>>1896772i see your Phil & IRD and raise you Hope and Sachs straight block. Vintage freewheels are a different story altogether.
>What you're *really* trying to say is some racist shit like "don't buy cheap Chinese".>Detestable.It is not insult whatsoever against the Chinese, who are capable to excellent manufacturing, to say that when given not even vaguely enough money to produce something good, they don't produce something good. There is cheap and then there is unrealistically cheap.
A freewheel on a bike in 2023 is a signifier of extreme low quality, yes. And this is not a theory, I think this because I have had to work on many of these bikes, and know how bad they are from experience. And know how frustrated the people who buy them are.
There's another issue too. Freewheel wheels are inherently weaker because the bearings are located further away from the end of the axle. This makes them more prone to bend. And they -frequently- bend. This design flaw combined with the extreme low quality results in a number of problems.
The other common flaw they have is the threading is machined incorrectly which gives the freewheel an uncorrectable wobble that complicates and often ruins indexing. This is common on even better wheels, like, old suntour you see this, and new freewheels it's almost strange NOT to have it. It's really only how bad it is. Terrible.
