freewheel failing when frozen

tomb353

a new one for me. Gears all froze this morning, then freewheel eventually failed (just spinning when the pedals rotate, not pushing the wheel round).

Took bike home defrosted it, all working fine again. Eventually managed to get to work but had to stop and borrow hot water from bike shop to defrost on the way.

Any ideas how to prevent this? Perhaps keep bike in bedroom overnight rather than the garage? Stop to pee on the rear hub occasionally? (it was -10 this morning so hopefully won't have this issue every day)

nicklouse

get some grease in the hub to displace any water that is in there.

what hub?

tomb353

its a standard shimano deore type disk hub. any tips on how to strip it, I have toils but have never gone further than removing cassette

tomb353

shimano FH-M475

jairaj

check on Shimano's website they have quite an extensive database of manuals and technical documents.

tomb353

have been googling away on this and have found quite good instructions on removing the freehub body. There seems to be some debate on whether you can successfully flush or regrease them.

cjcp

Did this to my freehub earlier this year. Yep, need to let it thaw out. I thought Shimano freehub bodies were sealed?

Blue Meanie

Free Wheel Fails when Frozen? You mean it's Fixed?

tomb353

no not fixed, that would be ok, instead ratchet freezes and no power to rear wheel at all.

In the end I found some quite good instructions from parktool on sorting out the rear hub, but in practice I just hung the rear wheel on a radiator all weekend to dry it out.

MichaelW

The grease is getting too stiff in cold temps. There is a device that makes replacing the grease easy:the Morningstar Freehub Buddy.
http://www.bikepro.com/products/hubs/hubacces.html

You do have to remove the freehub and apply the tool to the rear end (ooo Matron)