FREEWHEEL SELECTION: what to do?
 

INTRO: This concerns a bike that is pictured on these forums somewhere. A Gazelle Champion AB frame. (The frame was exported to Germany, so "Champion Mondial" had to be shortened to just "Champion" due to some patent thing.) It's a hand-assembled frame in Reynolds 531C with a "pegged" BB ... ie: it doesn't move! :)))

PARTICULAR:
• I live on flat land in Sendai, Honshu Japan. I cycle on the floodplains and levees of two confluent rivers.
• Consequently, when I built this bike from the frame up, I selected the gearing (the entire 'transmission') to match the cycling I'd be doing (and have been doing) ....
• Compact chain wheels up front. Close ratio 13-18 Shimano MF-6207 freewheel.
• This has been brilliant. Very smooth changes. The ratios have been perfect for the flats, and they are good ride in headwinds.

PROBLEM - 1
• The MF-6207 has been on the Mavic Montherly hub and rim ever since it was given to me years ago. I have never removed it.
• The two prong tool used to remove MF-6207 is virtually unobtainium. The problem has been discussed here on BF. Moreover, this freewheel has a reputation for being particularly difficult to remove. One solution is to file down a 2 prong SunTour tool ... and ... er .... try. Someone suggested a Regina 2 prong tool will work. Good luck finding one.
• I've tried veteran bike shops.
• I tried drifting the unit out with a punch. I was careful, but I still dinged one of the prong dents!! SIGH!
• PLAN: File a Park FR-2 two prong SunTour removal tool. Torque it on with a long 5-6 M bolt and nut and turn the rim on a large vice. I don't expect success.
Whatever I eventually end up with will go on a mint, Campagnolo Record hub laced on an NOS Mavic rim. YUMMY!

PROBLEM -2 ... and I don't understand why this has not come up in a thread/s
• There is hardly any selection among new freewheel stock. It looks like we are stuck with 13-24 ( and they are often out of stock), 13-28, 13 - HUGE GRANNY sprocket. Sunrace, generic Chinese stuff, Shimano TZ blah blah at Tourney level that is 13-28 and larger. No close ratio race options, AAAAHHHHH-1!!!!!
• I'd even go for 13-21, but they are no longer around. I think Sunrace may have made them
• Used and NOS is expensive — or even silly/ rediculously expensive. Then there is added shipping overseas and weeks to get here .... AAAAHHHH-2!!!!!

QUESTIONS:
• What to do? I really don't want to give up what I have. So a compromise is OK. But I'll never use 24T and 28T — forget it
• What do you vintage riders/ builders do?

Any suggestions, remarks, advice will be very gratefully accepted. And even by some chance I do manage to budge the MF-6207, having something as a spares and an option for other builds would be a good thing.

By the way, I've not been around here much. Work and stuff got in the way, and it was all I could do just to get out and ride. But I got forced into retirement due to the usual Japanese work protocols. (Which is why I'm not going to spend $100+ on a used and dubious freewheel. It's a usual problem for many of us, I'm sure. You have some money but not the time. You have time but not so much money :))) — Cheers - Lorne / Lenton58

Can't help with freewheel removal, but eBay is littered with close ratio freewheels. You might even find something NOS. As an alternative, if you have something that's too wide range for your needs, pastorbobnlnh can certainly refurbish it and replace cogs. I imagine he would be happy to take the larger cogs off your hands for inventory. ;)

Thanks for the reference. Good to know.

WOW - it's been so long ... too long since since I built a bike "transmission".

I found a Dura Ace, two-prong tool that fitted my freewheel perfectly. I secured it with a sewer and chucked the tool in my huge Record vice. With the tubular pumped to 100 psi to protect the rim, I pulled anti-clockwise and the freewheel cracked off!

The tool is in the original box. If anyone wants the part number, let me know. I forget what it is, and it's locked away with the mosquitoes in the bike garage.

I'm still interested in any comments about what members are doing when they want freewheels in the age of ubiquitous freehubs / cassettes.

And I'm still hunting corncobs.

Cheers ... Lorne

Here’s an inexpensive ISO 6-sp (looks like index). Don’t know if that would work for you.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/25517603197...kAAOSwt-ZhZeyz

Looks very nice, thanks.

I use down-tube friction shifters on all my bikes — old school. Indexed parts are no problem. But, I'm steering away from anything French after reading the Sheldon article. It cautions on mixing French freewheels with what I have. Italian and English threaded stuff has given my no problems with all my Shimano 6200, 6500, 6700 and Campy Record hubs. But it sure looks like what I want.

The Shimano TL-FW10 is the preferred tool for this. The Bicycle Research CT-1 is also good. Both have been out of production for years, but can be found on the use market, if you're patient.

Semi-corncob
 

Hey Lenton 58, I have a nice Suntour Winner Pro that I will probably never use, it is a 13-19 (they skipped the 18!). 6sp. If you can’t find what you are looking for let me know, I can send some pics. ew (hey, I have a Lenton “58”, or maybe 59, has manual fd, cyclo mk 7 in rear, cool bike!)

Welcome to the new normal. :twitchy: :roflmao:

We're so far down the road of threadless, disposable, cartridge, throwaway, profit at all costs crap that we're lucky so much oldschool stuff is still available and thanks to bullitproof design and manufacturing it lives on, the same will not be true for most of the "better, modern" crap we have now, nevermind built in obsolescence so it won't matter if they last.

Plenty of FW's like you seek to be had, you may just have to dig a bit. ;)

That ^^^^^^ Oshkosh eBay seller also has at least a couple 13-18 straight blocks, one Suntour and one Shimano. No indication whether he ships to Japan. Kind of ironic that you can't find a close-range Shimano or Suntour freewheel there. I guess the trees that they used to grow on there are no longer standing?... ;)

.
...close ratio freewheels are still around, just not in large numbers. I find them every now and then in the bin at the bike co-op here.

I have started just making up my own, using scrap freewheels I get out of that same bike co-op bin. If you stick with either early Suntour or early Shimano when you collect your parts donors, you get a lot of cogs that are compatible with whatever bodies you end up with that still work, I do not disassemble the bodies, because that requires a delicate touch and good eyesight.

Not sure I understand why, if you got your old freewheel off, you are not simply re-using it after cleaning, flushing, and re-lubricating it ? Is it worn out on one or more cogs ? I've had pretty good luck with replacing cogs on Shimano freewheels, but at this point I have a large collection of them.

Someone refresh my memory -- with a frewheel like the OP's, if cog wear is the issue, is there any hope/value in flipping the cogs?

Yes, that's the one. In post #4 I explained that I found one in it's original box in my tool chest. I've got tools that I've forgotten I even had. Anyway it's the exact same Shimano part number — TL FW10 as you cited. It worked perfectly!

I'll look him up. And you've hit on a problem — least my problem. I've been forced into retirement despite being healthy and robust — the Japanese system. So I'm ... er ... price-conscious. In many cases, I can abide the item price (barely.) But when you add on today's international shipping, or even shipping inside Japan when the seller refuses to adjust for domestic rates, the cost goes over reason. And I've seen stuff I wanted, but the seller has stated something like "lower 48 only".

I've had trouble ordering on the Japanese sites. My fault; my Japanese is not very good. Recently I joined a site and bought an item — all in Japanese. It was kind of a nightmare and the process took me all morning. Even my Japanese wife gave up and left me to finger it out. I succeeded. Nevertheless, I will keep trolling. I've seen some suff on Yahoo Japan that looks OK. Recently I bought a tool from there.

Also, I mean to troll 2-3 old shops for used stuff. Some years ago, I picked up an old Mavic wheel set that way ... with a UG Dura Ace hub. It came with a sorda-kinda close ratio 7sp Regina cassette . YUMMY.

I'm not sure about the Japanese keeping old stuff around as much as we North Americans. Space is an issue for many people — especially urban dwellers. I've selfishly commandeered space for piles of old audio stuff and bike parts. Someday I'm gonna have to do the right thing and thin out the dross.

There is no such thing like a co-op bin here. We used to have community waste collection for large items. You could sometimes find the most fantastic stuff there. When I arrived here almost 30 years ago, I was broke and needed to set up housekeeping. I outfitted a basic kitchen with pretty nice stuff. These collection sites were for "solid waste" [sodai gohmi]. It was always against bylaw to scavenge there, but people did anyway. So, the neighbourhood watch committees started placing retired men to stand guard over these huge piles or hito yama [people mountains]. If you even went near one of these places without some contribution to the pile, these old buzzards wearing armbands would start yelling in gruff threatening voices. At some point, the city would come haul the stuff away. This was an annual event lasting a week or so in each precinct.

The system changed. Now you have to buy a ticket at a convenience store and call the city to arrange a pickup — or haul the stuff to the recycle centre yourself where your cargo is weighed against the licensed weight of your vehicle. A commensurate fee is levied. Gone are the old days. This is bit off topic, but it's why bike parts don't heave themselves out of the ground here. There is nothing like what member Randy Jawa finds in Ontario landfills. In fact we don't even have landfills or dumps. We have recycle centres, and what is not incinerated is recycled. Wanna get rid of an old laptop? You have to drive to a special recycle centre for electronics and pay a fee. I could go on, but I'll stop here. :)))

> Not sure I understand why, if you got your old freewheel off, you are not simply re-using it after cleaning, flushing, and re-lubricating it ? Is it worn out on one or more cogs ? I've had pretty good luck with replacing cogs on Shimano freewheels, but at this point I have a large collection of them.

Oh - I am reusing it for sure! It's going on a mint Campagnolo Record hub. It's in decent shape. I'll just run some super oil into it.

I imagine that it's similarly difficult to find new typewriter ribbon stock (and for much the same reason), though I confess that I haven't looked.

I find that NOS 5-speed Sanshin freewheels are surprisingly cheap. But these are for touring. I don't suppose that they're so very durable; so if I'm at a bike "flea market", I look around for spares. Some may be hidden among the corncobs that are always to be found on offer. (Different strokes and all that.)

This particular vintage rider lives on flat land in Tokyo, and rides along levees of rivers only (i) when he doesn't have much time or (ii) in order to get to where the rides become interesting. I have what could be called a vintage bike and am very grateful for its 14-to-28 freewheel and its triple crankset: thanks to this combination I've propelled it at least twice from near-sea-level home to above a thousand metres and back home again. (Suntour) gear changing is normally very smooth (though recently the chain has been moving only reluctantly from the 39- to the 50-tooth chainwheel); and if the wide range means that I'm often not in precisely the gear I wish I were in, I'm tolerably close to it.

You're lucky enough (i) to have "a mint, Campagnolo Record hub" and (ii) to live in a nation where a certain subculture of grandpas drools over and pays a premium for Campagnolo Record. So sell the hubs, buy replacements from Zeus, Suzue, Sanshin or wherever, and with the change, get the freewheels that you want. They're certainly available:

• from Mercari
• from Yahoo Auction
• from Kato Cycle

as well as from so-called flea-markets (a misnomer; most are very hygienic) and I imagine also elsewhere in Japan: if you get talking to other people riding old bikes they may well have good suggestions.

...I don't know his freewheel specifically, but generally the older Suntour and Shimano freewheels I've chosen to work with have the two smallest cogs threaded, and they hold the larger cogs in place on the lower part of the freewheel body. They usually have the spacer integral to the cog, so flipping them is not an option. And it is usually on the small sprockets that wear shows up the fastest, at least on the freewheels I work on. The larger cogs can be flipped on these older freewheels, because they are only positioned by tabs. But even then it's not an ideal solution, because the teeth are usually taper cut in one direction, to assist shifting. So you end up with the taper on the teeth going the wrong way. Still works, but not as well.

By far the best situation is to have a stock of old freewheels that are made by the same company, roughly contemporaneous, that you can disassemble and rob for parts. (Same model if possible.) Even the newer freewheels made by the same company are often incompatible as the design evolves over the years. Suntour cogs come in a bewildering array of inner diameters and methods of attachment over the years.

Thanks EV. I'll send you an Email or PM. (I might have a cool trade in mind.)

My Lenton: I still wish I had it. It would be at the limit of small, but I could still ride it. I loved that Reynolds frame, and I can still remember the ride. My parents gave it to me on Xmas day, shortly before my 11th birthday. My dad spent Xmas day riding it and reliving his youthful cycling days on a Bates racer. Soon I was off to our little rural library where I found a little British book on how to care and maintain a bicycle. The Lenton was always clean, waxed, and lubricated. I over hauled hubs, installed stirrups and rode miles and miles instead of bussing. It had a Sturmey Archer SW hub — a complete disaster. Even after an overhaul, it would slip while standing up climbing hills. Very painful! The frame was stolen out of my apartment locker around 1981. I still miss it.

Perhaps Richard Ballantine, Richard's Bicycle Book?

I'm unaccustomed to Japanese retail websites that don't have domestic rates. (Typically, domestic rates are all that they have.)

The enormous successes of Yahoo Auction and Mercari mean that their purchase and payment processes aren't limited to the intelligent or attentive buyer. The process is usually straightforward. It tends to get complicated where an effort to "internationalize" falls short; notably, you can be asked to supply your real name (OK so far) but to do so in full-width characters (thanks to the assumption that all names are written in kanji, plus the website's desire to avoid the risk of half-width katakana). So: Don't attempt to use a credit card (unless you can do so via Paypal), and opt to pay at a convenience store instead.

Wives don't tend to be bike-purchase enablers. By contrast, your riding chums may be happy to help you get your fix of "gear" or "junk".

:)))) No! It's so long ago. Airliners that crossed oceans still had propellers! I forget the name and author, but I do remember it was very English in the old style; the recommended parts cleaner was referred to as 'paraffin'.

Besides a digital-copy of the massive Barnetts manual, I have a little book published in 1985 by Bicycle Books, San Francisco: The Bicycle Repair Book by Rob Van Der Plas. All the illustrations are excellent drawings making everything very easy to understand. For 135 pages, it's very comprehensive.

I have a lightly used 13-21T Regina freewheel and the matching removal tool. :-)

I haven't used it in over 40 years. It is not new but it is in darned good condition.

It might have been "parafin oil" not "parafin". I have a can of it in the garage. I use it in conjunction with polishing media to make a slurry and "finish the finish" (shellacs, lacquers, varnishes,...).

Link to Behlen Bros Parafin Oil

"Free Wheel

"No adjustment.

"Lubrication: Thin pure oil every 400 miles. If ratchet slips, inject paraffin or petrol first."

H. H. England, Cycling Manual, 24th edition (London: Temple Press, 1960), page 151.

I've seen no sign of any later edition than this, whose copyright page says "First published 1917".

I've never seen it, but I think I'd like a can. I dunno if being the son of a Londoner qualifies me enough, but I think for cleaning parts, when the books reads paraffin, it's saying kerosene. It's what I use for cleaning parts today. I soak and agitate chains in a jar full of it, let the crud settle and decant the clear paraffin ... er ... kerosene for recycling.

Thanks ... I'm interested. I'm looking at a prior offer but I'll get back to you. 13-21T is definitely in my sights.

I'm jumping in a bit late since I'm in the middle of a cross-country move.

Anyone interested in corncobs, I can provide them in the three major brands, Suntour, Shimano and Regina. Probably--- Maillard and Sachs, as well. For C&V members I can provide reasonable prices plus shipping via USPS Priority Mail. I realize shipping to Japan is probably $40+/- Each is cleaned and serviced with new lube.

Someone asked about turning the sprockets around to gain more life and wear. Some you can and some you can't. Depends on the model.

Well, I need to get back to my move. :(

Lenton58, the offer in the post by pastorbobnlnh is a good one.

My apologies to you for my post. I was just chatting. Although, you might think there's an offer to sell implied in my post, you'll notice there isn't any explicit offer. I shy away from direct, person-to-person sales via this or any other forum. Heck, I don't use Paypal or ebay, either.

Thanks very much for 'jumping in. I think I've just got fixed up, but it's good to know your service is around for stuff in the future. I appreciate your keeping these relics alive.