February 8, 2024 Sudarshan D Rangabhattar

Cassette VS freewheel

Chapter 1: What is a freewheel or a cassette?

Ever thought how you can pedal forward to move forward but when you stop pedalling and even if you pedal in reverse, why doesn't the bicycle stop?

How can you just cruise or coast through the streets without continuous effort?

What magic did the engineers do to achieve this?

The magic is in the hubs and freewheel and cassette systems

There's a lot of intricacies and research involved!

Chapter 2: Understanding the difference between the two driving systems

FREEWHEEL SYSTEM

* Freewheel is a whole unit of multiple gears and it fits perfectly on the hub and drives the bicycle forward.

* think of freehub as a reliable maruthi car. It is economic, simple and gets the job done.

* Freewheel is simple in design

* Freewheel is an old-school technology

CASSETTE SYSTEM

Cassettes are just specific arrangement of gears onto the freehub.
think of cassette system as a powerful sports car. It is efficient, a bit pricy, more focussed on higher end bicycles.
Cassettes are complex in design
Cassette is an upgrade from a freewheel system.

Chapter 3: What's better?

A simple answer would be CASSETTE SYSTEM!

But it doesn't mean freewheels are bad.

Freewheels work just fine. But cassettes have better shifting smoothness, better compatibility across freehubs, easier to clean, the list goes on.

Chapter 4: Final verdict

You can get a freewheel in the bicycles that cost less than 26k. You can get a cassette system in the bicycles above 26k. You can always upgrade the hubs and freewheel to freehub and cassette in the future if it's necessary.

I highly doubt that's gonna be the case since freehub is enough for leisure rides.

To better understand the inner mechanisms of the cassette and a freewheel, stay tuned. I'll be explaining it in detail in the coming blogs soon.

Filed in: cassette, freewheel, gears