Cycling UK Forum

Well, I injected about 20ml of Alfine 11 oil into my Alfine 8 through the LHS bearing. While I was fiddling with the cone and locknut tightening on the bench vise, I noticed that the oil started leaking from the RHS (gravity, eh). I put the wheel back on, cycled through all gears for about 10 mins. RHS continued to be oily and is now dropping every now and then (bike is stored vertically). LHS for now seems dry.

Brucey - should I store the bike leaning over to the RHS for a while to allow excess oil to leak out? Or I should just ignore it and it will dry out/leak out naturally?

Is it excess? Unless it is contaminating a brake I would try to keep the maximum oil in the hub.

alexnharvey wrote:Is it excess?

Hard to say, maybe it will all decide to leak out through the RHS

It won't all leak out if stored upright. The 8 is not oil tight so it will leak oil if leant over or placed horizontal.

the oil should (eventually, in use) mix with the grease and (providing the seals are in reasonable shape) the resultant mixture ought not come out of the hub at any great speed. However until the oil mixes properly you essentially have oil inside a hub which lacks good enough seals to retain it, so until the mixing occurs it is best to keep the wheel vertical.

In putting the oil in the hub and then (presumably) spending time working on the wheel with the RHS down, this has allowed all the oil to pool in the RHS side of the hub, where it can most easily escape. Normally the cone would be adjusted and the wheel righted within a short period of time and this would limit the leakage.

It will probably continue to leak for a while; there will be some trapped in the cassette joint etc and once oil gets past a certain point rightwards, it is definitely coming out of the hub. Hopefully it hasn't flushed all the grease out of the RHS hub bearing.

BTW the shimano oil is pricey stuff to have leaking out all over the place.

cheers

The wheel with the RHS down probably for around 5 minutes after adding the oil, with only a couple of oil drops leaked. As for the grease, below is a pic of how the LHS bearing looked like, basically very small amounts of white grease between the bearings. I wonder if I should add some general purpose grease here.

can't do any harm to add grease to the LH wheel bearing.

cheers

I decided to pedal more on a repair stand, there seems to be some freewheel ratcheting/clicking in high gears (4-8). The sound is similar to the one whel pedalling backwards. Moreover, his ratcheting disappears if I interrupt the freewheel by pedalling slightly forward and then releasing to freewheel again. Heres a short video (the creaking sound is my cheap stand):
https://youtu.be/LxTaPvnJ11I

Is it normal? I can’t recall if it was this way before today’s lubing.

It only appears in freewheel, it’s silent when pedalling

Could that be an overtightened cone/locknut? (I actually did it according to instructions here, hand-tightened the cone, backed off 1/4 turn, tightened the locknut, then went in small increments to tighten both of them)

when you freewheel one of two things can happen

a) the roller clutch that drives the hubshell can slip and this leaves the gear mechanism stationary or
b) the roller clutch continues to be engaged with the hubshell.

In b) the ring gear rotates, the planet cage is stationary and the sun pinion rotates backwards. The chances are that the noise you hear is caused by the sun pinion pawls clicking as the sun pinions turn backwards.

cheers

Thanks, Brucey. I will ignore it for the time being, Or should I be worried?

After removing my Alfine8 rear wheel today I noticed that the LHS locknut was loose, although I tightened it quite well when doing the oil-inject procedure. Can it become loose after several iterations of axle nuts tightening/untightening?

I don't think so, there shouldn't be any rotational force transmitted between track nut and lock nut via the stationary dropout. I would bet on insufficient tightening of the lock nut.

Are the no turn washers correctly situated?

Non turn washers are correctly installed...I guess you need to bevery talented or strong to get them wrong

the torque on the axle is normally much higher in bottom gear than in top gear, which means that if the axle is going to try and turn, it'll normally turn ACW (as viewed from the RHS of the bike) until the NTWs stop it. This means that if the NTW tangs are a slack fit and/or the axle can move in the dropout, it may loosen the LH locknut and perhaps overtighten the RH one.


In addition to the above, I have an idea that in some cases using vertical dropouts with these hubs is fundamentally not a satisfactory arrangement, in that it may be impossible for the axle to achieve a truly stable position, or the NTW load is on one dropout and not the other (which is liable to break the axle eventually).

cheers