How To Remove/Clean/Degrease/Lube/Install A Freehub Body On A Bike Wheel

I'm going to show you how to clean and Lube the free Hub body on a bike wheel generally unless it's causing you problems you don't really want to mess with it but uh in this case I'm going to be overhauling The Hub on this this wheel so uh there's not much extra work to go ahead and pull the hub off or the uh free hub off so I'm going to show you how to do that first you want to start off by removing the skewer then put the spring on there don't want to lose that stuff so put that aside next you're going to remove the cassette and you're going to need like a cassette removal tool put that on there and a chain whip to hold the uh cassette and then go ahead and then just turn this little lock ring counterclockwise then you go ahead and remove the little lock ring pull that off and then the whole cassette will come right off just go ahead and put that aside and there's the free Hub but in order to pull the free hub off we're going to have to remove the a axle so flip the wheel over there's like a rubber boot around here go ahead use like a screwdriver get under that lift it up and going to pull that off there and then that exposes the uh cone the spacers and the lock nut there now I can use a cone wrench to go ahead and hold the cone and then use a Cresent wrench to go ahead and loosen this lock nut up here and then go ahead pull that off there's the lock nut there's a spacer another spacer and now we have the cone here and I want to go ahead and remove this cone and just spin that off and there's the cone flip the wheel over and you can go ahead and pull the axle out to go ahead and stick all those parts aside now I can go ahead and remove the uh freehub body I have a large allen wrench this is 10 mm this is the most common size uh you might run into ones that use slightly larger sizes um and some you might have come in from the other side I've heard but this one just goad stick it in here and then me see turn this counter clock wise it could be really tight and this one is so I'm going to get a cheater bar and there go ahead and loosen this little part in here and I have the free hub off now I want to go ahead and remove the bearings out of there and then I can pull this little part out here now on the back side of the the freehub body um there's a little Rubber seal that goes around in here so you use like a very small little screwdriver reach under there and just pry this up careful not to damage it then you pull that out and that exposes all the bearings in there don't worry they're not going to fall out now to clean out all the old grease what I'm going to do is submerge this into a jar of a solvent for this I'm using a paint thinner and I'm just going to go ahead and let that soak in there and then what I'm going to do is periodically pull this out and rotate the inner part in there to help get everything all freed up in there but just go ahead and leave that soak in there for uh a a significant amount of time as long as you got and we'll come back to it okay after it's been soaking there for while go ahead and pull it out let it drain dry it off and then go ahead and let it set and let all the uh solvent uh drain out of it you want nice and uh clear of the solvent okay after the freehub body has had a chance to dry you want to go ahead and lubricate it using like an oil similar to like fil tenacious oil which is a heavy oil kind of sticky it's really good uh sticks to the bearings just go ahead and drip it into this crack between the two parts where the bearings are and then go ahead rotate this around let it work its way in you should notice a difference in sound as you T turn it should get a little quieter then you go ahead and dry off all the excess then go ahead and take the Rubber seal that we pulled off before and just press this in there now we're ready to install reinstall it okay now we're ready to reattach the the free Hub body to the wheel so I've got this little part here this is going slide down into there don't forget if there were any spacers or washers on there to go ahead and make sure those go back on there to sit down that down on there and then screw this on clockwise like that and it was on there pretty tight so go ahead and tighten it pretty well but you don't have to like be a gorilla about it either there so that's on there pretty well now I want to go ahead repack uh the race in here with some grease I'm using just regular automotive type grease general purpose type grease get lots of Grease right into the race cuz you want the bearings to be able to stick in there and then there were 9/4 in bearings on each side so just go ahead and place them in there there nine bearings then go ahead and flip the wheel over put some grease down in this race here insert the bearings around the race Now flip the wheel back over we're go ahead and insert the axle down through the free hub then again flip the wheel over now we go ahead and take the cone and you want the cone side down with the rais part facing down so just go ahead and screw that on and screw it down till you feel it hits uh the bearings and then just back it off just a little bit now we're going to put the spacers back on so the big spacer goes on first then the the thinner spacer goes on then we're going to put the lock nut on and we want The Ridges facing out or up in this case just tighten that just kind of fingertight at this moment then NOP turn the axle see how it feels does it feel smooth and it feels pretty good feel for play and that actually feels pretty good I put the cone wrench down on the cone and tighten the lock nut don't crank it down quite yet now feel the axle how does it does it feel smooth there much play and this actually feels pretty good it's not binding or anything so that's good so go ahead put the cone wrench back on the cone and then tighten the lock nut all the way and then again just feel the the axle make sure that it's still smooth moving smoothly and that's moving really well okay now you want to go ahead and reinstall this little Rubber seal here just slide this over snap it down and it will snap in around the the nuts there and around the wheel there go ahead flip the wheel over now we want to go ahead and reinstall the cassette and if you look there's like a wide Gap like right here F like the wide notch on the cassette line that up and it'll slide right down there was a little spacer in here then another little Cog here and then another little Cog find the wide Notch right there that fits on there get the lock ring the tool screw that on tighten this on you don't need to crank this on just tighten it down a little bit go ahead reinstall the skewer reinstall the wheel on the bike and you're done and that is how you clean and lubricate a free Hub I hope that helps

Channel: RJ The Bike Guy

Views: 842,735

Keywords: Bikes, Bicycle (Sports Equipment), Freehub

Id: f19BGYc5ysA

Length: 13min 8sec (788 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 18 2014