On Friday, August 3, 2018 at 7:55:08 AM UTC-7, Joerg wrote:
On 2018-08-02 16:59, jbeattie wrote:
On Thursday, August 2, 2018 at 11:50:10 AM UTC-7, Joerg wrote:
On 2018-08-02 11:07, jbeattie wrote:

[...]


... He rides on the road, and for the last four years before
returning home to PDX, most of his riding involved high-angle
climbing in the canyons of the Wasatch riding with the University
of Utah team. Until he got his Trek, he was riding my CAAD 9 with
wheels that I built for him that are in beautiful shape to this
day -- old Ultegra hubs, DT 14/15 3X spokes (32) and el-cheapo DT
R460 rims. He did get a spoke hole crack on a predecessor DT
R450, but no failures. You are buying junk or doing something
wrong if you are ruining freehubs and spokes with your massive
leg muscles.


It's ok stuff, Mavic rims, stainless spokes, Shimano freehubs,
Shimano BB (I buy the most expensive versions for each bike). A few
thousand miles into it the BB on the road bike starts clicking
again. Hurumph! I no longer care much about such noise and ride it
until the play is so bad that the FD isn't wide enough for it. With
friction shifters you can let that go quite far.

Are the loud "angry bee" freehubs that some riders use better and
Shimano-compatible?

Octalink BBs suck, although not as bad as ISIS. Both suffer from
too-small balls, although you may just need to reinstall with some
teflon tape. That often cures snaps and creaks -- but if it is a
pitted/deformed ball, you're screwed.


I only have Octalink on the MTB. Getting less than 10000mi there is
(somewhat) ok. For a bicycle. Because it's exposed to crazy amounts of
dust, water animal poop, rock hits and who knows what. On the road bike
I have square taper. Until recently the adjustable ones with loose ball
cages. It's not the balls or the cups that wore but the spindle
surfaces. Of course, with these I could get a 2nd life out of them by
mounting everything offset by 180 degrees. 3rd and 4th lives not so much
because the pitting was over more than 90 degrees but one could milk
another few thousand miles there as well.

Those have become unobtanium so I mounted a UN44 cartridge BB, the more
pricey version with all metal cups. That disappoints a little in that it
already starts clicking.


The angry-bee hubs are only better in that they have more points of
engagement. 72 points of engagement with CK ring drive!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pM1DJCryVEk Woohoo! My power is
delivered .00001 second faster. I guess its a pretty tough design,
but far too pricey for me.


To me only longevity and robustness counts. Price, too, but I'd be
willing to spend $100 if it was lasting seriously longer. Weight does
not matter. What I think causes the pawl failures on my freehubs is the
wearing out of their bearings and then the pawls don't engage straight
anymore. Over just a few thousand miles the freehub develops serious
bearing play. Shimano, Formula, brand doesn't seem to matter. That can't
be good, especially during rain rides or on dusty trails.


Whether other angry bee designs are better in terms of longevity
depends on bearing and metal quality. My OE Norco rear hub has a nice
buzzing sound, but I would bet that they are dirt cheap Joytech OE
hubs with equally cheap cartridge bearings.

And yes the angry bees are Shimano compatible unless you accidentally
buy a Campagnolo compatible hub.


Thanks, good to know. I just hear a lot of the local road bikers having
such freehubs. On a downhill you can hear them coming ... GRRRRRRR


I need to press in a new bearing cartridge on my son's Vison Metron
front wheel, which has a woefully undersized cartridge, IMO. I think
they wanted to keep the flanges and hub body small. Anyway, knocking
out and pressing in cartridges is more work than greasing some big,
burly balls, but I guess the upside is that you never have to worry
about wearing out a bearing cup or cone. I leave it to Andrew to
opine on the durability issues of the two designs. My Shimano hubs
have lasted a long time, and my Dura Ace wheels run really smoothly
and have been durable so far.


My dad usually didn't do such jobs for me, just once. He said "Son,
today I am going to show you how it's done so next time you can do it
yourself" :-)

I'll make him watch, whether he does future replacements is yet to be seen. He did bicycle assembly at one shop, but he's not a devoted mechanic. He is more clever getting warranty work, though, and doesn't mind taking things to a shop. This might just be a warranty job. We'll see. I did some adjusting, and the bearings are passable, but one cartridge is clearly on its way out. He's already gotten a full wheelset replacement because the first set had a bad angry bee freehub or some other problem. My father gave me some excellent electrical wiring advice, which I follow to this day: "don't stand in a puddle." Cutting the power was optional. He didn't know anything about fixing bikes.

-- Jay Beattie.