Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Unconventional Coaster Brake

I decided to take the coaster brake apart on an old Austrian made Free Spirit. This hub is a bit different from other coaster hubs I've seen, and quite honestly I still don't know exactly how it works (this one is labeled "Styria" on the reaction arm). Anyway, here are the pictures that I took. First I unbolted the reaction arm:


After removing the wheel from the bike, I had to remove the gear from the hub. It's held in place by a snap ring, twist it off with a screwdriver:


Keep track of which order the pieces come apart. With the cog removed I unscrewed the bearing cone by hand, and removed these pieces:



This hub had 5 roller bearings arranged inside a large retaining piece. After unscrewing the lockring that holds the reaction arm to the other side of the hub, I was able to extract these remaining pieces:


The braking mechanism resides inside this splined barrel, which is connected to the reaction arm:


Here is the nearly empty hub shell:


And here is how the inside pieces fit together:


I'm still not sure how everything works, since this isn't like a traditional screw type coaster brake. Regardless, I cleaned the parts up and started reassembling them with lots of grease. First I installed the pieces from the reaction arm side:



Next I replaced the roller bearings:


Then the ball bearings and the axle:


Now I slid the drive mechanism back into place:


And secured it with the bearing cone:


Now the cog can be reinstalled. I lined up the spacers in the order which they came off, then slid the cog into its 3 grooves and locked it in place with the snap ring:


Finally I reinstalled the reaction arm:


Done.

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