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WARNING! - Real-Design Sealed Bearing Hubs
Steve Sr. wrote: Hello, I got a set of wheels with these hubs with a new Litespeed bicycle late last year. The bike now has about 3K miles on it under 96% dry conditions. Recently, I started having all kinds of drive train noise. It originally sounded like BB noise so I started from there and worked my way back. I finally found the source of all of the noise when I took the rear hub apart. The bearings being sealed cartridge types were in fine shape. The freehub on the other hand was a real mess. The first thing I noticed was that the freehub appeared to have totally ineffective sealing. There was all sorts of crud and grit inside. I suspect that most of this got in there when I was caught in the rain about 10 miles into a century in mid-April. Having supposedly sealed hubs I never thought to take the hub apart to look at the innards. I cleaned everything up and before I re-assembled it I did a test fitting of the seal. It was fall off loose when put on the freehub OR in the hub body. Therefore the only real seal you get is a thin layer of grease which fills the gaps. This probably lasts all of 10 minutes riding in the rain. So why bother with sealed bearing hubs if the freehub is barely sealed at all? Is this the difference that makes the Chris King and Phil Wood hubs worth their weight in gold? Are there any other hubs that have better freehub sealing or is this the Achilles heel of rear hubs? Another thing I found was that the positioning stop for the circular spring that holds the pawls had broken and the spring slid around such that only 2 of the pawls had any outward tension on them. I temporarily patched this with a drop of J-B Weld but the freehub body will need to be replaced. I called Real-Design and mentioned both of these issues. They said that they hadn't heard of the moving spring issue but the freehub body would have to be returned through a dealer for replacement. The person also noted that the freehub seal was "sort of loose" but that it hadn't become an major issue at least as a warranty concern. Maybe they expect these wheels to only last the year warranty period and then it becomes the buyers problem. The bottom line is that if you have wheel that uses these hubs they should not be ridden in the rain and if you do they should be immediately pulled apart and the freehub rebuilt. At least these wheels disassemble easily. All it takes is to remove the skewer and put a 5mm allen wrench in each side of the axle. Best regards, Steve My daily commuter/grocery bike/dinner run bike is running on 1979 Phil Wood hubs - have had them serviced a couple of time ... IN 27 years ... and some of that was covered under warranty (the most recent was in April of this year - try to find another mfr that does warranty maintenance on a 27 year old component!). I have 3 year old Phil hubs on my touring bike, with 10K miles on them including a lot of rain and some snow, and they are still smooth and solid. I have/service a lot of hubs - Campy, Shimano, Chris King (also nice, if noisy), etc. but IMHO the Phil's may be expensive up-front but they pay off in the long run. - rick |
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