Cycling UK Forum

Hi all

Was out yesterday on a 70 miles ride (mainly off road Sustans track) noticed that when I free wheeled for a while I would have to pedal a few times before I would have any drive then after about 15 miles lost drive totally ie peddled but back Cassette just span. Didn't do much apart from kept spinning pedals to try and fix. Got going again then chain broke which I fixed ok and then slowly limped home Wondered does this point to a free hub failure and will it happen again and maybe next time I won't be so lucky in getting going. Done about 1500 miles on wheel
Would appreciate any advice or comments
Thanks for your time
Ragards
Mike

either take apart and diagnose the problem or bin.

i can't understand why you kept going after 15 miles. any problems like that and i go straight back home.

A get you home fix is to Zip tie the cassette to the spokes.

whether it is a freehub (cassette system) or a freewheel type hub (where the freewheel screws onto the hub body) the usual cause of this is that water has entered the freewheel assembly and the pawls inside are sticky [in the winter any water inside can even freeze!] The first thing to try is using a penetrating lube of some kind (GT85, WD40 etc) and to see if that frees the mechanism off. It may take some effort to get the lube in there, and some time for it to have the intended effect. If it does restore the freewheel action, just be sure to keep that part reasonably well lubricated in future.

In either case you can disassemble the parts but this a 'four spanner' (out of five) job in some cases. Most bike shops just change the parts because it isn't cost-effective (at their workshop rates) to overhaul them.

cheers

Thanks very much for the tips

I will get the can of GT85 out and see how that goes!

Appreciate the time taken to reply

Regards

Mike