Alloy freehubs

thecycleclinic

To many times on this forum and in the road section people comment about notching of alloy freehubs. Some say get a steel one.

I say do you lockring up properly.

Today it new XT cassette day for my MTB. This is my alloy freehub. The lockring threads are sharp and so are the freehub threads that means low friction and high cassette preload i.e the 40Nm i apply get used compressesing the cassette rather than overcoming thread friction.

Also note how i don't grease the splines. That serves no purpose other than to lubricate the sprockets and make notching easier.

There are reasons why problems happens. Stubbornness in not adapting ( or following instructions) your fitting techniques to match the equipment your using is one of them. Thats blunt but there no in beating around the bush.

[img]https://i.ibb.co/28SxXQ9/16081181723575440144323747846842.jpg[/img]

If your freehub looks more notched than the above piccy, its probably not the freehubs fault. Its probably the fitters.

One point if the freehub threads are not uniform then there would be extra friction and higher lockring torque would be required. This can be spotted when screwing the lockring. Any resistance is too much. Screw by hand all the way before putting a torque wrench on. There is no need to grease the threads either. They should be clean. Lubrication will attract crud and damage the spline when the lockring is undone. It also increases the preload on the cassette requiring lower torque therefore, how much lower is unknown. What you don't want to do is lubricate the threads torque to 50Nm and find the threads yield.

ugo.santalucia

I am not even sure tightening the lockring does anything. The smallest sprocket doesn't completely sit on the freehub, as the splines don't get all the way to the end of it , so even if you tighten it like a mad man, it won't put any more pressure on the remaining sprockets, it just puts pressure on the freehub itself. I never realised that, until I tried to use an 11T sprocket on the Brompton and found out that it won't go up...
It might be that an extra spacer at the end of the cassette makes tightening the lockring viable, but I fear in most cases the 11T is already bottoming once you torque it lightly by hand

thecycleclinic

Well the 11t sprocket never sits fully on the freehub. The whole reason for the over hang is so the cassette is preloaded when you do the lockring up. When the lockring is done it compresses the whole setup pushimg further in. If the spacer behind a 10 speed cassette is left off then the lockring won't do anything. Thats not following the instructions though.

Shimano, srams and campagnolos sprocket spacing is right when lockrings are done up fully. Is they are not sprocket spacing is slightly not enough to mishift, but enough to cause noise especially as everything wears.

ugo.santalucia

thecycleclinic said:

Well the 11t sprocket never sits fully on the freehub. The whole reason for the over hang is so the cassette is preloaded when you do the lockring up. When the lockring is done it compresses the whole setup pushimg further in. If the spacer behind a 10 speed cassette is left off then the lockring won't do anything. Thats not following the instructions though.

Shimano, srams and campagnolos sprocket spacing is right when lockrings are done up fully. Is they are not sprocket spacing is slightly not enough to mishift, but enough to cause noise especially as everything wears.

My wife has 11 speed, but the shop mechanic fitted the spacer behind the cassette. I am told this is because the cassette has a 34 T. Me thinks that without the spacer the 11T sprocket would most likely bottom out and the lockring would not do anything then...

thecycleclinic

The 11-34t shimano cassette is designed to be compatible with shimano mtb freehubs so on the road freehub which is wider by 1.8mm it requires a 1.8mm spacer. No news there. With out that spacer the while cassette will rattle and shifting would be off.