Well my project today is I'm gonna go
ahead and change the freewheel on this bike. This has got a Sachs freewheel on there
and it's a bit worn. And shifting is not too great. So I'm going to
go ahead and put a brand new Shimano freewheel. What a freewheel is, its a self-contained little unit. It screws onto the hub. So it's got little threads back
here. And it's got the whole bearing system
inside there so it spins on there. And it's got pawls. So what it does is, it allows it to spin
free in one direction but then catch in the other direction so
it turns the wheel. So that's what a freewheel is. Not to be confused with a cassette
in which the little bearing and pawl stuff is in a part...another part that is attached
to the hub called a free hub. But I'll probably do another video on
that too. So the first thing I want to do is remove the wheel. And for ease of use I've got the
chain shifted to the smallest ring. So go ahead and pop this down. It just makes it a
little easier to put the thing back on. Okay, I've got the wheel here. I wanna go ahead and
remove the skewer. And get the spring. And put it out of here. And go ahead and put that aside. Don't lose the springs. Now depending
on what brand of freewheel you are removing and installing, you are going to need different I tools. If you look right in here, there's like little splines. You might be able see it on the the new one a
little bit better. See, there's little splines in here, and so what
you are going to need is a tool that's going to fit those little splines. Here's like a few of the different freewheel tools that I have. Here's one has splines on it. And then these ones have little notches. Some other brands of freewheels also have
these little notches these fit into. The Sachs also used the same one here. This is a Park Tool FR-1. These other ones here are also made by Park Tool. These tools generally cost, usually under about 10 bucks. You can find them for maybe like 8 bucks at your local bike shop. Anyway this tool what it's going to do is it's just going to slide right in here and
mesh with those little splines in there. Okay so I have the tool in there And one thing you can do is you can put the skewer back through here, and have it actually go
through the tool to help hold the tool on. You don't want to have it clamped real tight. You want it a little bit loose so it gives it a little room to move out.
But I rarely ever do that. Not on this kind. On the other ones that have the little notches that come out... the other two types of tools, I usually do.
But on this kind I generally don't. So slide this in here and I have a big
Crescent wrench. and I'm going to fit this on here. And what I want to do is turn this counterclockwise. Now if this freewheel
has been on the bike for a while, what happens is, this is turning
clockwise it's actually tightening this thing on. So if this has been on the bike
for a while.... these things can be extremely tight. And you may need more than just a wrench to remove it So what I am going to use is a big cheater bar. So I am just going to slide this over the Crescent wrench here. to give me more leverage. And usually I will just hold the wheel. If its real tough I can actually kind of brace this up
against a wall or something. I rarely have to do that. Usually just do this and break that thing loose. And once you get it loose then you can just unscrew this off. Just turn this tool. It'll come loose. There. It comes right off. And so there's the threads that the freewheel screws right
onto. Okay I am ready to install the new freewheel. Just slide it on here and turn it on. Get the threading started. and it should thread on pretty easy. Then just go ahead and spin it on. Until it's tight there. Then you can take the tool slide it on there. Use the wrench to go ahead and tighten it on there. I don't need the cheater
bar to tighten it. I just use the wrench to tighten it on there. And that'll be good enough. As I ride it the freewheel itself will go ahead and
tighten itself on. Now I wanna reinstall the skewer. So I just slide this up. The lever goes on the side opposite the freewheel. Slide this on here. Get that started. Now I wanna reinstall the wheel. Since I had the chain on the
smallest cog when I pulled it off I am going to go ahead and put the chain on smallest cog putting it back on. Slide it back up in here. Tighten this on here. Like that. Then just go ahead and test it, make sure everything works good. There, and that is how you change a freewheel on a bike wheel. If you found
this interesting or it helped, please subscribe to my channel. You can click the like button on the video to show you liked the video. I always appreciate that. If you have any
questions or if there's something else you wanna see, bikewise, go ahead and post in the comments and
I'll see what I can do. Anyway thank you for watching!
