So, the replacement, 5-speed Freewheel which you want to buy should have a tighter stack ( e.g., 14-18, 13-19, etc. It may be an incorrect presumption, but for the moment I am going to presume that you actually mean to suggest that the three gears which you are using are adjacent to one another OR very close to one another. what you need will be time & TOOLS + a minimal amount of literacy & dexterity.įWIW. the information is freely available on the internet ( YouTube. Mixing old and new will often cause trouble.īut if you want to remove levers, want to shorten the cassette, and don't think you need more than three gears, and has ordered new wheels - Then why didn't you buy a wheel with an internally geared 3-speed hub instead?Ĭlick to expand. New chain+new freewheel/cassette is almost guaranteed to work well together. If you get a new freewheel, do get a new chain. Why are you looking at a new rear derailer while simultaneously wanting to remove gears from the bike? Unless it's been seriously damaged, I can't imagine a derailer being bad enough to cause trouble for someone who's happy considering shortening a cassette. If you don't need front shifting, don't touch the lever. If you pull the front derailer off you may find the bike throwing the chain off with annoying frequency. Would you remove the top gear out of the transmission of your car based on not doing any highway driving?īikes with double/triple chainwheels up front do rely on a chain that's flexible sideways. you'd need to set the limit screws to prevent the chain from shifting off the shortened stack, and I don't know if the reach of the limit screws is long enough for a shortened stack. Freewheels aren't really seen as serviceable items any more, some ingenuity and stubborness may be required to pull sprockets off. Removing sprockets from the ends will be "fine", but removing intermediate sprockets may get you in trouble. Smooth shifting relies on there not being too much of a size change from one sprocket to the next. For anything you remove you need to add spacers to make the whole thing go back together.
Most sprockets are just stacked there on splines, with the outermost sprocket or a lockring holding the stack together. Removing sprockets out of a freewheel/cassette is kinda-sorta doable, but: A 1975 bike is unlikely to use a cassette, more probably a freewheel which is an entirely different beast already.