digger

I volunteer at a community bike shop and I have a Maillard freewheel that I need to remove; came on an old Peugeot.

Works fine, but I want to service the hub bearings. I do not have the proper freewheel tool and finding one online proves to be difficult. I see them on Ebay but I'd have to order from Greece or Hong Kong. Would there by chance be another method to remove?

Thank you in advance.

D.

aTechnical

If it only needs to be removed and you want to replace it. RJ the bike guy has a video on how to remove it without the tool.

digger

I did see that video, thank you. I had wanted to reinstall it after I service the hub, but I guess I could add a Shimano freewheel. I think I have a 6 speed Shimano freewheel buried somewhere.

Trakhak

Measure the diameter of the section of the freewheel that the tool would engage with and call around the local bike shops. The oldest shops in town should have one of those tools. Pay them a few bucks to remove the freewheel for you. You won't need the tool to reinstall the freewheel, of course.

grumpus

Here's one. You may never need it again.
Otherwise just the usual suggestion - dismantle the freewheel, don't lose any of the bits that fly across the room or run under the bench, and carefully reassemble after you've cracked it with a pipe wrench.
I wonder if an air hammer on the splines would shift it, if it's not too tight.

grumpus

It's a Normandy (AKA Maillard large, as opposed to Atom, Maillard small) 24 spline, ~30 mm. They came as a pair, you had to clamp the small one in the vise and fit the large one onto it - clamping just the large one would damage it. An old bike shop may have the tools, these freewheels have to be at least 40 years old.

Trakhak

No need to confuse the shop guy with TMI in the phone call. If the shop has a freewheel puller with the correct outer diameter, the OP can be confident that it's the correct tool. It's probably safe to assume that no other company had a tool that was of the same diameter but incompatible otherwise.

Don't remember that one-tool-inside-another arrangement, and I worked in shops that sold French bikes, from the early '70s on. We might have had only the thick-walled version of the tool, though. Can you find a picture of the tool(s) you're referring to?

grumpus

All you need tell him is "large Maillard" if he knows his freewheel tools.
You can see that 407 fits inside 405, which has only shallow flats.

dedhed

check in C&V there may be someone near who'd borrow one.

Biker Pete 

Interesting. I’m reviving my 1975 Motobecane Grand Record, and I ordered one of the 24 spline freewheel tools from an eBay seller in France…..I’m in the US. Delivery estimate is three weeks, so I should have it in about one week.

JohnDThompson 

The Bicycle Research CT-3 works with those freewheels. It's been out of production for a while, but still turns up on the used market.

wesmamyke

EVT I think did a run of them at some point too. I bought one probably ten years ago from bicycle tools etc.

digger

I watched that video again, and the holes in the example he has are quite accessible. The cassette I have, you can barely again access to the hole; I'd say about 1/4 of it or less. So I'm not sure how to use that method to remove the cassette. I'll try my bike shop, but they'll like charge me $50. They know I volunteer for a community bike centre in a rural area, about 60km from them, so it isn't for me.

choddo

Could probably pick up a better wheel for less than that!