Narhay

Seems like the thing these days is loud freewheel ratchets on modern freehubs.

My regina, atom, suntour and sunrace freewheels are all fairly quiet. Were there any particularly loud ones bitd?

Kovkov

My long time abused Sachs-Maillard-Atom is pretty loud. I don't remember if it was allways like this. The spare ones i have are not so loud.

scratchpaddy

The Suntour Mighty-6 freewheel on my '84 Del Rey is pretty loud, but I know what you mean on modern bikes. I think it's partly because modern wheels and frames are so stiff, any little sound from the tires or components gets picked up and broadcast all around. Even on slick tires and smooth pavement, full carbon bikes sound way louder than they should when they pass me by on the MUP. I can always hear them coming behind me when I'm out walking.

Salamandrine 

Yeah, the incredibly loud freewheel/freehub thing. it's annoying. Chris King hubs are the worst. Sounds like some sort of party buzzer - or maybe the old Cox model airplane engines. Would drive me bonkers. My White T11 was a bit loud for me. Fixed it with Phil...

Vintage freewheels generally were pretty quiet, some more than others. I don't any that even remotely compare to today's noismakers. Regina CX were super quiet, it was kind of their thing, and at the time a selling point. They were OTOH slightly less reliable than the earlier Oro. Shimano freehubs were always pretty quiet.

Phil tenacious oil makes them all quieter. I have a bottle for the sole purpose of oiling freewheels and freehubs.

Carbon bikes are great resonators for sure. Amplify everything. That's partly why I don't ride carbon, possibly the biggest part.

Salamandrine 

I suspect part of the issue is the really light oil often used nowadays. I kinda think this is an over-reaction to the days of greasing freewheels. Possibly companies are trying to avoid liability from sticking pawls, which can happen, especially in freezing weather.

FBOATSB

I used to really enjoy the freewheel ticking, especially at low speed almost like clockwork.
Nowadays it would take hearing aids with maxed out volume.

artclone

My Regina Oro was deafening until I dripped some Phil's Tenacious Oil into it. Purrs now.

nesteel 

Nothing is quite as soothing as the double click from a nice Suntour freewheel on a sunny day.

juvela

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One lubricant I have found helpful for gear blocks is Castrol Foaming Chain Lubricant. It comes in a spray can with a narrow tube for the nozzle. Goes on as a low viscosity substance so penetrates well in tight spaces. In a short time the viscosity goes up as it quickly "cures" so it has good staying power.

Does a good job of quieting ratchet pawls.

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Velo Mule

It think it is both that the new freewheels have the lightest possible oil in them, I don't actually know for sure, since I only work on old stuff and the fact that the newer wheels act like guitar bodies and seem to amplify the sound. I hate it. It reminds me of the film single lens reflex cameras where camera makers were trying hard to quiet the sound of the shutter and now we have digital camera that have that shutter slam sound that seems to be louder than the worst of the old SLR cameras.

tiger1964 

Great description! In a group where I'm the only non-freehub rider, I could almost close my eyes and navigate by the sounds alone.

squirtdad

Probably due to the design of Chris King hubs. Good to know that Phil's oil works as good on freehubs as it does on freewheels

wschruba

Beware of using heavy oils on some hubs (mavic, in particular, but also these current crops of 3/6 pawl high engagement hubs). The springs in the old Mavic design are quite weak and it's easy to wind up with a stuck down pawl. The high-engagement hubs wind up with a slightly different problem: the pawls have so much surface area on the pocket side, that they will stick to the freehub body when they collapse.

All said, it's difficult to talk about 'loud' without setting some kind of standard as 'loud'. I know some people who are driven wild by DT ratchets, which are fairly quiet. They would almost certainly be driven to madness by a BMX race freewheel or a White Industries trials freewheel.

OldsCOOL

verktyg 

Great Minds Think Alike....

Discovered how well Phil Tenacious Oil works on freewheels about 10 years back. My riding buddy used to comment how quiet my bikes were!



I suspect that it's 120 weight gear oil used in truck transmissions and differentials.

Hint, if you get too much in the freewheel it will drip out when the bike sits in one place for a while and could stain the floor or carpeting. Also makes a mess on the wheel.

When I remove a freewheel, after cleaning it, when I apply the Phil oil, I put a small amount in both sides and rotate the FW to distribute the lube. After that I lay the FW on a paper towel to let any excess Phil oil drain out. After a few hours I flip it over.

Hint, before using a solvent to clean the crud off of a FW, I carefully remove any built up grit around the splits between the rotating and stationary parts so that it doesn't get flushed into the bearings. When I use a water based cleaner, after I get most of the water out of the mechanism, I spray in WD40. It displaces water - WD stands for "Water Displacing".



These Park GSC-1 Gear Cleaning Brushes work great to remove the grit and crud from between the sprockets.




I can hear a lot CFRP bikes coming up on me from the rear. They sound like a cactus rain stick!



I guess that steel is far more "dead" and absorbs the noises better???

verktyg

michael k

Thought I would enjoy the peace and quiet of this hub.that is, until that nerve racking,ear piercing ringing from a surprised scream while passing someone walking on the MUP.
I stopped and bought a bell.

39283932_1680295988748410_6004704187814772736_n by K Farm, on Flickr

Chombi1 

I loved quiet FWs so much that I used to overload them with grease to silence them up. I quit doing that when I noticed that it can hang up the pawls in some FWs with weaker pawl springs.
Still, as already mentioned, some FWs are quite than others, out of the box, like some by Regina.
Maillards are usually quite loud, unless you get enough grease in them, but they are nice because they are mostly bullet proof. They are like the AK47's of the FW world, not perfect, not so pretty in some cases, but dependable, at least that's been my experience with them.

tiger1964 

What, your spell-checker didn't correct that?

JohnDThompson 

High profile rims and oversize frame tubing provide acoustically resonant spaces for ratchet sounds to propagate.

As noted by several people above, these can be minimized by flooding the ratchet mechanism with oil, but the effect is temporary until the oil drains out. You can slow this drainage by working a thick grease into the gap between the inner and outer bodies of the ratchet mechanism.

Salamandrine 

That's worth noting. It's unlikely that these warnings to only use light oil are entirely without merit. If you have Mavic hubs you must live with the noise I guess.

It's clear to me that Phil's tenacious oil is not nearly tenacious enough to stick down the pawls of my White T11 hub, at least not without sub zero temperatures. The springs are reasonably strong.

I had tried Finish Line wet on the pawls originally. That kind of quieted them for a week or two, and then they got noisy again. Phil seems to stay put and makes the T11 nicely quiet.

Perhaps I pushed my luck a bit, but I'm not going to really break the rules and use grease. I remember grease screwing up freewheels back in the 80s during the great grease injector craze.

wesmamyke

[QUOTE=michael k;20509894]Thought I would enjoy the peace and quiet of this hub.that is, until that nerve racking,ear piercing ringing from a surprised scream while passing someone walking on the MUP.
I stopped and bought a bell.

Have one of those silent clutch hubs I've been meaning to build up. I had a particularly quiet bike, happened to be a BMX bike, possibly had to do with the original Suntour single speed freewheel. Don't think I ever rode that thing without getting screamed at, it just surprised people in the wrong way.

verktyg 

CFRP? Carbon Fiber Reinforced Plastic?

Acoustic Test:



I was stopped in heavy traffic this afternoon and could hear the freewheel on a bike going the other direction, 4 lanes away!

I have Shimano 7 and 8 speed cassettes. The grease in the freehubs has held up for many years. They used good stuff at the factory!

verktyg

pastorbobnlnh 

Just my 2 cents for this conversation.

My guess is that adding oil to a freehub, especially a new/newer one, would void the warranty.

Almost all freewheels were designed for a small amount of grease in the races. A small amount works on to the pawls and provides the needed lubrication.

styggno1

I would like to put forward that the problem being people not pedaling enough these days. Rolling around making clicking noices. But maybe I am just grumpy...

The Golden Boy 

My Phil free hub is really loud.

My loudest freewheel was a 5 speed Suntour Perfect.