I've been emailing back and forth with Phil Wood this morning on this very issue actually, after they noticed a discussion I was having on Twitter about lube for PW freehubs. I gave them a detailed run down of the problem and the three different lubes i've tried (phil grease, then tenacious, then triflow). I'll let you know what they say, but I'm betting it'll be 'send it in'... When this first started happening I did an extensive search online and found there were several others with the same issue, and some didn't receive their hubs back for several months. That is not an acceptable solution.
The freewheel style hubs should certainly be less susceptible to problems as there are basically no moving parts in them. Pretty much the same as the single speed hubs. That said, I've had problems with one single speed rear hub and one front road hub. The rear single speed bearings went in the first six months for me, which was being ridden in some nasty weather, but still. When I replaced them with new Phil bearings according to the instructions on PW's website, the bearings were destroyed by the install process! I emailed PW to ask if I had done something wrong and they indicated the process by which I installed the bearings would result in bearing failure. I pointed out I used their own instructions from their website, and I was told the instructions were no longer valid... That was about three-four years ago. The instructions are still on their site... I replaced them a second time using a different method and they've been great ever since. Lots of wet and sandy weather, they continue to get smoother. It was an expensive lesson though, as PW bearings are not cheap. My front road hub has a fair amount of side-to-side play at the rim. I know a certain amount is normal for cartridge bearings, but it was enough that it would rattle quite loudly when bounced up and down. None of my others have that issue. On Mon, Dec 1, 2014 at 12:42 PM, Garth <garth...@gmail.com> wrote: > Thanks Mark, > > Yikes about the PW attachment of the CS shell. I for one prefer the > FW/CS body mechanism and it's attachment not being able to render a wheel > unusable . I do not own CS hubs , my needs have always been served with > FW's and FW hubs . I have 2 sets of Phil FW hubs and they've been flawless > themselves, as expected. I'm all about user serviceability for the most > part. No, I don't tear down FW's completely but do take off the cogs and > clean the inside and relube them. I'll likely never buy a high end CS hub > unless it's design is not vulnerable like the PW CS hub is in it's > attachment and need to send in the entire wheel to PW to get it fixed. > That's just unreasonable to me. I guess that's why I love the > independence of the FW system :) > > > > > > On Monday, December 1, 2014 11:47:37 AM UTC-5, Mark Reimer wrote: >> >> In regards to the Phil Wood hubs, the problem is often with the ratchet >> ring which is threaded into the hub shell/body. The issue isn't often that >> the pawls themselves are faulty, they just can't engage with a faulty >> ratchet ring. And for whatever reason Phil Wood does not sell the tool to >> remove and replace the ratchet ring, even to bike shops. I've read many >> times that there was as bad run of ratchet rings several years back and >> this was a common replacement. >> >> On my hub, the ring and pawls all look fine to me, the issue is that the >> spring which pushes the pawls outward into the ratchet ring isn't very >> strong. A ticker oil like Tenacious oil, combined with colder weather is >> just too much for the spring to force the pawls into the ratchet and >> engage. >> >> >> -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the > Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. > To unsubscribe from this topic, visit > https://groups.google.com/d/topic/rbw-owners-bunch/gprQ76JepBA/unsubscribe > . > To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to > rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
