What have I done to my hub? Seized bearings?

Can someone help diagnose my problem with the rear wheel?

With the hub axle fully tightened (not super tight, finger tight) everything seizes and the wheel or pedals won’t turn. The wheel can spin backwards but the pedals are completely frozen.

If I loosen it a little it all works as normal, but this means having the axle loose enough to undo by hand, so not able to ride on it.

What have I broken?

Exactly what hub is it?

The hubs are hope Evo pro 2, with a Shimano freehub

have you had the hub apart? There’s a washer between free hub and hub that sometimes goes missing

Freehub or cassette not fully seated? Endcaps on crooked? What did you do prior to it becoming like this? Change anything?

If it spins backwards the pawls are working so the freehub/cassette must be being clamped against the frame somehow…🤷‍♂️

have you had it apart then??

common ones are the 2mm spacer between free hub and bearing

https://www.hopetech.com/_repository/1/documents/ProIIEvoRear150mmExploded.pdf

part number 4 on here.

or the seal around the freehub isn’t properly seated.

The missing spacer is a classic reassembly oversight. And forgetting it is more common than you might think…

Only disassembly is swapping a cassette a few months ago. Seemed to work immediately after but who knows. Perhaps to do with the end caps, the axle is bolt on and the problem only happens with the drive side tightened. I’ll try take it apart… It can’t get worse!

Microspline or HG Shimano?

Have you got the tensions of the cylindrical nuts on either end of the axle correct. I had a potentially similar issue when mine worked a bit loose, and I had to get right size cone spanners to tighten those up properly without overtightening on the freehub side

I wonder if the (green) hub seal has pulled out when removing the cassette and needs pushing back?

Missing spacer in the freewheel or green seal.

Both have caused me similar issues in the past.

End caps on the right side? If you’ve put one on the cassette side which is too short the cassette will hit the frame and won’t rotate, but it will spin backwards.

The giveaway for this would be if you had to adjust your brake caliper too, as that side would also be out.

The end caps are black (brake side) and silver (drive side)

So the problem basically seems to be that when it’s tightened the wheel won’t spin forwards, but spins fine backwards.

But I can’t workout how to take the freehub off or find anywhere to tighten the axle nuts, so it’ll be off the LBS!

HOpe have all the info on their site IIRC.  Usually the freehub just pulls off but I don’t know if the bolt up alters that

Oh it just pulls off. Who knew! So inside was what used to be a green seal, and one of the ratcheting arms had broken off so that is presumably the problem!

There are no axle nuts on hope hubs.

Just had this on one of my bikes. One of the freehub bearings was seized. Same deal, freehub no rotation when tightened fully, but when loosened slightly things worked….see if you can explore that too

So if anyone has the same problem it was one of the following: broken off pawl which was loose and maybe jamming or a seized freehub bearing which has now been greased.

It looked like the green o rings had disintegrated and presumably let water in so it seized. But seems to work fine temporarily without the green seals.

Green seal is on pro4, it’s black on pro2 Evo.

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I’ll throw in an alternative possible cause… if you can, check the cassette locking ring vs the previous one.  Believe it or not, some Shimano lock rings are longer (thicker) than others. One of my mates had this sort of problem. Took a while to suss out that because the lock rings were different by 1 or 2mm (only found when actually measured with a caliper) then the freehub bound on the frame when tightened.