Fitting a cassette onto a hope freehub, do I need to put a light smear of grease on there?
Yes, I always do.
Yep. You’ll thank yourself when time comes to change it.
If you put two metal things together and one day want them to come apart again, you need something in between. Grease, anti-seize or threadlock. I use anti seize but grease will do just as well.
Tbh, if it's a hope alloy freehub, it'll gouge and dig in anyway, and require a bit of work to get off.
In my wrench days it was extremely rare having difficulty getting a cassette off a freehub body, maybe I was lucky with my customers.
But grease isn't going to do any harm.
I've never greased my freehubs apart from the old steel shimano freehubs, anodised alloy carrier against anodised alloy freehub can't corrode together like steel on steel.
My thoughts are it's not supposed to move when tightened down and hopefully no grease lessens the scarring on the freehub.
Never had an issue with noise or removal.
No grease used here on current two bikes that have had far more use than previous ones and so needed new cassettes every approx 12-18 months.
Shimano freehub no grease needed apart from the lock ring
Sram XD freehub then yes grease up the freehub's threads if you want it to the cassette to be removable without causing any damage
My experience of hope is its not needed. However, the cassette usually bites into the freehub so it needs to be gently encouraged to get off. Grease won't harm.
I like the American classic design of 3 small steel plates that fitted onto the freehub to prevent this. They could be easily replaced if chewed but they never did. It didn't add much weight.
I once had a steel hope freehub but it seemed heavy compared.
I always have done this
Shimano freehub no grease needed apart from the lock ring
Sram XD freehub then yes grease up the freehub’s threads if you want it to the cassette to be removable without causing any damage
In normal use while it's possibly best practice it's probably optional.
For anything that might be used in a salty environment like if you were a person who enjoyed taking a fat bike to the beach then it's pretty well a must.
For XD hubs it's also a total must unless you want an expensive cassette and free hub ornament.
