Hub servicing questions

Jamey

In the last year I've gone from being a complete mechanical dunce to being able to service my own bike and even building a wheel, thanks to a kind forum member.

The only job I still haven't done is hub servicing, but I've got two spare rear hubs to practice on (one in my spare rear wheel and one just in a box, not built into a wheel) and I think I'll give it a try soonish.

But before I do, I wanted to ask a few questions:

1) What do you chaps do when it comes to looking after your hubs? Do you:
- A) Service it yourself?
- Get the LBS to do it?
- C) Buy a whole new hub and rebuild the wheel?
- D) Buy (or build yourself) a whole new wheel?

2) If you do it yourself, do you leave the freehub/freewheel attached on rear hubs or do you remove it first?

3) Looking at the guide on Park tool's website they say to adjust the locknuts and cones with the wheel clamped in the dropouts on the frame, but wouldn't this pinch the dropouts against the locknuts and make it hard or impossible to turn them? At least without scraping paint, anyway.

4) Are new ball bearings and cones easy to buy? How much are they?

5) Is it ok to use lithium grease for packing hub bearings?

6) Anyone know what size cone spanners I need? My front hub is the no-mark one that came with the bike (Specialized Tricross Sport) and I have three rear hubs - the main one is an Ultegra, the spare wheel is 105 and the spare hub is the original stock one (no-mark, just like the front one) that came with the bike. Are these all likely to use the same size cone spanners?

7) Where can you buy pencil magnets from?

Cheers
J

ride_whenever

Right, usually service my own at my lbs, ie i take it in and use their tools and grease. I have however just bought some pedal spanners, basically you want a selection for different hubs, i bought a cheap pair from my lbs, both have 13mm 14mm 15mm 17mm spaners in one thingy and an 8 and 10mm bolt tool.

I tend to use a white lithium grease but any lithium grease should be fine.

I tend to leave the freehub on but remove freewheels. It basically depends if you can get to the locknuts and cones without taking them off!!!!!

I don't know about cones, generally if the cones are gone the cups are gone too = new hub. BB can be bought from most bike shops/bearing shops very cheaply. Just take an old one along they're something like 3/8" or something like that.

DONT for the love of god use a magnet. Magnetic bearings are a pain!!! Just shake out the bearings whilst de-greasing the hub. Pop in fresh and push the bearings into it, that way they don't come off and they don't all try to stick to each other.

Vivid

ride_whenever wrote:

Right, usually service my own at my lbs, ie i take it in and use their tools and grease. I have however just bought some pedal spanners, basically you want a selection for different hubs, i bought a cheap pair from my lbs, both have 13mm 14mm 15mm 17mm spaners in one thingy and an 8 and 10mm bolt tool.

I tend to use a white lithium grease but any lithium grease should be fine.

I tend to leave the freehub on but remove freewheels. It basically depends if you can get to the locknuts and cones without taking them off!!!!!

I don't know about cones, generally if the cones are gone the cups are gone too = new hub. BB can be bought from most bike shops/bearing shops very cheaply. Just take an old one along they're something like 3/8" or something like that.

DONT for the love of god use a magnet. Magnetic bearings are a pain!!! Just shake out the bearings whilst de-greasing the hub. Pop in fresh and push the bearings into it, that way they don't come off and they don't all try to stick to each other.

+1

Would just like to add, front wheel generally uses 10x3/16in bearings and rear 9x1/4in bearings.

Also lithium grease in my experience is too thin and should only be used for racing conditions where you will strip and rebuild the bike after every few rides. For general use i would use Teflon Grease.

Not Another Hill

I used to service my own MTb hubs (Deore). Simple enough. Left hubs in situ. Just took wheel off. Unfortunately due to my increasingly time pressured life, i have just dropped the front wheel off my winter bike at LBS to be serviced

ugo.santalucia

Most hubs now have sealed bearings, there is infact no need of servicing them. I have covered 10,000 miles with my relatively cheap Aksiums and the hubs roll as good as new

robbarker

ugo.santalucia wrote:

Most hubs now have sealed bearings,

Nope. They are becoming more common at the expensive end of the market and with factory wheels, but the vast majority of hubs are cup and cone.

Jamey - have a look at www.simplybearings.co.uk, I just stocked up on 10 grade (i.e. very good quality) ball bearings at a very keen price. As has been said, most hubs use 1/4 at the back and 3/16 at the front.

Jamey

Cheers Rob. I have no idea where to start looking on that site, any chance of a deep link (or two) to products I could buy?

Ok, new question...

I'm assuming all my rear hubs are freehubs since they're modern, Shimano (or Shimano-esque) ones, is that correct? And freehubs are a bit of a pain to remove, aren't they? So I'm thinking I'd rather just service the hub with it left on but obviously that throws up two problems:

Problem 1 - you have to loosen the locknut and cone on the non-drive side in order to be able to remove the axle from the drive side.

Problem 2 - it's tricky to get to the ball bearings on the drive side, especially when replacing with new ones.

For problem one, how do you make sure you're loosening specifically the non-drive side? If you just put a spanner on either side of the hub and turn then it's pot luck as to which side loosens and which side turns with the axle. Do you need to clamp the axle on the non-drive side? Isn't that bad for the axle?

And for problem 2, this is why I thought a pencil magnet might be worthwhile but if you guys are saying it's more hassle then what would you use to get the bearings into the drive-side cup? Or do you all go to the trouble of removing the freehub?

Jamey

Rob - just had a better look at that site. Are these two products the ones I need (assuming I buy a pack of 100 of each):

Front hub:
http://tinyurl.com/asdao3

Rear hub:
http://tinyurl.com/anspw2

Have I got that right?

What grease would be best to use?

robbarker

http://www.parktool.com/repair/readhowto.asp?id=105

http://www.parktool.com/repair/readhowto.asp?id=118

I can't explain it any better than this!


Just have a shufty round the bearings site - 10 grade 1/4 and 3/16 loose balls is what you want - not the stainless ones.

Jamey

robbarker wrote:

http://www.parktool.com/repair/readhowto.asp?id=118

Ah, that makes it look like removing a freehub is pretty easy, maybe I'll try that. Didn't realise all you needed was a hex key.

Although when I'm practicing on my spare hub, because it's not built into a wheel it might be tricky to get enough leverage to remove the freehub bolt just holding the hub in my hands, and I don't have a clamp at home. hopefully it won't be too tight.