Sunrace 8-Speed Freewheel

Product Information

An additional complication is that "road" front derailer cages are shaped to fit well with a 52-53 tooth big chainring, while most current "mountain" front cages are shaped to fit with a 42-44 tooth big ring. SpeedsIn the early 1990s, the industry moved to 8-speed clusters with 130 mm spacing. 8-speeds were available in both freewheel and cassette hubs. As with the move from 4- to 5-speed, and from 5-speed to 6-speed, this required adding spacers to the right-hand end of the axle to keep the chain from rubbing on the frame. Mountain" hubs will likely be slightly better sealed against dirt and mud than "road" hubs, but this is rarely an issue in practice. The wider 135 mm spacing will generally result in a slightly stronger wheel due to reduced dishing of the spokes. speed freewheels with 13-15-17-19-21-24-28 teeth are available from Shimano, SunRace and IRD. This is a nice, even progression, or you may choose another -- see list of available freewheels from Harris Cyclery. Modern freewheels have the same easy-shifting features as cassettes. Even with a 30T inner chainring (you can go smaller than that, but look out for front derailleur capacity limits) you can use a cheap 14-28 6s or 13-28 7s freewheel to get a low gear like you want. Since chainrings usually last several freewheels/chains, this is not an expensive setup to run, because the freewheels and chains cost little.

From the combination of widening the cog ratios (from 14-28 to 13-34) and widening the front chainrings (from 24,34,42 to 20,34,42), my potential spread of gears will go from 3.5 to about 5.5 which is about 57% wider range.SRAM "ESP" or "Exact Actuation" derailers and shifters (generally designated by a decimal model number: 7.0, 8.0, 9.0 etc) can only be used if the shifter and rear derailer are both ESP. A Jtek ShiftMate pulley adaptor can make a SRAM shifter work with a Shimano derailer, or vice versa. All SRAM 10-speed derailers and shifters are of yet a third type. Rebuild the freewheel, so you can clean all the internal parts thoroughly. See our article on freewheel rebuilding.

Shimano lists Freehub bodies as a separate part, or you could cannibalize a hub. Wheels with damaged rims and good hubs are not hard to find. So my question is does this have a good chance of working or might there be problems? What pitfalls do I need to look out for? I made a spreadsheet of the gear ratios and they look very good. There is no large gap in the lowest 2 gear ratios and the middle gears that I mostly use are also very nicely spaced (between 11 and 14% gap).Very early Freehubs (sometimes identifiable by the absence of the typical bulge on the right end of the hub barrel) which have non-interchangeable bodies. The Freehub body of these hubs is held on only by the axle bearings, and will slip off once the axle is removed. From 2004 through 2007, Shimano used aluminum bodies for the Dura-Ace 10-speed model. To avoid this problem, Shimano changed the spline pattern, making the aluminum spline ridges significantly taller for better support. The downside of this is that those hubs will accept only Shimano Dura-Ace, Ultegra and 105 10-speed cassettes. In practice this "problem" almost never materializes. Many, many cyclists are using 9- and 10-speed chains with older cranksets and having no problems whatever. New Chainrings, Old ChainsGoing the other direction, using wider chains with chainrings intended for narrower chains is not generally a major problem if there's only a one- or two- generation difference. The only problem you might run into is that the chain will be more liable to rub on the inside of the bigger chainrings in the small/small crossover gears, gears you shouldn't be using in any case. Hyperglide cassettes are commonly sold as a unit There are dozens of different cassette combinations available. Most cassettes are designated by a one- or two-letter code. With other freewheels, reassembly can be more difficult. In days of yore, there were special bobby-pin-like clips to hold the pawls compressed against their springs while you re-assembled the freewheel. These are no longer available.