Cycling UK Forum

Welcome to the world of bike fettling! You’ve landed in the right forum.

It’s not essential to take the cassette off, especially if you can get a spanner on the rhs locknut when it’s still on. It is usually easier to do so though and the tools (cassette lockring and chain whip) are well worth having.

A proper engineer will be along soon to advise on home made cone spanners. I suspect they need hardening.

Gumwall wrote: ↑7 Feb 2024, 11:32pm Are they meant to be so tight when new, or has the manufacturer been economising on the grease?

That’ll be a ‘no’ and a ‘probably’. Once the wheels are back in the bike and the quick release levers tightened those bearings will be even more compressed, meaning they are currently doomed to a very short life.

Considering the newness of the bike then there should be no problem returning it and asking for the hubs to be adjusted, just as they should have been before it was sold. That should improve matters but the only true way I know to get them genuinely correctly set up is to learn how to do it yourself.

I did a pair of Apex levers/callipers a few months back. I followed Sram’s written/pictorial guide using their bleed kit and it all seemed to work ok. Tedious of course, but that’s hydraulics for you. Do you have a copy of that guide? I was wary of all the unofficial youtube videos but I’d be looking at them if it hadn’t worked.

I’ve filed the lips off the forks of every rim braked bike I’ve owned since they first started putting them on. To me, on that sort of bike, they only serve to avoid a user error that I like to think I wouldn’t make, having grown up before their invention. I don’t file them off other peoples’ bikes that I might be fettling, unless they ask me to, and I never file them off a disk braked bike.

Never heard them called ‘dropout hangers’. That I would associate with where you attach a rear mech.

My experience of putting 28mm (Conti 4 Season) tyres on Open Pros was that their measured width was almost unchanged from the 25mm ones I had used for years previously. In other words I wouldn’t recommend putting 28mm tyres on Open Pros even if you do have clearance.

Have you tried asking a frame builder what clearance would be expected from steel forks made with a cast crown and the same overall length as your current ones? Fairly sure that a cast crown gives more clearance than the simple bent in blades (uno crown?) design does.

Certainly elegant on the right bike - ie skinny steel tubes. I also love the straight leg look of my existing steel forks so this would keep the aesthetic too. Thank you.

scottg wrote: ↑22 Jan 2024, 1:16pm Carbon fork with 1in steel steerer.

https://woundupcomposites.com/product/road-x-1/

Scott - do you have any experience of Woundup forks and hence have any views on what they’re like? I’ve considered one in the past for an all road bike but they are difficult to find in the UK and very few people seem to know about them.

bohrsatom wrote: ↑18 Jan 2024, 9:06am Tempted to replace the middle chainring and see if this improves things

Before you start down this road do check the price of a new chainset and compare with 3 new rings, as you may end up needing more than 1.

Level 1: if you're lucky, when you reopen the hub after using it this week you may find that the tarnished balls, in combination with the new grease, have polished up the race quite acceptably. In which case just clean it out again and replace with new shiny balls and a fresh round of grease. Fairly sure this was a Brucey suggestion from ages ago that worked for me once.

Level 2: if you need to replace the freehub body then do check the price of that part on its own. In the glory days of discounting a new hub was definitely the way to go but not sure it is anymore.

Level 3: if you want to build a complete new hub into your wheel then you will probably find any similar Shimano hub will work. Their dimensions vary by little so the resulting recommended spoke length is the same. Obviously do verify that with your preferred spoke length calculator first though.

Good luck.

On your other post:

viewtopic.php?t=159350

you seem to be looking for the most trustworthy brand, rather than the cheapest. Are you applying the same logic here, seeing as both brakes and handlebars are safety critical? And, assuming you already have brakes, what is it about them that you are trying to fix/upgrade?

It is possible to buy adhesive aluminium tape in diy stores. It will be somewhere near the Cellotex/Kingspan insulation boards as it is used for edging and joining them. I’ve never tried it on seatposts but it looks like it should be suitable. You’ll have a lot left over but you may come across other uses for it too.

Shimano nomenclature is normally ‘SS’ for the shortest cage, ‘GS’ for the middle size and ‘SGS’ for the longest one. Road groupsets such as 105 are typically offered in SS and GS while off-road ones can be available in GS and SGS. The terminology short/medium/long can be ambiguous because of the way it gets applied differently to road and off-road groupsets. Hope this helps your search.

Note it can be possible to just change the cage on an existing mech to switch between the 2 sizes it is/was available in. Try SJSC for the parts, but they’re probably little cheaper than a new mech.

It’s the fiddlyness of rebuilding a freehub body* that pushed me to splash the cash on Shimano’s freehub body grease. I didn’t want a trial and error approach. The reservations I expressed above about a slack chain when back pedalling at zero degrees relates only to whether I have put too much in this time, rather than whether the grease is the right stuff for the job. Unfortunately I’m not surprised to read that a regular bearing grease has not worked out well.

* mine is even worse than most as I have an oversize aluminium axle with more, even smaller, ball bearings.

Tricky one to answer in words. I've only ever rebuilt a freehub body with Shimano's bespoke grease, but that presumably is SFG. For the ball bearings it's just enough to stick them in place ready for reassembly. For the pawls, just a smear. Last time I did it I did err on the generous side of those definitions which has given smooth operation so far, though I did notice that any back pedalling in the ~0 degrees on Friday did cause the top run of the chain to droop significantly.

I've found the likes of GT85 and bicycle greases to be a bit of a disaster - the lubrication seems to help but a week later performance is worse than before anything was added. I assume this is because the lubricant has damaged the plastic liner. For new installations I find whatever the cable manufacturer (which for me is normally Shimano or Jagwire) to have used is fine on its own. For any later works I have found silicone grease to work and not damage any cable liners. Shimano sell a bespoke product for cables but it is quite spendy.