Silent freewhweel

SimonAH

Built a gash bikerack for the workshop (you know, hook the saddles over a bar thing) and lined up the fleet. Spun all the rear wheels and the pub hack beat the rest hands down. Sh1t, you can go to the house for a beer, come back, and the rear is still merrily spinning in eerie silence.

I built her from bits a good while back. It's an 8 speed cassette and the skewer at least is marked DuraAce. But there is not the tiniest hint of a ratchet click.......what do I not know about here?

cooldad

Probably a good old Shimano cup and cone

SimonAH

Cup and cone, wot no ratchet?

cjcp

Can't give you the technical explanation, but, when I first bought Shimano hubs a few years back, they were silent, whereas Campag had that clicking.

UndercoverElephant

Yup, my Tiagra hubs are whisper quiet. It's a matter of preference, a guy at work loves his DT Swiss hubs, because they make such a racket.

sketchley

When I changed the original wheels on the hybrid to Shimano rs20s first thing I noticed was how quiet they were. Current wheels are handbuilt with Ultegra hubs which are also very quiet. There is nothing quite like freewheeling downhill in relative silence. I don't think I'd want a noisy freewheel again. However, I've talked about this in morpeth before and there was some with the opinion that clicking is good to show person being scalped you went past freewheeling....

andrewjoseph

All hubs can be silent, if you keep pedalling!

Twostage

UndercoverElephant wrote:

Yup, my Tiagra hubs are whisper quiet. It's a matter of preference, a guy at work loves his DT Swiss hubs, because they make such a racket.

+1 for the quiet tiagras. Mine only click for a couple of rides after they have been serviced and I can hear them getting quiet as I go.
Re: the spinning forever I've noticed that if I leave the hubs a bit loose after servicing the bearings they spin for a long time but they wobble when back in the bike. Shame that they have to be tightened but I suppose life is a compromise.
By the way - some early risers today.

UndercoverElephant

Twostage wrote:

UndercoverElephant wrote:

Yup, my Tiagra hubs are whisper quiet. It's a matter of preference, a guy at work loves his DT Swiss hubs, because they make such a racket.

+1 for the quiet tiagras. Mine only click for a couple of rides after they have been serviced and I can hear them getting quiet as I go.
Re: the spinning forever I've noticed that if I leave the hubs a bit loose after servicing the bearings they spin for a long time but they wobble when back in the bike. Shame that they have to be tightened but I suppose life is a compromise.
By the way - some early risers today.

There's a sweet-spot of about 1/16th of a turn of a cone-spanner where the wheels don't wobble and they still spin forever. Well worth persevering.

prj45

UndercoverElephant wrote:

Yup, my Tiagra hubs are whisper quiet. It's a matter of preference, a guy at work loves his DT Swiss hubs, because they make such a racket.

Remind me never to go on a nice relaxing ride with him with those wheels on, seriously was out with a group the other week and somebody had some that really made our teeth grate, he ended up riding on his own basically.

Wheelspinner

prj45 wrote:

Remind me never to go on a nice relaxing ride with him with those wheels on, seriously was out with a group the other week and somebody had some that really made our teeth grate, he ended up riding on his own basically.

I hate those... was out this morning and tagged on to a group of half a dozen. One guy on a very slick Cervelo S3 with deep rim Zipp tubs, which made an awful racket freewheeling like a swarm of bees, a weird noise when braking, and in between when he pedalled, the cleats on his shoes squeaked something awful.

I dropped back after about 3 km, couldn't stand the noise.

rick_chasey

I wish I had a silent freewheel.

No need for noisy freewheels.