Planet X wheels eating cassettes?

tonkin

I have just got the model B's and a Ulegra 6700 cassette. Not tested the wheels yet but they look the business.

I hearing reports that the freehub is softer metal and the harder cassette digs in to the freehub, making it very hard to remove. Is this happening to you?

The free wheel tick sound is abit louder than most wheels i had.

alfablue

This is an issue with most 9/10 speed alloy freehubs (not just planet X) if used with Shimano 10 speed cassettes, which have taller slots for taller freehub splines on dedicated 10 speed freehubs. I have had a set of 9/10 speed Model B's which I ran on a 10 speed cassette, and this problem was slightly evident, but I have since swapped these wheels to a 9 speed bike and its fine, and I have a set of 10 speed only model B's, and they are fine with the 10 speed cassette. I think you can specify what you want when you order. Solutions are using the 9/10 speed hubs only with 9 speed and using 10 speed only with 10 speed; steel freehubs (shimano); American Classic "clips"; or inserting some panel pins in the sprocket holes; or doing the cassette lock ring up really tight (maybe).

boondog

I had this issue with my model B's, but as said it's not specific to PX wheels.
When removing the casette (mine was Ultegra), some of the sprockets had bitten into the spline. Removal was fairly easy, stick a screwdriver into the sprocket hole and push it slightly anti-clockwise, and they come off easy. When putting the cassette back on, install it as normal and you won't notice any difference. I remove/clean the cassette every 2-3 weeks, never had any issues where I couldn't remove it.

andy_wrx

Or try a SRAM 10sp cassette.

The problem is that when Shimano originally went 10sp, they went with alu freehubs to save weight on the original 10sp DA & Ultegra wheels.
Being softer than steel, while they stuck with the same spline pattern, they made the splines deeper and hence the spline grooves on the cassettes are deeper.
These original early 10sp DA & Ultegra wheels are 10sp only - only the 10sp cassettes with the deeper grooves will fit on the deeper splines.
Current DA wheels have titanium freehubs and Ultegra are back to steel again so the splines are back to being shorter, and are called 8/9/10sp as they'll take all 3, as will Tiagra, 105, etc which have always had the shorter splines.

10sp cassettes, with the deeper spline grooves, happily fit on 8/9/10sp hubs with their shorter splines and if they have steel freehubs there's no issue, but if they have alu freehubs like the PX's then they can move about and chew-up the hubs a bit.

SRAM never went for the deeper splines, so SRAM 10sp cassettes have the shorter grooves and shouldn't chew-up the hubs the same, but need to go onto 8/9/10sp hubs and not Shimano-10sp-only high-spline hubs.

tonkin

Thanks. You kind of put my mind at ease about it. The problem doesn't sound as serious as i was led to believe. I had visions of a jammed on cassette i couldn't remove.

Shimano cliam it better to have weight in the centre of the wheel. In that case a steel hub maybe better than aluminium anyways .

andylav

An easy fix to prevent the individual cassettes chewing forwards is to use cut down stalks from pop rivets to tie the individual cassettes together in a similar fashion to the official American Classic cassette pin kit.

When fitting the cassette, you should see three small holes that line up through the three individual sprockets and spacers. Simply cut the stalks of a suitable diameter pop rivet to length - allowing for compression once the lock ring is torqued up - slide into place and you prevent any single sprocket from being able to move independently under force.

If you do a search for Planet X Model B in the buyers guide, there are quite a few comments relating to the freehub in this vein, but as others have said, the same issue will arise with any lightweight freehub body (happened to me on a set of Vuelta Carbon Pros)

Cheers