rear wheel and sprocket removal: a new approach?
 

Been chatting to a colleague about the problem of rear wheel and sprocket removal for those of us without access to a windy gun!

Tales of long breaker bars with a scaffold tube stuck on the end, and a second operator desperately applying the (notoriously weak!) back brake sound a bit fraught to me.

My colleague suggested (and I don't see why he shouldn't be right), that it would be quite easy to have a "immersion heater tool"-type spanner laser-cut out of, say, 10mm plate. Either it could end in a size suitable for fitting a scaffold tube over, or, (better, I think), have a shortish "arm" which could be "flogged" around with a lump hammer. This would offer the "shock" to the nut which enables a windy gun to remove them so easily.

I reckon that by marking the nut before removal with yellow paint, it could be tightened in a similar fashion.

Any comments, anyone?

I know I probably take my rear wheel off more often than most, but I really don't have a problem with it!
If you get someone sat on it with both the brakes on it's easy :devil:
The shocking aproach would be a bad idea if you've got an ally nut on as well!

Well you're the first person I've ever heard say it's "easy". :)

Remind me not to challenge you to an arm-wrestling contest! :roll:



No ally nuts (I wouldn't trust them), just the stock item. I figure the windy gun that all tyre-fitters use is "shocking" anyway, so what's the odds?

Looking at the bike tonight, a couple of further thoughts occur:

1. If the arm of the spanner is to be long enough to pass the tyre, allowing a clear uninterrupted swing ;), then it'll need a "joggle" to clear the tyre.

2. A snag: Whilst it'd probably be a good idea to place a thin piece of card (plastic?) with a hole in it, over the nut, prior to using the spanner, so as to protect the paint-work on the wheel, the nut, itself anyway much thinner than you'd like, does not stand proud very far from the profile of the wheel (This is a Brembo wheel, I don't know about the Marchesini ones). So a flat piece of steel, just clearing (or protected from) the wheel, would only be engaging with the very edge of the nut.

It might be best to use the "flogging" principle with a suitable bar and a conventional socket.

I use a 1/2" drive breaker bar which is about 30" long.
You could very easily use something similar and hammer it for the shock tactic!!
A while ago, my husband changed the front sprocket on his gixxer, and would it come undone? No way! We tried all kinds of hammer and non hammer type methods, but it was the trusty breaker bar that did it in the end!

Never had a problem with rear wheel removal if I have done them up myself using breaker bar and a Ducati paddock stand with the wheel locking bar.
Only ever had a problem once when I first got one of the bikes, still firing up the compressor and using the windy gun sorted that out.

30" breaker bar and a foot on the rear brake works for me.

If you need more to get it off, then it's probably overtorqued using a windy gun. If you consider most common bike workshop torque wrenches are around 30" long, it shouldn't need much greater effort to undo the wheel nut than the effort needed to torque it up.