Hope Pro2 steel freehub body wear.

The standard alu freehub bodies are notorious for wear, so I opted for the heavier steel bodied freehub in the hope of minimising the chewed up splines.
Sadly the steel bodied variety seems to suffer from the same wear issues. The cassette was a PG970 … so not the cheapest of cassette .. and its one cassette old .. 7-8mths old.

When i first saw this I thought something was wrong, however on reflection as there is no actual movement between the free-hub
splines and the cassette splines then i cannot see the ‘indents’ on the free-hub spline having any detrimental effect as long as the cassette assembly is still easy to remove.

My steel pro2 has nothing like that sort of indents. How tight are you doing up the cassette?

Its done up tight enough to have never worked loose. Cant imagine there being a problem with overtightening it though.

When I slid new cassette on, it did not slide on as smoothly as expected from the chewed splines.

I guess the steel variety isnt much of an improvement after all.

Ive got a 8-9 year old steel hope xc freehub that has no sign of wear from interface with the cassette and has been used with both cheap cassettes and ss.

Something seems a bit odd there.

Hope replacement by any chance?

WGAS

Doesnt really make any difference does it? Every freehub Ive had since forever has been like this, never found it a problem.

It’s not a problem until you get a cassette that won’t come off the freehub 🙂

Haha, yes you usually end up with a cassette and freehub that come off the wheel axle (if you pull hard enough!)

Nah, just give it tape with a hammer, obs a gooden.

Never had this with any shimano freehub .. the one on my fully rigid mtb has lasted best part of 6yrs and upteen cassettes.

is the suggestion above that the cassette may have been overtightened, or undertightened?

I dont see how overtightening it would make any difference. Where as if it was loose it may move about and chew a little. The marks on mine arent showing signs of it being too loose and moving about.

Not really the same wear problems as the ali ones, just marking. I’ve seen the ali ones worn through, allowing the sprockets to actually rotate.

The ti ones on my old bulb hubs never looked like that. Wish they’d do a special run of ti ones. I’d have 4 of them.

This is the 1st cassette. Fitted earlier this year. And to be honest – I have done most riding on the road bike this year, so it hasnt had alot of use.
Not too confident on its longevity..

was always told get at least an XT/PG980 cassette with PRO2 hubs

Yes – I had heard stay away from deore level type. Always assumed the 970 was on par with xt .. then again, I also assumed the steel body would be bullet proof.

It’s not the price of the cassette it’s if it has an alloy carrier to surport the cogs that matters
You can see from the marks all the way down the body that yours is an all metal one

I’d not worry about it to much though. If the marks get in the way just file them off

Does the 970 have an alloy carrier?

Type of cassette makes a difference, I have had a SRAM cassette saw through alloy splines in no time, due to the smaller cogs not being attached to the rest, so the spacers and cogs were separate, so the load was concentrated on 1mm.

Look for cassettes where they are not in separate bits, or the cogs have a wide base, rather than loose skinny cogs and separate spacers.

mine looks nothing like that, and Ive been using a Deore cassette.

+ 1 for a run of Ti ones, I’m still running a hope bulb hub that I bought second hand about 10 years ago and the freehub is fine

and while they are at it they could knock up some bulb 15mm front adaptors and I would be a happy boy

It’s not the price of the cassette it’s if it has an alloy carrier to surport the cogs that matters

+1

As long as you can still get the cassette off I don’t see any issue – both my rear Pro2 hubs have done the same with the lower-end cassettes I use.

looks fine to me, just run a file over the worst bits so you can get the cassette on and off, many many thousands of miles left in that.

“assumed the 970 was on par with xt “
more like a ‘higher end deore’ eg hg62?

id took them as:
950 similar to deore hg52
980 like slx (3 biggest on carrier)
990 like xt (5/6 biggest on carrier), though 990 almost as heavy as 980

on topic, my steel bodied xc does this with a deore (hg52?). Just keep it in check my filing down the burrs

It’s not a problem until you get a cassette that won’t come off the freehub

Never seen that. 2 chain whips, or a screwdriver will do the job! That is a lot of damage for a steel freehub though.

Same issue here, but in an earlier phase.
Today I have dissasembled my 9 speed sram pg 990 cassete to do some maintenance and cleaning and I noticed hardly visible damage on my hope pro 2 evo steel freehub body on the place where the alone cogs are. The sram pg 990 cassete has 5 cogs on big block ( no damage there ) and 4 standalone cogs. The damage is on the place of the standalone cogs. I am using the steel freehub body for quite soon, so I expect after more riding the damage will increase.
Any idea how I can stop the destructive process ? Or no chance… 🙁

What ever happened to the to free hub body’s?

I still have 2 of these on bulb hubs. They are the business.

Really can’t understand why they have ditched then. If its to keep costs down that’s daft because people would pay the extra for to.

When you pedal after freewheeling do you feed it in or do you make the freewheel clang? A mate of mine tends to do the latter and his freehub gets chewed up.

How accurately are you tightening the cassette nut? I have noticed that many cassettes I have replaced for people have not been tight enough and allow the cogs to move individually. 40NM is a surprisingly high torque.

When I pedal in most cases I feed in, but sometimes it happenes to clang by accident.
Actually I do not know my torque of tightening. I do not have tool to measure it. Maybe I should buy one. But when tightening, I think about that some day I should remove the casette. 🙂 I have bad memories with overtightened cassette, which was almost unremoveable.
For sure the casette is not lose.

Is the tightening so important for a steel free hub body to remain undamaged ?

Exactly the same as mine. It’s not as bad as the alu version, though. Cheap cassettes are notorious for this I think.

I’ve got a steel shimano freehub that’s done about 20 years of service, and it doesn’t have so much as a bruise on it… Same with my old cheapo Formula hubs. Wonder why Hope have a problem with this? Wouldn’t be very pleased myself, considering the entire reason you get the heavy steel one is to avoid it.

Their alu ones are worse for it than my DT alu freehubs, always assumed it was just a softer alloy they use but maybe there’s something in common with the design of the 2 hopes? Can’t think what, mind

40nm on the cassette lock ring and a good smear of Shimano Anti-Seize on the freehub body before fitting

depending on the cassette design, some will notch even the steel body, some won’t

this was my alloy body on my Pro III (road bike) after 6 months with a 105 cassette

I’ve been selling, maintaining and using Hope hubs for many years, and was familiar with having difficulty removing non-spider and even spider style cassettes on mountain bikes, and using a steel file to clean up any notching before fitting a new cassette, but this level of damage on my Pro III was nothing I had seen before.

I had to remove the cogs using a flat blade screwdriver and hammer to rotate each cog the 2-3mm it had bitten into the alloy body.

I am not a big guy with big legs and only riding in S-East England, so was surprised it was so badly notched.

after talking to Hope Tech, and sending the damaged part back, they replaced it FOC which is typical of Hope with their excellent backup, one reason I will always buy Hope for hubs 🙂

I wounder if something like this can help:

protecting freehub body

Has anybody tried it ? Will it be better than a steel free hub body ( ignoring the weight ) ?
I will never do this amount of work for 70 grams if the steel freehub body does the job. 🙂

after talking to Hope Tech, and sending the damaged part back, they replaced it FOC which is typical of Hope with their excellent backup, one reason I will always buy Hope for hubs

It’s one reason I’ll buy products that work properly. Always find the fawning over Hope a bit odd, why don’t they fix products, rather than acknowledge they’re shit by replacing them free?!

OP, it won’t get any worse, don’t file it down just leave it, as the high metal helps to prevent it digging in any more. I do agree with njee above, people slaughter SRAM for the reverb issues, but good old Hope are from t’yorkshire tha knows, so are exempt from such stuff. FWIW, fisher are pretty good on warranty SRAM stuff too.

The bike, along with the freehub was stolen not long after .. so its somebody elses prob now 😐

I do however still think Hope are superb. Customer service second to none.