Have some old Chris King hubs on singlespeed gravel bike, riding this morning and freehub failed, the cranks would often do 2-3 revolutions before freehub would engage..and it would help if I back-pedalled a touch, before putting pressure through again to engage.

Normally with other hubs, like Hope, I’d clean out and fit new pawls and springs, but Chris King are the ring drive system, any thoughts on how I go about fixing?

Thanks

I’d wager the grease on the ring drive needs cleaning out and replacing. I’ve had this before and it’s a very easy fix.

Could try YouTube, bound to be someone who’s serviced one on there.

Thanks all, hopefully it is just a good service they need, felt very “terminal” riding this morning!

Or it has frozen due to the temps at the moment?

It’s the springy ring part of the hub shell. If the grease gets too thick/claggy, the mechanism sticks to a clump of grease and essentially ends up fully concentric to the drive shell. I’ve always found that it’s common when a combination of not having been used for a while, not been serviced and cold weather come into play.

As above clean out the drive rings and spring and use fresh king hub grease in there.

Thanks all..

This time of year I ran them on an increased mix of tri flow oil in with the ring drive grease. They may have changed the grease since I last bought mine

Sounds like it’s frozen, original CK oil was water based, fine in decent conditions, but had a tenancy to freeze in cold conditions, mk2 oil doesn’t 🙂

I had this. Took it apart, nothing obvious, put it back together again and worked. Could well have just been the strip and regrease which did it, as suggested above

Next question.. did you all use the specific CK grease? I have the Ring Drive oil, but is any light grease suitable?

I just used some Finish Line stuff, it’s been fine

As above – Mk2 Ring Lube…

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