Miele Man

Had that happen to me when trying to remove a super tight Shimano freewheel. Wasn't even my bike. :<(

Cheers

francophile 

I always QR my freewheel tools in, but always try out an 18" or 24" adjustable wrench before taking the extra steps to lock down the vise and going to town.

Upside is, adjustable wrench usually liberates a freewheel with that extra leverage PRONTO with no extra setup.
Downside is, adjustable wrenches are prone to slipping, especially on freewheels like this Sachs LY96 where a scant 1/4" or so of the freewheel tool is protruding.

It's a balancing act, you want to fully engage the splines, but you also need enough to grab.I think the larger dent was from this freewheel removal session and that's the exact cause, who knows about the smaller ones.

This thing is pretty old and has seen some abuse over time. I don't have a ton of new tools.

francophile 

Oh, and to answer your question, no. I was not tightening. At least, not actively at the time. If I get lots of resistance, sometimes I will go back and forth on it. Sometimes tightening will break things free, as illogical as it sounds.

francophile 

Got the Bike Hand 12-spline in today, only to find it's not comparable to the TL-FW30. Interesting. Splines too wide?

But when I went to put it away in the freewheel tool box, I noticed I have the Park FR-1.2, awesome. And dammit also!

Tossed it into my Bosch 18v impact, and went to town on with that. This mf'er isn't budging!

Incredible. Same impact has broken rusted frozen nuts off stuff. Not a shortage of power.

This freewheel is superdamnstuck!

And yes, I tried the direction it should remove, and the opposite a couple times. Wheel is off an American bike, Shimano HB-MN72 hub. It's not like it'll have weird threading.

How wild.

wschruba

Sounds like it's time for destructive removal, if you want to save the hub/wheel. $0.02

francophile 

I'm going to give some more penetrant and some heat/freeze cycles a g to see if I can break the steel/alloy bond.

I'll report back if I have any luck. I'm really super curious what this thing looks like underneath!

Millstone

The plot thickens...

sbarner 

It's all about history in this case. When Campy developed their hub axle back in the 1950s, notched freewheel removers were in vogue. We all learned to avoid putting Atom freewheels on Campy hubs to avoid having to pull the axle every time you wanted to remove the freewheel, but I'm pretty sure that Campy's hub locknuts came out long before Atom's splined remover. Along comes Phil Wood with his axle that is devoid of both spacer and locknuts, and he produced that ultra-thinwall remover for Atom FWs so you wouldn't be "screwed" if you thoughtlessly threaded an Atom freewheel on a Phil Wood hub. Suddenly, we all had to buy these because they allowed us to use the superior splined remover. Forget about the even better Normandy-style spline--you couldn't go below a 14-tooth cog and real men rode 13s. Soon several European freewheel manufacturers had adopted the Atom spline while Shimano, always looking to do everyone else one better, enlarged their existing spline slightly so that they, too, could have a remover that could be used on a Campy Record hub without removing the axle. Shimano's remover was just a bit thicker walled than the Phil Wood remover, but it was still a bit fragile, especially when compared to the original, smaller diameter version. So, it's history and incremental evolution that gave us fragile freewheel removers, all traceable back to the Campy Record hub locknuts and the desire for ever smaller freewheel cogs.

With the Phil Wood / Atom remover, you were wise to use a vise to hold it so you could evenly apply force turning the wheel to avoid side-loading the tool. This is good practice with the Shimano tool as well. Of course, that means you need access to a decent bench vise, which not everyone has. If the freewheel is already trashed, my approach is to disassemble the body and clamp the inner body in my giant, 19th-century vise (yes, I got that right), and put the beef into it. I messed up a nice hub once before I learned that the vise can provide so much force that it distorts the thread and that I needed to back off the pressure of the jaws as soon as the freewheel broke loose.

oneclick 

An intermediate step is (if you have one), to use the genuine Atom remover; yes you have to free up the end of the axle, but the tool will not break.

Prowler 

A few years ago my winter project was an well neglected Raleigh. It had been shed stored for decades. That FW was stuck. It took me a month to remove it. Hot air gun, penetrating oils front and back then set it by the wood stove. Try it in the vise. Fail and repeat over and over. My vise is tough and bolted to the building. Still, patience won out. That’s why winter projects are good. No hurry.

JohnDThompson 

Or a Bicycle Research CT-2, with the same caveat.

The Park FR-4 is between the Atom/Bicycle Research and Phil tools, in terms of wall thickness. It's somewhat stronger than the Phil, but is thin enough to fit over the locknuts on most hubs; Campagnolo Record, Zeus, and Phil being the notable exceptions.

1989Pre 

Never seen one break up like that, but I just bent a brand-new Cycle Pro chain whip in half by trying a breaker bar on it. I'll try some lube on the sprocket threads first, next time.

JohnDThompson 

Zeus also produced a thin-wall remover; not sure if that came out before or after the Phil tool.

c

unworthy1

never saw that one before...but given the Zeu$ branding I probably never will see, let alone own, one!

JohnDThompson 

It fits Atom/Regina/Zeus/Everest splined freewheels, and clears the locknuts as well as the Phil tool. Not common in North America, and the Phil tools are getting hard enough to find.

sbarner 

That would certainly be my approach with an Atom, but there is no solid remover that I know of for the larger Shimano spline.

oneclick 

Though the number of splines is the same across these several varieties, they are not the same shape and are only close in dimension, and so are the removers.

https://www.bikeforums.net/22644910-post8.html

(I think there's a busted Everest in a bin, I'll have a dig and see what fits that.)

JohnDThompson 

Interesting. I just tried it here, and you're right, the Zeus tool won't fit a splined Atom freewheel. But the Phil and Bicycle Research tools do fit:


I don't have a splined Regina to test, but I do have a Zeus freewheel. All three tools fit, although the Bicycle Research felt a little sloppy. I know the Phil works well to remove Zeus freewheels, because that's what I used before I got the Zeus tool.



I guess the moral of the story is to have a variety of tools available.