Phatman

I was thining about putting an ultra-six freewheel on my ten speed. I just haven't found any in the gear ratios that I want. All of the ones that I have seen are practically TT corncob setups. (well, 12-21 is pretty narrow) Does anyone know of a source of wider-spaced ultra 6 freewheels?

I heard that an Ultra 6 freewheel will work with an 8-speed chain. what about the crank? That has teeth too. I know that if you use a 9-speed chain on a 10 speed (2x5) you will get crazy chain suck. Are the 8-speed chains wide enough to not cause chain suck with the chainrings? I was going to go touring this summer, and I want to get a new chain this summer anyway.

detrieux

Phatman,

Did you try Sheldon Brown/Harris Cyclery at www.sheldonbrown.com? They carry a lot of this type of stuff. Sheldon may be able to answer your other questions.

Phatman

yea, thats where I actually learned about the ultra 6 freewheel. They didn't have the gear range that I wanted.

D*Alex

an 8-speed chain will usually work just fine with an old 10-speed.

pokey

That's just applesauce. Sram 8 speed chains work with 7 and 6 speed too.

detrieux

Try ebay or put an ad on the buy and sell forum. Vheck with some old bike shops, you never know what you might find in one of those. Nashbar has a 6 speed Falcon Freewheel which might work for $7.95. www.nashbar.com
The item number for Nashbar is YF-FCFW6

Do not know if it is in stock but is listed on the website.

D*Alex

Sorry, detriux-he's asking about ultra 6 freewheels. Those Falcon piece-of-cr@p freewheels are standard 6's....
Ultra 6 freewheels are really quite rare, and are about 25 years obsolete.

Phatman

the front chainrings won't be too wide?

D*Alex

If you are worried about the chain slipping between the rings, thiat is rare, but sometimes does happen. If it does, there are 2 things you can do:
1) Buy a new ring or set of rings that have a "bump-out" further down the ring-this will usually prevent a chain from sliding between them, provided that there is a good amount of teeth difference between the 2 rings, or
2) Buy a Shimano 8-speed chain-they are just a bit wider. I had to do this on my touring bike (rings had a bumpout, but the 2 biggest rings only had a 4 tooth difference, allowing an SRAM chain to slip between-aaarrrgghhh!).

detrieux

Thanks DAlex. I thought this was a regular but thought I would mention it. Never knew they were that bad of a piece of equipment.

Phatman

yea, really the only freewheels that I would trust are the "S"s Shimano, Sachs, and Suntour. I heard regina was ok also.

brucejackson

Some old bike shops have old SunTour cog boards in the back. From these you can build up any ratio you desire. All the bikes I rode had 126mm hubs so I have been building up standard 6 speed and ultra 7 speed freewheels. Speaking of wide gears I once built up a 13-38 6 speed freewheel for my town bike using the big cog from an old SunTour AG Tech freewheel! Since I had a 36-48 double front crank I got below 1 to 1 gearing without using a triple.

8 speed chains should work fine on ultra 6 speed freewheels, I used them for years on ultra 7 freewheels without problem.

froze

I had a Suntour Winner 6 speed freewheel that had about 75,000 miles on it when it finally wore out to the point where the chain started to skip. Before that one there was a 6 speed Suntour Winner corncob gearing that I used for about 50,000 miles. I currently have a 7 speed Sach (I think it may be now called Sach SR or just SR) freewheel that has about 18,000 miles on it and so far so ; Shimano also makes a 7 speed. E-Bay has quite a few NOS/NIB Suntour freewheels that pop up all the time; Suntour made a very reliable freewheel.