rodscot

I was working on my wife's old bike this morning and had a look at the freewheel. I was surprised to notice that it was made by Nervar and not Shimano. It is a pretty standard old 6 speed 14-28T freewheel and comes off with the standard freewheel socket.

Can anyone tell me about this company? The bike is an old Townsend ladies bike, so pretty basic and pretty cheap at the time, therefore, I assume that Nervar were 'value' components?

bakerjw

Probably better to have this post moved to the Mechanics sub forum.

bikemig 

No Nervar made some pretty good components as well.

VeloBase.com - Component: Nervar Star (earlier version)

JohnDThompson 

Nervar was a second-tier French component maker. They made decent quality cranks, but used a proprietary bolt-circle diameter (126mm) on some models. OTOH, the extractor thread was standard 22mm x 1mm, so you didn't need to search for a non-standard tool to pull the crank.

thumpism 

I'd never seen nor heard of a Nervar freewheel until now, and also never heard of a "standard" freewheel remover but if it's a Shimano clone, as appears in this photo, that's probably as close as you'll get.

rodscot

Thanks, everyone. I did search for info on this but did not find much. Other than one vintage bike refurber who mentioned them. However, since posting this I have now discovered that Decathlon appear to sell these under their own brand Btwin. Now that may mean that at some time in the past I have replaced this cassette myself as we have a Decathlon locally. I don't remember doing it on this bike, but that doesn't mean it is not something I did a few years back when overhauling the bike.

Bill in VA

I have an old Malliard Freewheel remover for my Peugeot UO-8 that was said to also work with Nervar. It is a large circle many splined tool. Never saw a Nervar Freewheel until today.

carbo

hi
does anyone know which way to turn the bearing cover shown in photo, I've seen it done both ways on YT can't budge it yet. trying centre punch and hammer after a soak in WD40.

mmm it says i have 7 replies but nothing visible !

San_Son

I´ve managed to unscrew one of this Nervar freewheel with a Shimano remover.

3alarmer 

...I have never seen a freewheel where the top bearing race thingie was not left hand thread. So you would need to loosen it by turning clockwise with your punch and hammer.
This is usually not an operation worth doing. There are a lot of tiny bearings in there, and some pawl springs of fine wire. All of them tend to go all over the place when you open it up.

The only time I take them off is when I'm forced to do a destructive freewheel removal. Otherwise, clean by immersion in kerosene or mineral spirits (or an ultrasonic cleaner), let dry, then re-lubricate using a 20-30 weight oil. BUt since you posted that in September, I guess you did what you were trying to do already.

carbo

Thanks for this. I finally removed it with a centre punch and hammer after it soaked for a few days in WD40.

SurferRosa

BB in @Wildwood's Harding

Wildwood 

Correction: Austro Daimler Olympian
and pictured with the accompanying original Nervar Star crankset, wonky bcd and all.