I've had a Phil Wood freewheel tandem hub give up on me. We were half way up a hill and the pedals started spinning without the bike going forward. I was cursing (as I initially thought) the crappy Suntour tandem freewheel, but when we finally got home and I removed the wheel from the frame, I found that there was nothing wrong with the freewheel - it was the threaded part of the hub that had given way. I unspoked the wheel and sent the hub back to Phil Wood, and they replaced it without any fuss, but I looked around at what was available, and rebuilt the wheel using a Bullseye tandem hub instead. At the time (about 35 years ago) the Phil hubs were not user serviceable when the bearings needed replacing, whereas the Bullseye hubs were, and (particularly under the stresses of tandem use) the sealed bearings only ever lasted a season or two before starting to feel rough.
I still have those Bullseye hubs in service, but unless you want to keep a vintage bike using vintage components, I can't see the sense in buying a new freewheel hub or wheelset today. -- 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 https://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
