Removing a stripped crank and what's this freewheel?

[DCLane]

Evening all - I'm seeking some advice from the CC technical collective:

A friend's asked me to work on his Claud Butler Odyssey - horrid thing, but I'm almost done apart from it needing two new gripshift gear changers (ordered).

He's also asked me to look at his brother's Elswick Stag and get it working as a surprise present. Here's where I'm stuck. It may be rusted but has some nice components on, including Shimano 600 shifters and FD plus a Cyclone Mk II rear derailleur. The wheels are lovely Shimano ones on 27 x 1 1/4" rims although the frame's only Champion No. 5.

The 6 speed freewheel's an unknown type - and I can't get it off. What appears to be the spline is larger than a Shimano HG and I've no clue what freewheel tool is needed (mine are all too small).

Does anyone have any idea what type of freewheel this is? What tool's needed to remove it?

Also the RH crank has come off fine. But the LH crank has a completely stripped thread. It's square taper with an adjustable bottom bracket.

Any ideas how to remove this please as well?

 

[ColinJ]

 

[midlife]

Looks more like a cassette than a freewheel. External thread so uniglide ?

 

[midlife]

Freehub on the left possibly

 

[DCLane]

Freehub on the left possibly

View attachment 441102

We'll see - tool bought to remove it. Thanks.

 

[mrandmrspoves]

Gear puller as in the video or alternatively I have sometimes had more sucess with a ball joint splitter.

 

[midlife]

We'll see - tool bought to remove it. Thanks.

Shouldn't need tool, just 2 chain whips. Why do you want to remove it?

 

[DCLane]

Shouldn't need tool, just 2 chain whips. Why do you want to remove it?

The wheel needs the bearings doing.

 

[midlife]

The wheel needs the bearings doing.

Undo cup and cones to change bearings Freehubs were designed to increase the width of the bearings to stop axles breaking / bending as freewheels got more cogs.

 

[classic33]

Gear puller as in the video or alternatively I have sometimes had more sucess with a ball joint splitter.

This^^^

 

[SkipdiverJohn]

Sometimes you can unseat tapered-fit components simply by giving the part a hard whack on opposing sides using two decent-sized, i.e. large hammers. This can be more effective if a willing (or unwilling!) assistant can wedge a prying tool such as a crowbar between the crank arm and the BB cup and apply some outward pressure. I've done it loads of times on car steering arms. Very effective so long as you have enough room to swing hammers, which won't be a problem on a bike. You can also do the hammer trick in conjunction with a cotterless crank extractor, on occasions when the crank is really tight and you are concerned you might strip the thread. Tighten up to a sensible amount and give the sides of the crank arm a wallop whilst under tension!

 

[Venod]

I have never tried this but if you have not got two chain whips it might come in handy, with thanks to Sheldon Brown.

Removing rear sprockets
The usual reason to remove rear sprockets during a ride is to replace a broken spoke.

If a bicycle has a modern Shimano-compatible cassette Freehub, the Stein Mini-Lockring tool (described in our main article about on-road repairs) removes the lockring so you can slide off the sprockets to replace a broken spoke.

With a freewheel or older cassette, one sprocket, sometimes more, is threaded on. The sprockets can be removed without using any tools, except on some very old freewheels which have sprockets that remove to the inside.

Place the chain on the smallest front sprocket, and remove the chain from the rear derailer. A SRAM chain with a PowerLink can easily be disconnected. With another chain, you may have to remove the lower (tension) pulley of the rear derailer to extract the chain.

With the right pedal behind top position (around 10 o'clock), wrap the lower of chain around the the outermost sprocket, starting at the bottom, and the upper run around an inner sprocket, starting at the top. The closer the two sprockets are in size the better this works. Get as much slack out of the chain as you can. If you haven't disconnected the chain, shape it into a figure-8 behind the sprockets.

Now step down on the right pedal, backpedaling. Because the outer sprocket is smaller, it will turn faster and unscrew. You may have to reposition the chain once or twice before the sprocket is completely loose.

Repeat as necessary to remove additional sprockets until you reach a splined sprocket and can lift the rest of the sprockets off. Be sure to keep all sprockets and spacers in order for replacement.

 

[DCLane]

Undo cup and cones to change bearings Freehubs were designed to increase the width of the bearings to stop axles breaking / bending as freewheels got more cogs.

Thanks. I did that and the cassette fell off. Landing sprocket down on my foot

So no tool needed then

Bearings all done front and rear ...

 

[rogerzilla]

Annoyingly, UG removal tools are slightly smaller than HG tools, although they look identical. A lot of off-brand freewheels also take the UG tool. Depending on tolerances, they may also take an HG tool - it's that close. Non-Shimano HG tools are sometimes a bit undersized and do both jobs.

 

[andrew_s]

Does anyone have any idea what type of freewheel this is? What tool's needed to remove it?

As stated above, it's a Uniglide cassette, held on by a screw-on top gear sprocket rather than a lockring. You remove it using 2 chainwhips, a Pamir cassette cracker, or by using the bike chain in one of a couple of different ways (one as above, the other being the rotafix method (youtube) usually used for fixed gear sprockets).

Rogerzilla is thinking of the Shimano freewheel remover, which has similar splines to a cassette lockring, but with the splines half as high, and bearing over a longer length. You can use a freewheel remover on a lockring, but not vice versa.
The freewheels may originally have had UG-pattern sprockets, but nowadays they have hyperglide sprockets.

Uniglide didn't shift as well as hyperglide, especially under load, but the sprockets lasted well over twice as long, and could be reversed on the splines (except the screw-on sprocket) for renewed life when they did start to wear.
Replacement uniglide cassettes are now very hard to find. What's left are mostly the smaller sizes, like 11-21