Freewheel vs Cassette - What Are They? Can I Convert?

hey beerus i've had some viewers that have asked questions about freewheels cassettes and they convert from a free will to has said that do other things and I've had to you'll try to explain through them through messages you know like that and so I decided to shoot a video showing the differences between a freewheel and a cassette I mean at a glance they look alike they basically do the same thing that for you in the One Direction they catching the other and you'll see they drive like that how they actually attach the hubs and everything like that is completely different and so I'm going to show you close-up the differences between the two between pre Welles cassettes and then maybe they'll understand like what they can and can't do with pre wheels cassettes ok so here's an example of a freewheel and it actually screws onto the hub and to remove it I'm going to need a tool and the tools come in a variety of different flavours depending on the manufacturer of the freewheel this particular freewheel uses this tool here so there's little splines inside here so the tool just fits in and I can unscrew this from the hub just like this I already had this loosened they can be very very tight because when you actually ride the bike they actually screw tighter tighter on the hub already pre loosing this like pull it off easily now if you look at the hub here there's a threaded section on here and that's where the pre well threads onto now this is relatively standard there's some slight variations maybe between English French Italian type hubs where the diameter of a like that but they're close enough that the free wheels are generally interchangeable and so now this the freewheel itself and the most common sizes are like 5 6 & 7 cogs on here ole tends to be bikes had the 5 cogs on their newer bikes have like the 7-speed free wheels on here now the ratcheting mechanism is actually built in to the freewheel so this is like this it spins in one direction but then kind of catches in there with the little Paul's in there so that's all built into the freewheel now just because this stuff in here is relatively standard doesn't you can just take a five speed freewheel off and it's all a seven speed freewheel because the hub diameter the hub width is actually different between the two unlike road bikes a five speed hub is going to be about 120 millimeters wide on a six and seven speed hub it's going to be about a hundred twenty six millimeters wide so if you try to install a seven speed freewheel in place of a five speed freewheel freewheel is going to rub against the inside of the frame because the hub is just not wide enough okay here's a small collection of different styles of free wheels so to identify whether you have a free will or not you kind of like look down there's like a little recessed area and so like you want to see whether there's a area for the tool to attach to and so this is the freewheel I took off the wheel and it's got the splines down in here and so this one it's also got splines are like a smaller smaller splines in there this is an old French freewheel and so it's got like a larger opening there but it still has the splines there now this is a different style see it's got notches here and so the tool like this actually attaches into this notch these notches here to unscrew this from the wheel and then there's also some other ones that have like four notches in there so a tool like this would fit down in there to unscrew that and then the item really covered here here's a single speed free well it's got like four notches here so wider and but it threads on to the wheel the same way as these others do so anyway this is kind of like maybe getting an idea of what to look forward to see if you have a freewheel or not okay so now this is an example of a cassette it's a Shimano hyper glycoside which is one of the most common cassettes you find around today and it's kind of like a little spice in here but how this the cassette does not actually screw on to the wheel like the freewheel does is held on by a lock ring so I can remove this lock ring which I already had loosened and so I pulled this off it threads on there and I could pull the cassette off and the cassette is actually just a collection of cogs that fits on to this part here which is called the free hub there no ratcheting mechanism inside the cassette the ratcheting mechanism is in this part called the freehub and then this is attached to the wheel now cassettes commonly come in sizes from like 7 cogs up to I think currently about 11 cogs if you have like a 7-speed wheel on the back it's possible you have a freewheel as possible you have a cassette so if you look to see does it have a lock ring on there if it has a lock ring then it's probably a modern cassette if it has like what I showed you before like kind of the recessed little splines like that then it's probably a freewheel there's like another variation called you know glide which was a cassette but actually had was held on instead of having a lock ring it actually was held on by the smallest cog which screwed on there and those are not really common anymore the parts are hard to find so and they're not really compatible with modern cassettes and so before people asked there is just no way to install a free hub to come hold a cassette onto a hub design for a freewheel it's just not going to happen so that is pretty much what the difference between a freewheel and a cassette is so there's there's really no way to take like a modern cassette with like 10 speeds and install it on a hub designed for a freewheel so if you want to convert you pretty much have to replace the wheel or rebuild the wheel with a new hub it's just probably going to be more cost effective just to replace the wheel with a hub design for a cassette so anyway I hope you found this useful or interesting if you did please click like on my video I was appreciating likes of my videos it helps me out if you're not on my channel click the big subscribe button and you'll see new videos to come out and always come out with new videos and I'm also we're on Facebook Rjay the bike guy go over there like my page and I post a lot of stuff over there too anyway thank you very much for watching

Channel: RJ The Bike Guy

Views: 1,318,134

Rating: 4.8971267 out of 5

Keywords: Bikes, Freewheel, Bicycle (Product Category), Cogset

Id: qcgz3-XyNkI

Length: 6min 42sec (402 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 13 2015