Hi. I’ve owned my Crossmax SX Wheels now for around 14 months from new. After a few months I returned the rear to the shop as the freehub was sticking really badly. They sent them back to me after giving the hub a service and was told basically the hub needs to be used regularly and serviced regularly,

Well I don’t use them as regularly as I’d like but do service the hub using the the correct procedure and mavic oil.

I’m just fed up with how sticky the freehub is. It can be on and off though. The main things that annoy me are:

– when bike is in the stand and I pedal and let go of pedals, they (pedals) will continue to spin. If I stop the pedal there isn’t any chain suck or anything but can tell the wheel is slowing down faster then usual.

– when I clean my chain with a chain bath and back-pedal, the wheel will spin backwards too.

I don’t get any issues when riding but it’s on my mind that the wheel isn’t running as free with the resistance as it should be. My old Hope Pro II Evo hubs never did anything like this.

When I had the hub apart, all bearings feel really smooth.

Can fellow SX owners tell me if this is normal. I’ve heard of various people who got fed up with their SX/Enduro wheels and got rid. I would but it’s not worth it now. Anyway to resolve this? Thanks

My ST freehub bearings went after 12 months – first sign, sticky freehub.
New bearings and now spins freely.

What sort of price am I looking at for hub service with new bearings?

DIY – lots videos online – 2 small bearings – less than £20 for quality ones.

After using my mavic sx’s for about 18 months my freehub became really sticky with all the same symptoms you describe. I gave the freehub a good clean and put a few drops of mineral oil in there, it’s been as good as new ever since.

I had a similar issue with my st wheels that I think use the same hub, turned out the disc side bearing was installed the wrong way round. If you look at the mavic hub pdf docs it shows the red bearing seal side should face inwards but mine was the other way around. This causes drag on the freehub even when the bearing preload is wound off. Once I’d carefully drifted out the bearing and swapped it round the hub worked fine. Hope this helps

Come to think of it ‘The Duke’, when I’ve serviced my hub I’m pretty sure I remember the red seal facing outwards on the disc side. I’ll have to double check but I’ll def give it a go. Any tips on getting the bearing out and back in, socket?

I stripped the hub and used a flat head screwdriver to carefully tap the bearing out, socket worked fine to push it back in . If you got them from a shop just take them back and get it done under warranty, I got mine online so couldn’t be bothered with the hassle of sending them away but it depends how confident you are to do the work yourself.