I had an interesting experience last week, which I present here as an
RBT curiosity. A friend had a cassette that was slipping under
pressure. Turns out it wasn't the chain.

I suspected gummed-up pawls, and suggested he bring it by for a look. It
was a very old Shimano freehub, and sure enough the cogs turned
clockwise with very little effort, but it didn't feel like munged pawls
either.

When I went to access the pawls (I've done this before with freehubs),
even the inner part of the freehub body was turning clockwise (so I
couldn't unscrew the left-hand-threaded bearing cup.)

As I said, the hub was one of the oldest Shimano freehub designs (no
bulge on the aluminum hub shaft). Rather than mount with the usual 10mm
screw, this body mated to an aluminum spline on the outside of the hub.
The aluminum spline was ripped up beyond recall. Curious, since the
rider is an older recreational rider, though he was geared quite low.
(Of course we had to replace the wheel).

Finally found an image of one of these hubs at (where else):
http://www.sheldonbrown.com/k7.html#advantages
The drawing shows the spline on the right side of the hub body.

Question 1: Anybody seen this failure before? Was it the reason Shimano
dropped this design so quickly?

Question 2: Does anybody want the freehub body? It should be reusable
if you have a hub to match (though I can't imagine a situation where
you'd need it - I'd expect other failure to be like this one.) Available
for the price of shipping.

Mark