Steel vintage bike restoration and modification, troubleshooting help I acquired a vintage 10 speed Healing Commuter made in New Zealand, rode it everyday and treated it pretty poorly. No regular maintenance, chained it on the street come rain or shine. Having grown fond of it I decided I would do a complete over haul.

Fast forward 6 months, it’s a new colour and all the mech is working well... independently.

The bike has all its original parts except:


The derailleur now a Shimano Tourney 6 speed SIS
Both wheels now Shimano specialised pro mondo with a 6 speed cassette and
A new chain now a 7mm SRAM chain with a quicklink.


The crankset is a Shimano Front Freewheel System - from what I can tell, the FFS was pretty low end and a solution in search of a problem, to quote Sheldon.

Sadly my first ride was lack-luster thanks to a knock. When pedaling with gusto, something in the crank system is slipping so the rider experiences the pedal engaging normally followed by no opposite force from the pedal followed by the pedal engaging normally again. This occurs rhythmically and on both sides, when left foot is leading then right then left etc.

I’m wondering if it’s something to do with the crankset being a freewheel system plus the free hub system in the considerably newer wheels?

Maybe it’s an error I made in the rebuild of the crank?

Any crank troubleshooting tips would be much appreciated. 

Ta
I had a Schwinn World Tourist and those had the freewheel system, too. It might... might be because you have two freewheels. The bikes that had those, had fixed gears on the wheel, since it was the crank that coasted. And yes, the whole point of the system was so you could change gears by coasting.