At 5:25 PM -0700 22/07/04, marc garcia wrote:
>I was working on the ted williams bike (I guess the subject will not die)
>today and I wanted to remove the freewheel so I could work on the hub. I
>tried the park FR-1 with no luck. I checked the park website and there
>does not seem to be a remover for a shimano freewheel from the early to
>mid 70's. Does anyone know if one of the other park removers will work? or
>does anyone have a sugestion on how to remove it? I checked for a model
>name and all it says is "Shimano Freewheel."
>
Hello,
There is an older style of Shimano freewheel that needs a splined remover, and as you discovered the Park FR-1 is too large to fit these freewheels. Bicycle Research makes the necessary tool, and it can be ordered from Harris Cyclery at:
http://harriscyclery.net/
Shimano also made the remover as the TL-FW20. An online retailer that I hadn't heard of until I did a web search for "TL-FW20" has a picture of the remover at:
http://store.airbomb.com/
If memory serves, however, the Shimano tool won't fit over some axles -- this is either because the walls of the tool are too thick to fit in between the axle and the splines on the freewheel, or because the hole in the end of the tool is too small to fit over some axles. In these cases, you will have to remove the axle before the Shimano freewheel remover can be used. Please note that it's been a while since I've used this particular Shimano tool at the bike co-op where I volunteer, so I may not be remembering this detail correctly. It's my understanding that the Bicycle Research tool has sufficient clearance for all axles -- see the description on their site at:
http://www.bicycletool.com/
Hope this helps.
Jeff Noakes
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada