On Mon, 2011-06-06 at 20:43 -0700, james black wrote: > Why must we dump our freewheels, a technology which in my experience > has always performed flawlessly as intended, just because freehubs > make for better engineering?
One reason might be that freewheels NEVER "performed flawlessly". First time I brought my Paramount in for service, and it must have had less than 1,000 miles on it, the shop destroyed my Regina Oro freewheel trying to remove it. It was common for shops servicing tandems to resort to a three foot long cheater bar to try to remove the freewheel. Pedaling screws the freewheel on tighter, and the stronger the forces on the chain, the tighter it gets. Trying to overcome that torque with a small notched or splined wrench inside the freewheel often led to slippage, which in turn led to damage. As if that wasn't enough, there's the issue of the freewheel's location forcing the drive side bearing in the hub inboard, leading to axle bending; this wasn't a problem in the days of 3, 4 and 5 speed clusters, but once they went to six and beyond it became more and more of a problem. Seven speeds appears to be the practical maximum. Rather than considering them "flawless," you might think of freewheels as a poorly engineered system that was pushed beyond its practical limits into the realm of failure. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch?hl=en.
