mprince

I've noticed that every so often the freehub on my Dura Ace rear hub will skip, nothing major but a bit disconcerting to say the least. I have been a long time user of the Morningstar Freehub Buddy on this hub, and usually give it a gear oil flush every year or so as part of routine maintenance. I remove the freehub body to do this, so I can let the excess oil drain out of the unit (versus all over my hub/spokes or into the greased bearings on the drive side).

Anyway, I was going to try and do a solvent flush followed by one or more lubricant flushes over a period of a couple days to see if that helps. Everything I read on the internet (including Sheldon Brown) said that Shimano 9-speed stuff was interchangeable, so I ordered a Tiagra 4500 9-speed freehub body to put on the wheel for interim use while I worked on the 7700 body. However, when I went to install it, it didn't fit as it seems to be a bit shorter than the 7700 body. It sits too much inboard, and as a result the cassette can't fully seat as it hits the spokes before it goes to the bottom of the splines. Also, the shortness of the body was apparent when I installed the axle and had a bunch of extra length on the NDS end.

There was a thin shim with the replacement body, perhaps I will re-try with that but I was under the impression that this was to replace the existing shim/washer around the hub splines (which fits into a recess in the hub), not sit on top of it as a spacer. Plus, it didn't seem thick enough to resolve the problem I had. Hmmm...

I probably won't ride for the next few days, so I likely will service the 7700 body this weekend so no big deal. While I have it off, I may retry the 4500 body with the shim and see if it works better that way, at least to satisfy my curiosity. If it does fit that way, I will come back and update the post, if for nothing else to help someone else who may be searching about this.