daniell

It's been some time since I last greased these hubs. Should I risk removing the dust covers? If no, can I adequately clean the hubs without doing so? If I bend them, I don't think that I will be able to find replacements.
Thanks

Crankycrank

Dust cover on non-drive side is OK to remove. Dust cover in the freehub is a no. It gets mangled very easily trying to remove and no replacement seal is offered. There used to be a company called Morningstar that sold re-usable seals but the company is no longer in business. Once in a while that seal will pop up on ebay or ?? but usually sold for more than the price of a new freehub.

daniell

I will start on the front hub. When I get to the rear hub, should I remove the freehub and soak it in solvent, then drop oil in it?

Crankycrank

Soaking the freehub is probably a good idea given it's age and not a difficult job and you'll be good for (probably) another 5+ years. Soak, let dry, remove the o-ring on the rear of the FW hub, dribble gear oil, Phil's tenacious, or Chain L chain lube in the o-ring groove and you're good. Make sure you use some lube of the same viscosity of heavy gear lube as most anything thinner will just dribble past the seals in a short time. Thicker, like grease, tends to make the pawl engagement iffy.

Andrew R Stewart 

If you have compressed air available that helps to drive out the solvent from the freehub body as well as better clean out the hub races behind any dust cap left in place. Crankycrank gives good advice BTW. Andy

daniell

I finished doing the front hub. Soon I will begin working on the rear hub. I have a one inch threadless King headset. I know nothing about it. Since it is still functioning as new, I wont touch it.

Crankycrank

You might want to remove the seal and check the bearings to see if they need a flush and new grease. How to Service Chris King Bearings – Chris King Precision Components Great headsets but do require some maintenance every once in a great while and not cheap to fix if the bearings get rusty and/or pitted from neglect.

daniell

Two things that I do not have. Compressed air and synthetic grease

Crankycrank

The air isn't necessary and neither is the synth grease. Spray/wipe some solvent on the exposed bearings and let dry before lubing. I've been using cheap petroleum marine grease in my CK for 20+ years and no issues.

daniell

Thanks.
I feel intimidated. Being 75, I am more familiar with the old components. I felt comfortable with the old campy components. Maybe I am too old to learn the new stuff.

Crankycrank

Nah, dont be intimidated. YouTube is your friend. Lots of videos on how to do this stuff. You may even find a "how to rebuild a shimano 6500 rear hub" I like the "RJ the bike guy" vids. Good, practical videos for people who have some mechanical skills and not a shop full of bike tools. Here's one for lubing the freehub body. Here's a list of all his videos. RJ The Bike Guy - YouTube

daniell

Thanks,
The rear hub I can handle. The headset is another matter. I have replaced conventional hubs on my mountain bike but the King headset is all new to me.

davidad

Try Lubriplate EMB. It is a synthetic and not too expensive. I buy it by the tube and use it all parts that need grease.

daniell

To lubricate the King headset do I have to remove the cups or bearings? When I bought the frame, I had the vendor install the headset. What is the advantage of synthetic grease?

blamester

No need to remove the dust covers
Open them up a little first and see do they actually need a service.
If they spin good and there is grease in there then they are fine. Put them back together.

davidad

[QUOTE=daniell;22404554]To lubricate the King headset do I have to remove the cups or bearings? When I bought the frame, I had the vendor install the headset. What is the advantage of synthetic grease?[/QUOTE
I have found with proper maintenance my hubs have in some cases over 60k miles. I overhaul them every 2500 miles. I have a friend who has the King headset and he hasn't had to do anything to it yet. You will need to pull the fork to make the bearings available for inspection. I haven't seen that set in a long time, so I don't know how to grease them.
This is all anecdotal, so you need to research the greases yourself. I do know all specific bike grease is overpriced and no advantage over the auto store products.

FastJake

If you want to re-grease the bearings of your Chris King headset, they have several instruction manuals online: https://chrisking.com/pages/support

Russ Roth

Doing a chris king bearing is easy, there's two pieces to deal with, one is a slip ring and the other is the rubber seal it holds in place. The metal slip ring has a diagonal cut in it so you can grab the edge at that cut and gently pull out and up, once one end of that ring is unseated it comes off real easy. The rubber seal just pops off. Spray a little wd40 in there to loosen up the old grease and wipe with a rag then just pack a little new grease in there. Reassembly is tool free, just lay the rubber seal back in place and gently push it down all the way around. The slip ring then gets set into place and pushed in all the way around. Wipe off any grease that leaks out and done. If the bearings are good they're held in place in a plastic cage which doesn't need to come out and you don't need to remove the bearings or the headset to do the job. If you can do Ultegra hubs, these will be easy.
Also a little late to this conversation but I never remove any dist seals, just pull the bearings out with a small magnet, use a screwdriver to push the rag around inside the races till they're clean, spray with a degreaser and wipe dry, then repack and reassemble. Dust seals are too easy to damage when removing them to make it worth the effort to get it right, easier to just skip the process.

daniell

Thanks for your helpful advice. I already completed the front hub without removing the dust seals. when I fist purchased the hubs, they came adjusted too tight. I figured that Shimano knew what they were doing, and it would loosen up. That was not the case. I had to replace the cones.

daniell

I would also appreciate a recommendation for a degreaser in which to soak the freehub. I would use kerosine but I don't like the smell of it.

masi61

@daniell - when you are referring to the rear freehub it is not clear if you mean the whole 6500 hub with its 8/9/10 speed Hyperglide freehub body, or just the freehub body itself?

Some of the previous posts seems to be focusing on flushing and lubing the freehub body. It sounds to me like you are mostly just wanting to repack the 6500 axle bearings. If this is the case and the freehub body isn’t mucked up, why not just repack the bearings exactly the way you did the front hub? The drive side bearing race sits on the outside of the freehub body. If the freehub body is ratcheting fine, why mess with success? I would just clean the splines with some odorless mineral spirits or WD-40. I use Rock-N-Roll Super Web Grease in a Pedro’s micro grease gun to apply tiny bits of grease where needed or just butter in Finish Line grease from the 1 pound tub I have into the bearing races then reassemble the cones/spacers/locknuts with your cone wrench/locknut wrench. You can leave a tiny amount of play in the cones prior installing the wheel back into the frame dropouts. Once the wheel is installed and the quick release skewer tightened, often the compression from the skewer will have removed that last tiny bit of play or just use 2 of the same size cone wrenches (one on non-drive side, one on drive side) to remove all play but still have zero binding of the bearings. As far as I know the 6500 hubs still have this older design which is so logical and reliable. Could you post a picture of the rear hub so we could refresh our memories of the dust seal design?

My experience is mostly with Dura Ace 7400/7403 and Dura Ace 7700 hubs but I believe these are very similar to the 6500.

daniell

Thanks, you talked me out of it. I will only regrease the axle bearings. Photo will come later.

masi61

daniell I looked at a photo of a used 6500 rear freehub that is listed on eBay, the non drive side dust cap appears to be metal, not plastic. For metal hub dust caps like that they can be carefully removed with a wide flat blade screwdriver working it slowly around the perimeter and monitoring to make sure it doesn’t start to bend. Having the dust cap out does facilitate easier clean out of the old grease. After the race is thoroughly cleaned, re-greased with new bearings (or cleaned up older bearings - your choice) then you can replace the dust cap. One trick for pushing it back into place without damage is to use a round flat object that is just shy of the diameter of the hub shell edge such as an oversized socket or maybe even the head of a plastic mallet if you have one of these. Then you can just push the dust seal down while having the other side of the hub sitting on a firm surface.

daniell

I am ready to put in the bearings. I did not bother to remove the dust covers.

daniell

I needed two cone wrenches. A 15mm on the cone and a 14mm on the locknut.