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Old 07-25-23, 07:42 AM
  #6603  
VintageSteelEU
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Originally Posted by bulgie
Classic! When I worked in bike shops, people would ever so often bring in a rear hub with freewheel still attached. It was sad having to explain to them what they'd done.

One fix is to make some Z-bend spokes, which don't have heads on them, so they can be inserted into the flange. They can be made by snipping just the top cap off the J-bends, then adding another bend near the existing bend, with narrow-nose pliers. The space between the two bends should be set to match the flange thickness of the hub, but it doesn't need to be precise.

You can make, say 8 spokes in the time it took me to type this.

The exact length of the spokes also doesn't matter. I said 8, which is based on one-fourth of a 32-hole rim, but the exact number doesn't matter either.

Once you have the spokes made, lace a wheel only to the right flange and only pulling spokes, no crosses. Thread the nipples on to full engagement, and proceed to removing the freewheel the normal way. Once your 8 (or however many) spokes are pulled tight by the freewheel removal action, you'll have almost the same removing power as a fully built wheel, no crossing spokes needed.

It is possible to damage a rim by this method so you might want to choose a junk one or at least a heavy/strong one. You can't hurt the spokes though, you aren't strong enough.

Remember to hold the freewheel remover tightly to the freewheel with a QR skewer. Back off the tension on the skewer after the freewheel breaks loose. (Standard advice for almost any FW removal.)

If we charged a customer what this job should cost in normal labor rates, most people would opt to throw the hub and freewheel away. That's always an option; used vintage hubs and freewheels aren't expensive, like on ebay, leboncoin or swap meets for example. Extra karma points for keeping these out of the recycle bin though. Good luck!
So far so good, because this allowed me to lace the hub. My nose pliers are shot and I need to get a new pair, but I have used some steel hub I have to bend the spoke ends into Z shape (by inserting them into flange holes and bending them this way). Looks like I finally found some use for, otherwise useless, black spokes I had.
I laced the hub into a rim, put a junk tire on and gave it a go. Didn't budge. Blasted it with more penetrating oil and left it overnight, but no luck so far. I laced the whole wheel in this manner (with normal, J-bend spokes on the NDS), put some tape inside the rim, tube and tire on and gave it another go. Still nothing. Well, the hub sits in there firmly enough. Now I need a new freewheel removal tool Mine just got stripped. I will get some more penetrating oil in there wihilst I wait for the tool to arrive. At this point what worries me the most is whether the flange will take radial lacing, but fingers crossed.
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