following on from the thread on the CK hub freezing up, the freehub on my commuter (shimano deore) keeps freezing up – had to pour hot water followed by a dose of gt85 on it today to get it to work

from memory the shimano freehubs cannot be taken apart without unleashing hell (for me anyway) – so before i start bodging/breaking stuff is it possible to flush out the water inside the freehub and regrease or should i just buy another freehub for the wheel and hope that’ll be better?

if you take off the frehub you can lever up a seal off the back and flush shimano freehubs without taking the actual freehub apart and freeing one billion small bearings.

I’ve even found a picture!

taken from
http://www.parktool.com/blog/repair-help/freehub-service

Worth a go, rarely (never?) seen one last long once it’s gone bad, even with regreasing/oiling.

LX hubs on on-one for £15 for spares – better seals too.

http://www.singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/frozen-freehub

cheers for that info Brick, will give it a go tonight

cynic-al – a freehub off a lx hub would do just the trick if regreasing doesn’t work. thanks for pointing that one out 🙂

My local garage has a solvent bath with a jet that they let me use to blow through all the water that collects inside. You then need to find the right sort of oil or grease to replace what you’ve flushed out.

It worked for a while, for me. But I get through freehubs at quite a rate because I can’t resist using a hose for cleaning.

a new shimano freehub is only £25

philfive – lend us a tenner 😉

pop the freehub in a pot of clean engine oil and leave for a couple of days, don’t ask me how, but the oil works it’s way in, and the muck works it’s way out

Interesting concept Captain B (can’t swear obviously).

If I immerse my hubs, bb, headset in grease will that work too? 😉

Flushed mine using white-spirit in an ultrasonic tank from Aldi(takes a long time), then soaked it in gearbox oil. Been running it as an experiment for probably 5 months now, just to see how long a “dead” freehub will go on for, every case is obviously different, but mine’s still going strong.

gaz – did you get sorted out ? I have just stuck a good used XT freehub on the classified 😆

http://www.cyclistno1.co.uk/features/maintenance/xt-hub-service.htm

if it starts to play up just replace it. Attempting to prolong its lifde will just result in it failing and ruining a ride. I had two rides ruined by failed shitmano freehubs. It won’t happen again – I have hope hubs which can be rebuilt trailside with no tools

Indeed TJ, simple preventative maintenance works wonders 😛