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