Cassettes for aluminium freehub bodies?

d00m

I'm finding my slx cassette is chewing up the alloy freehub body on my hub. The slx has an alloy spider, which the 3 largest sprockets mount to, but the other sprockets, being steel are chewing up my freehub.

Are there any cassettes that have every sprocket on an alloy carrier, or sprockets with an all alloy construction? I take it sram cassettes are compatible with shimano?

Should say, I'm not willing to pay for xtr, I'm not convinced by titanium sprockets, and £130 for a fairly short lived consumable item like this is taking the piss.

Cheers for any advice.

nicklouse

XT and up and thr top of the Sram range.

njee20

But even those only have the top 5/6 on a carrier, the others will still dig in. The only ones which will do no damage at all are XX/XG-999, but as they're more than twice the price of XTR I'll assume they're out!

XT will lessen the damage surely. Just make sure your cassette is tight, and file the burrs flat when you remove your cassette. Not a big issue.

oodboo

If it's a hope hub just get a steel freehub and use any cassette.

njee20

Adds a whole lot of weight, if such things bother you. Considering the damage is essentially cosmetic I'd not get too hung up on it.

nicklouse

njee20 wrote:

But even those only have the top 5/6 on a carrier, the others will still dig in. The only ones which will do no damage at all are XX/XG-999, but as they're more than twice the price of XTR I'll assume they're out!

XT will lessen the damage surely. Just make sure your cassette is tight, and file the burrs flat when you remove your cassette. Not a big issue.

and the XX is even worse. (unless they have changed the design). All the "cogs" drive through the Big steel cog.
I see they do not seem to.
[deleted by mod (sorry Nick!) due to malware from bikereviews . com. Please DO NOT embed images from this site]

the fact the smaller cogs are not on a spider does not really matter that much as the force you can put on the body is much less than you can with the bigger cogs.

njee20

The 'base' of the cassette where it bears is significantly wider though. Certainly my XX cassette didn't leave even the slightest mark on a 240 freehub body over a year.

We've had the conversation about cassettes before, and I've never seen a significant difference in the amount of damage caused by individual cogs. I realise that theoretically torque is higher in the larger sprockets, but have never actually seen this translate to more damage on those. I use a cheap HG50 cassette on an alu freehub body on my PowerTap and it leaves 9 even notches!

Northwind

Aye, I find the same, all the loose sprockets on my cassettes dig in equally- makes me think it's just the application of force rather than the degree of the force that does the damage, fretting rather than squeezing.

But anyway- I've not found any meaningful difference between SLX and XT on my Pro2s and DTs, just an extra row of notches but no worse. Hope say it's only cosmetic, but that IME is what's known as a "lie", especially since they'll replace bad ones on warranty.

Pro 2 with a steel freehub is a fix but it's really only the ally freehub that makes them light, IIRC the steel one leaves the hub weighing much the same as an XT one which seems a shame.

nicklouse

a lovley pic thanks to Sheldon of shimanos first foray into Alloy bodies.

here you can see the differing depths. (wish i had taken pics of the ones I have had to fix).

bikaholic

nicklouse wrote:

a lovley pic thanks to Sheldon of shimanos first foray into Alloy bodies.

here you can see the differing depths. (wish i had taken pics of the ones I have had to fix).

Still fixable and usable.

Just grind/file down the notches flat and bond a square strip of steel (eg from a metal staple) in its place.

It's a fairly well known mod for soft aluminium freehubs.

On a new aluminium freehub, you would only need to mod three of the splines.

ilovedirt

I have a sram pg990 cassette on my alloy hope freehub, yes the smallest three cogs aren't on the alloy carrier, however the marks they have left on the freehub body is barely noticable. CRC have them in for about £50, highly recommended.

supersonic

This might have had it though.

ilovedirt

Wow, how did they manage to do that with one of the smallest sprockets?!

bikaholic

I can see that the freehub belonged to a masher and not someone who finesses the gears from a standing start.

I hate throwing things away, so I would attempt the mod on the above freehub as there would be nothing to loose if it failed.

cloudynights

wow thats really dug in i only use those gears on the road, your putting some power through that cassette

d00m

Turns out I was getting my cassettes confused between bikes, and the one fitted on my ally freehub is in fact an m770 xt, supposed to have 6 largest sprockets on the spider, but I'm sure its only 5 :oops: cant remember... anyway, the notching on the freehub is quite worrying considering that the new wheels have only covered around 60 offroad miles.

Its a sunnringle freehub, and I do remember reading in a review that the freehub body tends to suffer badly with steel sprockets.
Maybe I can grind the sprocket splines and fit some hard rubberry compound insert in there between them and the freehub, like a cush drive almost

njee20

Fair enough Nick, not a massive difference, but I'll concede. I've never seen that on any of the wheels I've worked on.

Reckon that one of yours was run loose SS.

Anonymous

What a steel cassette (or more specifically the lockring) did to my Crank Brother's piece of swiss cheese.


(note the crack)

Warranty replaced, but I'm not happy with the durability of the thing especially where doing up the lockring to specified torque can potentially wreck the freehub! (I'm actually under torquing now because of the aluminium. High load of hard steel on soft aluminium could be the major cause of this).

I don't give a rats about the weight. It's a 30lb bike, aluminium freehub on what is supposedly a tough wheel (Iodine) makes no sense if it's just to shave maybe 100g or so off. I'm not going to notice at all.

Not sure about the spline wear. It seems to be this would allow the cassette to become loose over time, though obviously the lockring is supposed to hold it in place.

nicklouse

the fact the lockring was steel or alloy is totally irelavent.
it could have been made from Carbon and when tightened to the same setting the body would also have failed if it was going to.

Anonymous

Not convinced. Hard materials will win over softer and the torque spec just could be wrong for steel into aluminium. As the steel threads lock into the aluminium threads, getting up to that crazy 40Nm SRAM spec could just make it dig into the aluminium threads rather than stop when there's no further it can go if it was steel on steel. Result the threads are damaged, thin wall on the freehub and that damage leads to a crack, etc.

njee20

That's not a common failure though, there was clearly a problem with the freehub body, which failed.

I've had 2 Tune freehub bodies disintegrate completely, they make quite a racket. I'll take the weight saving and risk it though!