Bicycle Freewheel Disassembly/Assembly

Some of my viewers have asked me about taking a part of the

freewheel

and putting it back together, so I'm going to go ahead and make a video on how to do it. This is an old

freewheel

that I don't really care for. It has some rust on it, but it's a little glued on the inside, so it's a great example to get into anyway, you want to go ahead and leave it on the wheel to start taking it apart. I brought them this skewer. outside and there are these little holes here, these little indentations, you have to use something like a pin wrench.

I have this one here from your tool and it has like little pins in there, so these will fit into little holes in there. I'm going to use this to turn off this little lock ring. Now this lock ring here is reverse threaded so you're going to turn it clockwise to loosen it up so go ahead it might be too tight so we're going to go ahead and try this here with the pin wrench and that it doesn't come out like that, so if that doesn't work, what you're going to do is use like a little punch and a hammer, so I'm going to bring this here, I'm going to stick this here, I'm going to hammer it and let it go.

They're awesome and I don't want to completely remove this yet so it's loose there so the next thing I want to do is remove the freewheel from the wheel so I have a freewheel removal tool here and hang what kind of free wheel. You'll have, you might need a different tool, so from here, when I find myself, use this. I'm going to turn it counterclockwise to unscrew it from the wheel and this might be too tight so the head comes loose and the brake comes loose once you get it. it came loose, just go ahead and unscrew this from the wheel like this, okay, now I want to remove this little ring here and I want to be careful not to lose the bearings on the back here, so I'm going to hold this up. and I want to unscrew this.

I just have a kind of skewer here that I'm going to use to twist this ring. I think I want to hold this part here so it doesn't become like this. Turn this like this and all the bearings are there, so I'm going to place it here and I want to keep track of how many bearings are on this side, how many bearings are on the other side, so this is a little bit magnetic. so I can just lift the bearings up here like this and that's all the bearings out of there, let's go ahead and put them in this so we don't lose them, keep them all together and set them aside now I can lift this up. up and there are bearings on the other side here there so I want to keep these bearings separate from the other bearings and they are probably the same size so there are the pawls there and there are all the bearings there so I'm going to go ahead and remove all those bearings like this now I want to clean all these parts and it's all inside there, so I'm going to clean all this, okay.

I cleaned all these parts here using a little bit of paint thinner and I'm ready to put this back together okay so I have this piece here and what I have to do is lubricate the parts so I have my grease gun here and It's full of marine fat, what I'm going to do is just cut out some of the fat. around the pawls here and so and then work like this there okay so I got that now I want to apply some grease around the race here to help keep the bearings in place here now comes the tedious part you have to take the bearings and these were the bearings that came from the bottom side and there were 39 bearings is what I counted, you know, take one bearing at a time and just put it in the grease and you'll still do that all. the way is fine, we've done all we have to do is screw this part back into the hub, but first what I want to do is put a thin layer of grease around the threads here, we'll make it a little bit easier to screw on and also protected because This is aluminum and the parts are steel and there will be galvanic corrosion between the two and anyway you don't need much just a thin layer and this will make it a little bit easier to screw in here and then screw this in with great care. to the hub, put a screw in clockwise, make sure it's threaded and be careful not to lose any bearings that way and I don't need to tighten it really well, now I'm getting ready to put this piece in before I put this piece in.

I want to Go ahead and run a little bit of grease over here, just lubricate it, especially on these teeth here or the pawls are going to go away and I don't need much, just run a thin coat over these teeth here. so and while I'm at it I want to go ahead and put a little bit of grease over here on this race because there's going to be bearings coming down and over here like that I need to smooth it out with my finger a little bit and then there was also a couple of spacers that came out of here, there was one a little bit thicker, but slide it in there and then there was a thinner one and they will sit there and what these spacers do is that when I'm going to put this part of the cone here like this.

I can tighten this all the way to where these spacers are intended so that when I tighten them all the way it has the correct gap and doesn't crush the bearings. there they will be here, so now what I can do is very carefully screw this piece here like this and I want to leave this on the ground. If I turn it gently counterclockwise, you will go over the pawls and hit a couple of bearings. it's out of place there so I want to put it in there without removing the bearings from their place very carefully, it should fit well like this and I can turn it counterclockwise like this, now it's time to put these bearings in here.

I counted 31 on this side, so I'm going to drop them into place into the grease in this little race over here, they're like, oh, those bearings there, okay, now I want to install this cone here, so I'm going to put this here and you could tighten it once you screw it on, tighten it by turning it counterclockwise and it should screw on pretty easily and then once you have it there, now I can use my wrench here to go ahead and tighten this So. which now to tighten I'm going to go ahead and use my chain whip to hold this in place while I twist this like this.

I get it nice and tight so now I can go ahead and use my freewheel tool to tighten the freewheel though on the hub all the way and there now the freewheel is nice and tight that way and it touches in the other direction and that's how a freewheel is disassembled and assembled anyway. I hope this has helped. I hope you found it interesting if I liked the video, click like. I always appreciate getting likes on my videos and if you haven't subscribed to my channel, please subscribe to my channel. You can click on the subscribe button.

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