Play between Ultegra cassette and freehub body - normal ?

yertez

Hi, My Canyon Ultimate CF SL 9.0 with Ultegra + KSyrium wheel set has done just over 5,000 Km.
I put a new chain on at 4000Km when it was still below the replacement stretch limit (one benefit of being a lightweight).

Deep cleaned the bike today and noticed that the Ultegra 11 speed rear cassette moves on the freehub by about 0.5mm.
Dismantled it, cleaned and reassembled.
I notice that there is some play even with the first 3 sprockets mounted.
Lock nut tightened to 20Nm as per instructions.

So looks like wear.
Would this be right after 5000K?

Or am I just not assembling the cassette properly ?

Freehub is rock solid on the axle, and the gears all work fine.

It's got the long reach rear mech to go with the 32/11 rear cassette.

trailflow

I have the same on my Fulcrum 7 LG's with an 11spd cassette which have done 2000 miles. They felt solid when new but the cassette now has a very small bit of play but the gears still shift fine. The freehub has no perceptible movement i can detect. I think its either bearing wear, or just bad tolerannces of either the freehub or cassette or both,or another theory, the freehub/cassette has stretched from the forces. My other wheels Fulcrum Quattro LG's still feel rock solid but they are still relatively new (low mileage bought 2nd hand). Only time will tell if they go the same way. Im going to try putting some tape on the cassette to eliminate the movement.

svetty

Noting that this is an 11spd cassette - presumably on an 11sp freehub - there shouldn't be any play at all between cassette and freehub - if there is then the lockring isn't tight enough. Riding it with play will wear the splines and they will get chewed up making it harder to remove/refit the sprockets. Assuming that the cassette sprocket spiders aren't cracked or damaged in some way you may just need to give it a bit more welly when tightening it

If the freehub has some play on the hub body this is quite normal...

yertez

Had a closer look today and can see the plastic body that holds the bottom three and bottom two sprocket sets have worn.
The splines are about 0.25mm wider than those on the freehub body and worn around the corners where they take the strain.

Hence the play.

I guess that's the problem with lightweight stuff like Ultegra, wears out pretty quick.

Question is whether to splash out £50 on a new cassette now or carry on for a bit, but risk wearing the freehub too.

svetty

yertez wrote:

Had a closer look today and can see the plastic body that holds the bottom three and bottom two sprocket sets have worn.
The splines are about 0.25mm wider than those on the freehub body and worn around the corners where they take the strain.

Hence the play.

I guess that's the problem with lightweight stuff like Ultegra, wears out pretty quick.

Question is whether to splash out £50 on a new cassette now or carry on for a bit, but risk wearing the freehub too.

Some people have addressed this by using straightened paperclips to 'fill the gaps'.........

supermurph09

Bizarrely I had the same issue the last few weeks, (same bike, setup etc). Although I have just swapped the wheels I can conclude that the issue was indeed caused by not having the lock ring tight enough.

yertez

Aha, funnily enough my lock ring wasn't tight enough either and my LBS noticed when I took the bike in to get the new chain at 4000Km.
I guess that's one problem with Canyon's direct-sales approach, there's no LBS involved to tighten everything up after the first 500 Km or so.