[CR] Old Freewheel Disassembly

Well, the episode with the Mecadural turned into a lesson in old freewheel disassembly. Not able to remove the outside cog from a Cyclo 72 (perhaps because it is nonremovable as Sutherland's seems to say), I initially used a British-made TDC, which oddly enough seems to be French threaded, as that was the first FW on which I succeeded in removing the outer cog.

However, I had an Atom 66 body with just two inner cogs, a bag of assorted French cogs, and a couple of bodies plus loose cogs, both Atom and Regina. Sorting through it all, I for the first time ever finally confirmed something I vaguely remember hearing years ago. That is, old Atom and old Regina cogs are interchangeable. I'm talking 60's and early 70's FWs, the Atom ones before they began to bear Maillard markings.

In this era, both Atom and Regina 5 spd FW's had the two inner cogs thread on from the BACK of the FW, while the outer three threaded on from the front of the FW. And sure enough, trying various loose cogs on my unbuilt bodies, the Atom cogs threaded onto the Regina bodies and vice versa. But none of the loose cogs would give me the combo I wanted, which was 16-30 4 spd, leaving off the outer to accomodate the Mecadural spacing. The 30T inner is about as large of the Simplex Rigidex mounted on the Mecadural chainstay will clear.

But I did have a 14-30 Regina outer body with cogs, salvaged from an FW where the inner body remover notches had been damaged beyond use. So I decided it was finally time to tackle removing the cogs from this outer body.

On the old Regina/Atoms, removing the outer three cogs, while not fun, is usually doable, if not with two chain whips, then with a bench vice and a FW vice like this Bicycle Research, clamped in a bench vice:

http://www.biketoolsetc.com/index.cgi?id 79106717&d=single&c=Tools&scÊssette-and-Freewheel&tc=Cluster-Vise&item_id=BR-SV

But the inner two cogs on both Regina and Atom, in my experience, are an absolute pain in the a** to remove, even with the above FW vice. However, I had a completely different FW vice, a VAR 368. I bought a couple of these when an online seller was clearing them out a couple of years ago. If you can get the outer three cogs off a Regina/Atom FW, the VAR will hold the FW body in a bench vice while you remove the two inner cogs from the BACK of the FW. Time to try the VAR out. Using this tool, I was able to remove the two inner cogs from the Regina body with with only a modest amount of pain, whereas my previous experience with such inner cogs had for years led me to avoid this task like the plague.

Built up the loose Atom 66 body with a combination of Atom and Regina cogs to give me the desired 16-30 4 speed, omitting the outside cog.

Thought it might be of interest to the group to confirm that these old Regina and Atom cogs are indeed interchangeable, and that it is actually possible to remove and replace all the cogs if one has the VAR FW vice.

Regards,

Jerry Moos
Big Spring, Texas, USA