Wheel hub water resistance

[Pagw]

Hello, I had my bike wheels replaced two months ago with a "basic" wheelset at my local bike shop (they charged me £25 for the front wheel and £40 for the rear to give an idea of the quality). I found after a few weeks that a couple of times the rear cassette would not engage with the rear wheel - for example, I would try to get going at a junction and my pedals would just spin. I figured the rear wheel hub may have been damaged so I took it back to the shop for them to have a look at it. They said they couldn't find anything wrong, except for some "water damage", and they did a service and gave the bike back to me. I asked them how come there was already water damage, and they said it's what is expected for basic wheels. I had ridden my previous (better quality) wheels for about six years until their rims wore down, without water damage being an issue. I do occasionally ride in heavy rain for the couple of miles between my home and work and my bike is not covered when parked at work, but there's not been any especially severe weather in the last few weeks.

Is it true that cheaper wheels have hubs that are that much less water resistant than those of more expensive wheels? If so, I wish I had known that before opting to get basic wheels. Still, am I wrong to think that even basic wheels ought to be fine to ride in the rain?

Thanks very much for any useful insight you can give.

[Brucey]

those were not expensive wheels (and were a downgrade from your previous ones from what you said) and the LBS would just have slung them in to your bike. They would come with stuff-all grease of low quality inside them. You've ridden them in the depths of winter, when there is lots of road salt about; those two months may have been as destructive as the rest of the year might have been; cheap or non-existent grease does not resist salty water.

It is impossible to say if your inexpensive wheels have any kind of seals on them or not (some do, some don't) but keeping the weather out of even good hubs is not an automatic given. Old hands will often use more, better quality lubricant inside their hubs, because what usually comes inside them is frankly inadequate for UK winter use.

At a guess, I'd suppose that water got into the freewheel mechanism (which is unsealed in a typical screw-on freewheel, and similarly unsealed on the LHS of a cheap freehub body) , and caused it to stop working. My suggestion to avoid a recurrence is that when you oil the chain, you also oil the unsealed parts of the freewheel mechanism.

FWIW I've just specced a set of wheels for a chum; his requirements are not terribly unusual, but the parts alone will cost nearly £200 and the labour to build them and set the hubs up properly will be another £50 or so.

cheers

[JohnW]

Sorry to say this, but £40 for a complete rear wheel does sound indeed basic. A decent Shimano rear hub, complete with integral freehub mechanism is £79.99, even at Wiggle's prices (RRP £99.99 so Wiggle say). Don't get me wrong, I never deal with Wiggle, but that's the price on their website.

At a guess, I'd say that the water ingress is into the freehub (freewheel) mechanism, and probably not into the hub bearings.

On one of my bikes I have a pair of Campag hubs which are at least 30 years old and I've never noticed water ingress when I've been servicing the bearings...............I can't count the number of rims they've worn out, nor the number of times I've replaced the bearings. However, these are hubs which take screw-on freewheel blocks (which incorporate the sprockets - i.e. what you possibly know as the cassette), and water does get into the freewheel mechanism in them. As far as I know, manufacturers of decent current rear hubs (those which incorporate the freehub mechanism) claim that they are sealed, and by implication water resistant. I've never had this problem (so far anyway) with them.

(Please note that when I started typing this, Brucey's comments [above] hadn't been posted, but I can assure you that Brucey is genuinely a man who knows).

[pwa]

Cheap wheels do seem to have poor seals, so you need to pull them apart and re-grease them much more frequently, or accept that you can only use them in dry conditions. The sad thing is that hubs with decent seals would only add £20 or £30 to the cost of a pair of wheels.

[blackbike]

Sorry to say this, but £40 for a complete rear wheel does sound indeed basic. ]

It is perfectly possible to get a decent rear wheel for less than £40.

Here is one from Rutland Cycles.

https://www.rutlandcycling.com/99262/pr ... -rear.aspx

And here is another which I've had as a rear wheel on one of my tourers for about a year now, and it is has been trouble free even after some hard use off-road.

https://www.parkersofbolton.co.uk/colle ... tte-qr-hub

Also, I have this cheap, sub £30 front wheel on one of my road bikes, and after a summer's use last year it has been fine.

https://www.parkersofbolton.co.uk/colle ... ith-qr-hub

Obviously they are not of the best quality, but cheap wheels are now usually quite good.

Rosebikes do quite good wheels for good prices. Here is a wheelset with Shimano hubs for 106 Euros, only a bit more expensive that the wheels the OP has bought.

https://www.rosebikes.com/article/rose- ... aid:202991

Such an early failure of a freehub. freewheel or any bearing is not to be expected on even the cheapest wheels.

[Pagw]

Thanks very much for the replies. When deciding which wheels to get, I tried looking up the advantages of getting better-than-basic wheels and the information I found mainly talked about more expensive wheels being lighter and stronger, neither of which were qualities I felt I needed for 5-miles-per-day commuting. I never saw or heard anything mentioned about resistance to British weather being an issue with any particular wheels. It also seemed like spending a lot of money on wheels would not be worth it when other bits of my bike are quite worn out (though not essential parts, so I was hoping to keep it going for a few more years). Is there anything I can do to the wheels to avoid having to do maintenance on them every couple of months? Is there a way to tell in future if particular wheels will be quite weather-proof like my old ones managed to be? Thanks blackbike for the information about good value wheels that are out there (though I should add that mine are 26" wheels, on a hybrid bike).

[pwa]

Parkers of Bolton! Still in business! I had my first drop barred bike from them in the 1960s. By the 1980s they looked a bit like they were running down.

[Brucey]

oiling any unsealed part of the freewheel mechanism will help to stave off future disaster, but the devil is in the detail.

It might help if you say if you have a freehub + cassette or if you have a screw-on freewheel.

BTW winter commuting miles can be the worst because you can get the full benefit of freshly-strewn road salt, first thing in the morning.

[edit; also I assume that part of the cost was labour to fit the wheels? Mind you there is wide variation in cost depending on where you go...]

cheers

[blackbike]

Thanks very much for the replies. When deciding which wheels to get, I tried looking up the advantages of getting better-than-basic wheels and the information I found mainly talked about more expensive wheels being lighter and stronger, neither of which were qualities I felt I needed for 5-miles-per-day commuting. I never saw or heard anything mentioned about resistance to British weather being an issue with any particular wheels. It also seemed like spending a lot of money on wheels would not be worth it when other bits of my bike are quite worn out (though not essential parts, so I was hoping to keep it going for a few more years). Is there anything I can do to the wheels to avoid having to do maintenance on them every couple of months? Is there a way to tell in future if particular wheels will be quite weather-proof like my old ones managed to be? Thanks blackbike for the information about good value wheels that are out there.

I'm not afraid of spending money when I need to. I still have the £530 Pace MTB forks I bought in 1996 and they were well worth it. But I'm reasonably good at finding out when cheaper bits can do the job I require.

Nobody needs to do maintenance on wheels every couple of months. The overwhelming majority of bikes in the UK are low priced and have cheap wheels. Their wheels are not brilliant but they should last a lot longer than 2 months without attention. I've used cheap wheels for years without regreasing bearings, and I do thousands of miles per year.

The theory that some bike bits are so poor they can't be used in the rain is one I've not heard before, and I find it unbelievable, both from my own experience and my knowledge of people who use cheap bikes all the time without too many problems.

To me it sounds like you had a faulty component and the bike shop was using the cheapness of your wheels as an unjustified excuse.

[Brucey]

....The theory that some bike bits are so poor they can't be used in the rain is one I've not heard before, and I find it unbelievable, both from my own experience and my knowledge of people who use cheap bikes all the time without too many problems....

if even cheap, unsealed parts are slathered in oil, they tend to last OK. But if they are not, and they are used on freshly gritted roads, a single ride (at the wrong time) can be enough to cause problems. 'Rain' isn't really the problem....

If you don't ever ride on freshly gritted roads (as we have them in some parts of the country, and by 'grit' I mean road salt of course) it is difficult to imagine just how corrosive it can be. To give you an idea, a single ride (with 'summer lube' on the chain) on such surfaces is enough to cause a chain to corrode into a solid rusty lump less than two days later.

Shiny new parts with no seals and no lube don't stand a chance in such conditions.

cheers

[Pagw]

Thanks for all the replies. I think the key question to have an answer to that would be useful for making good decisions in the future is how can you tell how hard-wearing a wheel is going to be when making a buying decision? I've not been able to see what information is relevant when browsing wheels online, for example, and it seems like a key quality to look for if it differs a lot between wheels. It sounds like it's not something you can tell just from the price, either. Are there particular brands or models of hubs or wheel features that you should look for, for example?

After doing some more research, it also seems that the freewheel/hub can be replaced separately from the wheel, so if this becomes a problem again then could I just replace the freewheel/hub with one that is better sealed, without needing to replace the whole wheel? (I've not had time to figure out yet if I have a freewheel or freehub, and I didn't know until now that there were two possibilities - it might just be easiest to pop into the bike shop and ask I guess.) If it's a freewheel, I guess that I need to oil it now and then - possibly the shop did not put much on when I got the wheel the first time, and I didn't know I was meant to lubricate it, so it got a bit worn. The cassette did seem to click quite loudly when I was coasting, which I've read is a symptom of a freewheel that needs lubricating, but I didn't think anything of it before. Maybe my old wheel had a freehub and could last a long time without requiring lubrication.

In response to Brucey's question about the wheel cost - my figures are just the costs for the wheels, not the labour to fit them.

[Brucey]

this may help



typical HG cassette



typical screw -on freewheel



Regarding quality; 'price is a poor indicator of quality'. If we knew exactly what you had before and what you have now, it would be possible to draw useful comparisons.

cheers

[atoz]

Sorry to say this, but £40 for a complete rear wheel does sound indeed basic. A decent Shimano rear hub, complete with integral freehub mechanism is £79.99, even at Wiggle's prices (RRP £99.99 so Wiggle say). Don't get me wrong, I never deal with Wiggle, but that's the price on their website.

At a guess, I'd say that the water ingress is into the freehub (freewheel) mechanism, and probably not into the hub bearings.

On one of my bikes I have a pair of Campag hubs which are at least 30 years old and I've never noticed water ingress when I've been servicing the bearings...............I can't count the number of rims they've worn out, nor the number of times I've replaced the bearings. However, these are hubs which take screw-on freewheel blocks (which incorporate the sprockets - i.e. what you possibly know as the cassette), and water does get into the freewheel mechanism in them. As far as I know, manufacturers of decent current rear hubs (those which incorporate the freehub mechanism) claim that they are sealed, and by implication water resistant. I've never had this problem (so far anyway) with them.

(Please note that when I started typing this, Brucey's comments [above] hadn't been posted, but I can assure you that Brucey is genuinely a man who knows).

I agree about old style Campag hubs- excellent design for keeping water out. Unfortunately you can't get high quality screw on freewheel blocks any more, so you often get water in them. My hubs are around 30 years old also. Old man Tullio knew his stuff..

[JohnW]

..........................
I agree about old style Campag hubs- excellent design for keeping water out. Unfortunately you can't get high quality screw on freewheel blocks any more, so you often get water in them. My hubs are around 30 years old also. Old man Tullio knew his stuff..

Ah - well - that's what I thought - until someone on this Forum told me about the IRD freewheels available from Spa.

http://www.spacycles.co.uk/m2b0s112p308 ... -Freewheel


I bought a 13-28 6-speed, and they are better quality. I'll be able to give more feedback in about another 6,000 or 7,000 more miles, but so far - so very good. It's done about 3,000 miles so far. Current 6-speed Shimano freewheels give me between 5,000 and 7,500 miles depending upon weather - it's usually the most used sprocket that wears toothless. I once had a cheap Shimano 5-speed block come to pieces on the road! In days gone by I did get just about 10,000 miles on one Regina block - but everything was different then.

[ambodach]

Brucey's comment on the effect of salt on chains is certainly very apt. I was away from home at Xmas and had the Brommie out one morning after sleet and gritting the previous evening. On returning I folded it up and stuck in the back of the car as I was pushed for time. Two days later I got home and took it out. The chain as Brucey said was a solid lump after just a couple of days!