The freewheel in the center is one that I modified.  It was a Shimano seven cog freewheel with a small 14 tooth cog and a big 28 tooth cog.  I changed the 28 to a 26 so that now it goes from 14 to 26 teeth with two teeth between every jump.  I have been running a cassette geared this way on my Yellow Roadie for a while now and I like that range and the two tooth jumps.  Admittedly, the Shimano 14 to 28 tooth freewheel is a good combination that I have run for several years now.  It’s just that the last shift is four teeth, from 24 to 28, and I’ve come to like the smaller jumps.

    The freewheel to the left is a Sachs seven cog freewheel with a small cog with 13 teeth and a big cog with 28 teeth.  It is a lot easier to take apart, but I can’t find cogs for it anymore.  

    With freewheels like the Sachs, all you need is two chain whips, one to hold onto a big cog and one on the small one, and you can take the freewheel apart without even taking it off the rear wheel.  The Shimano freewheel is a different beast all together.  The cogs are all splined and a lock ring holds them onto the freewheel body.  The lock ring is a skinny affair and getting it off without wrecking it is a challenge.  I think that when Shimano came up with these freewheels, they were thinking about selling freewheels to people who wouldn’t take them apart.  I guess that would be most people, but it’s not me.  I build my own cassettes as well as freewheels.  I guess it’s not necessary these days with most everyone running ten cogs on the back, but for those of us who still run five, six, or seven, it still makes good sense to build what suits your riding style.

    The bigger rings in the picture are chainrings.  Just recently, Tom Ritchey sold a crankset with a 48 tooth big ring and a 38 tooth small ring.  It was a setup they thought might appeal to cyclo cross racers, but I suspect that it didn’t because I don’t think they sell that crankset anymore.  It’s too bad, those are the rings I use on my Yellow Roadie.  On the Red Randonneuse, I use 46/34 chainrings.

    This all gives me a bit of heartburn.  I wish that Shimano, Campagnolo, Sachs, and the other manufacturers would offer the crank arms and let us decide what chainrings we want for them.  Same with cassettes.  Sell us the bodies and let us pick the cogs and spacers we want.  I’ve got a box of 50 tooth and bigger chainrings that I took off of cranksets and replaced with chainrings I had to buy separately.  That’s baloney.  It just makes things easier for them while doing nothing at all for us riders.  

    It is the antithesis of custom bicycles.  Someone asks me to build a bicycle.  I talk to that person, and we decide what kind of bike will work best.  I choose the tubes, the angles and tube lengths, the fork rake, and make a dozen other choices.  When it is all finished, what?  Set it up with a ten speed drive train that has a 53 tooth big ring up front and an 11 tooth small ring out back.  What sense does that make?

    A 53 tooth big ring and an 11 tooth small cog gives you a 130 inch high gear!  Remember Greg LeMond?  The first American to win the Tour de France?  His big gear for racing was 52 X 14.  He said that gear was “suitable only for the fastest riding, usually downhill, or in a sprint.”  52 X 14 is a 100 inch gear.  Do you know what else he said about gears?  He said that while training, he sometimes used a gear as big as 52 X 15!  That’s 94 inches or 36 gear inches less than what almost every bike on the show room floor of your local bike shop comes equipped with.  That really gripes me.

    The Red Randonneuse has a top gear of 89 inches.  (By the way, what this means is that a high wheel bike would need a front wheel 89 inches in diameter -- more than seven feet -- to be geared as high as Red.)  I spin out in this gear sometimes, but unless I have a very good tailwind, I’m usually going downhill and I might as well coast.  The upside of this gearing is that I spend most of my time on the big ring, saving the small ring for big hills or leaving from complete stops.

    My wonderful Yellow Roadie, with a 48 tooth big ring and a 14 tooth small cog has a top gear of 93 inches.  I’m not Greg and this is plenty big enough for me.  The cool part of it is that I use this gear.  And when I do spin out, it really is time to coast.  Oh, there are times I could use a 50 tooth big ring and I have to admit that with my 48, a 13 tooth small cog would get some use, but the fact is that looking for usable gears, 48 teeth in front and 14 in back is as much as most of us could hope for.

    With my 34 tooth small ring on the Red Randonneuse and a 26 tooth cog in back I have a low gear of 35 gear inches.  That hurts sometimes late in the day on steep climbs, but the trade off is that with only twelve teeth between my small ring and big ring and only twelve teeth between my small cog and big cog, my Chorus deraileures shift flawlessly and while the shifts are noticeable they are not too big.  On the Yellow Roadie, with only ten teeth between the big and small ring and the same spread in back, my Dura Ace deraileures do almost as well.

    Anyway, I’m glad I figured out how to get that lock ring off my Shimano freewheels because I really like my Phil hub and I was starting to think I wouldn’t be able to run it much longer.  Now, I think I’ll be able to run it happily with freewheels I like for years to come.

    If you wondering why I’d want to keep riding seven speeds in back, just twang the spokes on a ten speed rear wheel.  On the right, you’ll hear a “Twang” and on the left, you’ll hear a “Thung.”  That wheel is way out of balance as far as spoke tension goes.  Besides who wants to tote around three extra cogs on the back, even if they are made of titanium and cost 50 bucks apiece?