Hi there, I'm trying to remove the freehub from my rear hub (branded commencal deluxe), to replace its cartridge bearings.
I've removed nut on the end of the axle on the drive side, and can see the end bearing (it has no circlip or anything retaining it), but I can't see how I'm supposed to either remove the axle or the freehub. The freehub is so tight to the hub that there's no room to wedge something to 'pry' it off.
Any thoughts? Thanks!
Pull hard
I used to have this problem with my hope hub when the end cap was one of the random 'impossible to pull out by hand' types. I can't recommend this approach too often, as it has the potential to balls up spokes and suchlike. However, what I used to do was loosen the locknut slightly, the get a chisel wrapped in electrical tape behind the cassette on a solid bit (one of the arms) and lever against one of the spokes where it is next to the hub shell. With a bit of wriggling the whole lot pops off, and if you've remembered to loosen the locknut you can get the cassette off the hub body. Not ideal, but the end result is what you need. Wrap the levering implement in lots of tape to protect the spoke and hub as much as possible.
Thanks a lot, I spent the morning trying and failing with different methods, but I haven't tried this yet so worth a shot. Its definitely on tight!
Are you sure there's not a bolt holding it in? Sometimes a big 11 or 12mm allenkey needed to undo the free hub on some hubs.
Sometimes you have to access the hex from the non drive side
Lots of bike manufacturers buy in hubs and will be rebranded formula or some generic hub supplier
Tap the axle through the hub (if it's the one i'm thinking, it may have to go out of the brake side), it'll take the one bearing with it, and if it's a slide on freehub assembly, it'll fall off, if not then you'll have access to the bolt from inside the hub if it's mounted that way, or you can remove the bearing from the axle and tap it back through the hub to knock out the freehub bearing to gain access from that side, assuming you still want to remove the freehub.