Aluminum alloy Hub and a Steel Freewheel. Very dissimilar metals and with just a little oxidation they can be a bugger to separate. Of course PB Blaster, and allowing time for it to work, is usually your savior. One trick not recently mentioned is using a Trifloroethaine spray. Something like CRC Freeze Off or just a can of Liquid Air held upside down as a spray.

The coefficients of expansion between the Aluminum Alloy and steel are very much different. That difference could work for you. I would not aggressively heat up the freewheel. Some of the Shimano freewheels I have taken apart have plastic spacers between the cogs.

It could be that the energy that broke that axle most likely bent or got the hub out of round further complicating the freewheels removal.

https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/t...als-d_859.html

Hey... A stuck Freewheel! Finally something I know about... Ha

They were fragile. You had to use them very carefully, and even then, they would still fail. They were the best thing in some situations such as the original small-splined Shimano freewheel, because the only way to use a standard extractor was to remove the axle from the hub, and that was something mechanics wanted to avoid.

I suppose if you (or a friend) has a lathe, you could adapt a thicker wall tool, maybe heat treat it.

The issue is it would have had to be incredibly thin to work. Suntour removers are fine because there is more clearance and since I have several good suntour freewheels that is what I will use in the future

Has this become a show-us-your-freewheel-removers thread?

I used to have most of those.

That ring also stabilizes the tool, so it is less likely to cam off the slots and cause damage.

N.B. the Bicycle Research CT-1 also has that ring and works on those old Dura-Ace, Regina, and Caimi freewheels with the two notches:

Ok Neal,
I'll play....

This hasn't failed me yet. Needs about 90 PSI to run but always spins the FW's off pretty fast.
Smiles, MH

^ So you use that to open your mail, Dave?

Do you remember any details like what brand of FW, or brand of remover? Because if it was an Atom FW with the spined interface, Phil sold a remover specifically for that.



The key point is how thin the wall is on the sort-of tubular part. It must be made of strong steel, because despite how thin they are, I've never seen one fail. I use my Phil tool for any Atom (or Regina which used that same spline), regardless of whether the thin-wall is required. That thing is a life-saver.

Oops I hadn't read your post before I sent mine claiming I've never seen a Phil tool fail. I mean, I haven't, but maybe I "need to get out more". My time as a mechanic predates that tool; by the time I had one I was a frame builder and I didn't work side by side with mechanics anymore, so my dataset is pretty just me with my tool, working on my own bikes. A pro in a busy shop would have used his many times more than me.

ooh, can I play?


A few unusual ones in there:

• front-center, there are two Cyclo-Pans 4-prongers
• Front-right, who made that goofy thing with the skewer nut bult in? It spins but it's held captive. What a waste of steel, I mean you have the actual skewer nut in your hand from taking it off, so when would you want this? It's just a curio, I've probably never used it.
• Next to the chrome Dura-Ace TL-FW10 is the yellow Bicycle Research CT-1 that does the same thing. I like redundancy.
• in front of the CT-1 is a TDC 3-prong, anyone ever work on TDC FWs? At my old job (early '70s) we decided it stood for Totally Degenerate Crap. Not fair, but moderately funny.
• Behind the CT-1 is a Maillard. Funny thing about that one, in addition to the large external spline you see, they also had a smaller internal spline at the other end, which fits an Atom remover up inside it. The only logic for that I can imagine is if you had an Atom remover welded to a large tommy bar, you could use that to drive the big Maillard remover. Or maybe it's to prevent the Maillard "can" from being crushed in the vise?
• To the left of the Maillard is the can that Phil used to ship with their hubs, to prevent you from accidentally extracting the axle/bearings subassembly.
• Upper left is a freehub tool, how'd that sneak in there? Someone wasn't paying attention.

In all my time as a shop mechanic, I have never needed anything more than the spline tool and a bench vice to get a Shimano fw off.

Skewers don't do anything for Shimano tools, and I have never seen thread corrosion that was strong enough to resist two hands and a bench vise.


Adding more tools just creates more opportunities for something to go wrong.

Not so, if the axle was built correctly; that being with a locknut securing the drive-side cone, and a spacer outboard of those two.
Pull the spacer off and there is enough room for the tool.

So it's an atom freewheel and the tool was a park tool.

You need to a use a very rapid ‘jerk/snap’ kind of motion to break the freewheel loose. Think ‘absolute destruction’ and go at it, anything less isn’t enough.

If we’re playing the tool game I have 2, 4 and 6 prong Suntour. And Suntour cog gauges.

Dang! This has turned into a freewheel tool and removal technique p!$$!ng match! Who would have ever thought that a "stuck freewheel" could be so much fun?

I have every possible tool I could imagine needing, except the one that is needed for the next project...Murphy’s Law sub category...

Looks like I'm going to need to step up my game and buy a few more freewheel tools to be a full member of the cool kids club . .

Looks like I'm going to need to step up my game and buy a few more freewheel tools to be a full member of the cool kids club . .

I was incorrect above. That Phil extractor I used was for an Atom freewheel, not a Shimano.

JERK/SNAP FOR THE WIN!

Woke up in the middle of the night and remembered that I had a old chain link fence post in the Pile Of Crap That Might Be Useful Someday.This am, Retrieved the wheel from outside the garage where it had been marinating in the hot sun with the bit of Liquid Wrench I’d applied days earlier. Found the 1” Wrench rather than the 12” adjustable. Slipped the post over the wrench, and gave a sharp snap, and felt some movement. Second snap and the FW broke free. It had in fact been well lubed, old grease was vey much in evidence
Here’s the tools and results.


Thanks all for the help.

You may now return to the displays of freewheel tools currently in progress….

Yeah my park tool Shimano one works.

Awesome!!

Phil hubs, as well as Campagnolo Record and Zeus, have larger diameter locknuts than many other hubs, which prevent most splined removers from seating properly unless you remove the locknut. Phil's tool was specifically desgned with this in mind, so customers could service Atom/Regina/Caimi/Zeus splined freewheels on Phil's hubs. Zeus also offered a thin-wall splined remover for their hubs and freewheels. I don't know if one was copied from the other (or which came first), or if they were independently developed, but they both work interchangeably on Atom/Regina/Caimi/Zeus splined freewheels.


At that time, Campagnolo didn't offer a freewheel, so providing an appropriate tool apparently wasn't felt to be their problem. And when they did eventually offer a freewheel, they went with a proprietary helical two-slot design, arguably the best two-slot remover since removal torque drives the tool further into the helical slots, preventing it from camming out, as is so common with other two-slot freewheels (I still prefer splined freewheels). This is the Bicycle Research version of the Campagnolo freewheel remover:



Unfortunately, I have seen a Phil tool fail. I loaned one out, and got it back with the splines twisted.