Felt branded hubs

paulbnix

A friend has a Felt (Z5 I think) road bike with Felt hubs. There is a noise coming from the back wheel both free wheeling or pedaling.
He is coming round this evening so we can look at it.
The hub seems to have a knurled nut on both ends of the axle then there is a purple aluminium sort of cover. Does anyone know what sort of hubs these are? Are they cartridge or cone and loose ball bearings?

ugo.santalucia

Most hubs these days are sealed cartridge bearings. Most have slots to fit a 5 mm Allen Key and undo the caps. The freehub can then be removed and serviced.
That is most hubs... not all hubs. If there is no obvious way to open them, then the caps are probably just pressed in place onto the axle (Hope hubs, for instance)... in which case a pair of pliers might come in handy

paulbnix

We attempted to dismantle the Felt rear hub last night.
The purple aluminium cover on the non-drive side meant we could only get at the outer knurled nuts on either end of the axle. The knurled nut actually has an inner flat section to fit a cone spanner.
The cassette side nut came loose so we could take it off and see a normal cone and bearing system that unfortunately was covered in muddy grease. The cone surface was damaged as well.
Ok - the wheel needs either servicing or replacing if the inner bearing surfaces are also damaged. We could not pull the axle out even though nothing was retaining it on the cassette side. The axle was somehow attached to the purple thingy.
So squirted some grease in and reassembled still baffled about what the puple cover is for and how to get it off.

ugo.santalucia

If the cone is damaged, I doubt you'll be able to rescue the hub... there are no spare cones for that one

mroli

Interesting this - my mate has a similar problem and the product description says sealed bearings: see here: http://www.tredz.co.uk/.Felt-F5-Carbon- ... _49290.htm

But I guess not. I'll have a look at my mates and see what its like. (sorry for thread resurrection)

DKay

There is a Felt section on the roadbikereview forum, where you can post questions to Dave Koesel who is Felt's product manager. He's very helpful.

http://forums.roadbikereview.com/felt/

jonnym5

The purple cover you speak off is just held in place with an o-ring. Get under the lip with a blade or something to pull it off and you'll get access to the cone and lock nut.

Sounds like it may be the freehub body which even once you get it off Saddleback need it back to match it up to the replacement. Fit an R500 and be done with the felt wheel.

This year the rear hubs on cheaper Felt bikes use Shimano hubs to help with this problem.

Pretty sure the freehub comes off with a 12mm allen key through from the non-drive side.

paulbnix

I was a bit surprised to see this thread re-appear but my mate the solved the problem by ditching the Felt wheels and replacing with Mavic Kysrium. Like many other oem wheels there was insufficient sealing to handle a Manchester winter.