robow

May I ask what you define as "long term wheels" and how often is "serviced regularly" in your opinion ?

cyccommute 

I'm not sure what I was attempting to say. I think autocorrect took a bite out of me. But for trouble free bearings, I'd choose cartridge over cup and cone any day. I've seen a number of wheels at my local co-op with cups and cones that have either loosened or are too tight. The ones that are too tight are usually new and come that way from the factory. I hypothesize that the bearings are tight so that they work better in the wheel building machines. Wheels that have seen a lot of use are the ones with loose bearings. Neither situation is good for the hub.

On the other hand, I seldom see a cartridge bearing that is seized. I've seen a fair number of wheels that have Suntour cartridge hubs from 1983 (they came stock on Miyata Ridge Runners and some Specialized Stumpjumpers). None of the ones I've seen have any issue whatsoever. They all run smooth and free even though they are nearly 40 years old. All of my wheels are cartridge hubs and even with nearly 20,000 miles on some of them (and about 12 years), I have yet have to do anything to them.

Full disclosure, I have had to replace cartridge bearings on a total of 3 hubs in nearly 40 years of using them. I had one of the Suntour cartridge bearing hubs seize on me. That may have been my own fault because I was regularly prying up the seal and regreasing the bearing. I may have even rinsed them out back when I didn't know better. I had to replace a cartridge bearing in a Cannondale hub from 2003. I also had to replace seized bearings in a Ringle' hub I bought at a swap meet. None of them were difficult to replace.

By the way, I see a fair number of loose bearing hubs from the same era as the Suntour cartridge bearings. Few of them are in good shape. Pitted cones are very common.

Yearly or twice yearly. 1500 to 3000 miles, roughly.

elcruxio

I think one of the reasons for seeing lots of pitted cones and loose bearing hubs in bad condition is because a majority of cheap bikes use them. And the hubs used in these bikes are also cheap meaning that they have very little in terms of sealing. My drunkbike has a cup and cone front hub which has no sealing whatsoever. On top of that it had very little grease in when I bought it new and so when it was exposed to weather and I at some point did a service the whole inside of the hub had just turned completely black. The way I remedied that was that I cleaned everything as well as I could, added a TON of new high quality bearing grease (which luckily is super cheap since it's automotive) and the hub still functions well for its intended task, ie. trips under 6 kilometers. Probably eats some watts but for the use the bike is meant for that's a complete non issue.

Add to the above that a lot of the people buying affordable bikes likely aren't enthusiasts and thus put much less effort into maintaining their bikes than any of us here do and that is going to cause problems.

But on the other hand modern higher grade Shimano hubs (which by the way are still ridiculously cheap when comparing to phil woods or kings etc) have really good multiple layers of sealing. On top of that you can jam them up to the gills with grease. A hub like that will need far less maintenance than older cup and cones and the affordable modern offerings.
Good cartridge bearing hubs will have independent sealing preventing contamination reaching the inside of the hub and on top of that the actual bearings will have seals of their own. The flip side of the coin is that you can't jam pack a cartridge bearing hub with grease because there's a chance the grease can interact with the bearings or seals by for example hydraulicking them out of position.

Cyccocommute did point out that many cartridge bearing rear hubs do have a tool free process of removing the freehub body so you can remove the freehub while the cassette is still attached, making spoke replacement possible on the drive side. This is a neat feature, but can be overcome by carrying cassette tools. There exists a cassette tool which is around the size of a 2 euro coin and weighs only slightly more which allows for easy field removal and installation of the cassette. It is somewhat rare though and for a long time we did not have one because it was unavailable. And there are some other botch methods too, but better to just have proper tools. I do wish however that shimano made their freehubs easier to remove and on top of that made them serviceable. At the moment stripping a shimano freehub requires specialized tools and they are many times considered a wear out and toss type of item.

So I still maintain that there is no absolute winner and it depends on the values of the end user. Affordable shimano hubs make it possible to build some seriously good wheels with a budget.

cyccommute 

Cone pitting is has multiple causes. It's not just contamination that causes it. You can pit cones if the cones are too tight due to galling or brinnelling if the ​​​​​​cones are too loose. As I've said above, a lot of new wheels have hubs that are way too tight and lots of old ones have come loose.

And, if you rebuild a loose bearing hubset, the chances of doing one or the other is much greater. If you are using a quick release, you should have a small amount of play in the bearings to prevent them from tightening too much when the skewer is tightened. But too much play and the skewer won't load the bearings enough, leading to brinnelling. Too little play can lead to galling. There's a fine line.

I'm not as enamored of Shimano's sealing as you are. Yes, they are sealed nicely on the off-drive side. On many of them, there is little more then a boulder seal on the drive side. I call it a boulder seal because they can't really be called a dust seal.

I agree. That is what happen to my old Suntour hubs. They don't need more grease because they have enough from the factory. But that is the beauty of a cartridge bearing. You don't have to ​​​​​​​jam them full of grease or do anything else to them, for that matter. Ride 'em and forget 'em.

Have you ever tried to use a Stein lockring driver or something similar?​​​​​​​ I have. It was a Pimar Hypercracker (about 2/3 down the page) which has more of a lever arm than the Stein. All I managed to do was to dent the chain stay on my Cannondale. It's not a easy as it looks.

Having the ability to remove the free hub body with the cassette is worth the extra cost, in my opinion.

Yes, you can build wheels with Shimano hubs. But if you have a budget, why build when you can buy the same wheel for a lot less. You can get this wheel for just over $290. To build the same wheel from Internet parts would cost $310 to $345 in parts plus another 10% in shipping plus labor to build. If the wheel isn't anything all that special and you can buy it, buy it. If you want something special, build it but don't waste your time and effort on something that is ordinary.

Tourist in MSN

This past weekend at a swap meet I picked up a 24mm cone wrench for a buck. Several minutes with a file and it became a lightweight 1 inch wrench to fit on my Park cassette tool. That means I don't have to carry the heavier adjustable wrench that I used to use any more. For chain whip, I wrote up what I use at this link years ago.
https://www.bikeforums.net/touring/8...ip-travel.html

But I have not broken a spoke for almost 20 years, so I am not sure why I worry so much about that sort of thing any more. Last spoke I broke was on a wheel with a Campy hub that had a 1961 date code.

elcruxio

Like all other things, cup and cone hubs do require know how to assemble properly. It's just as easy to destroy cartridge bearings during installation if you don't know what you are doing / are using improper tools. That's one of the cons of cartridge bearing hubs. You need specific press tools or a functional workaround to install new bearings. On top of that it is also quite easy to damage the hub itself if removal of worn bearings is done improperly. Some hubs require a bearing puller. On the other hand you do not need special tools to remove or add loose ball bearings other than those needed for opening the hub for service.
I would not say adjusting cup and cone hubs is all that difficult. It's just fiddly and requires patience. None of my cup and cone hubs have suffered damage due to improper tensioning.



I could say the same about some cartridge bearing hubs where the cassette side does not have even a dust seal to protect the cartridge bearings. While the bearings themselves are sealed I would prefer to have some sealing between them and the world.


At least until a bearing gets damaged or worn. Cartridge bearings do need to be swapped now and then. I'd say a modern Shimano cup and cone is ride and forget for thousands of miles when enough grease is added and even then the service is a simple cleanup and regrease though they do generally require more maintenance. But they are also easier to repair and do allow for botch jobs.


It is unfortunate that your frame was dented by hyper cracker. I have an M-Gineering NBT2
M-Gineering, Imports and framebuilding
I acquainted myself with using the tool before our last tour and it was easy enough to use. As far as I saw it didn't even scuff the paint on my LHT when I removed and reinstalled the cassette.
I like the ability to remove a freehub tool free, but with a Hope the problem is then seating the freehub seal with the cassette on. Usually one would use a specific press tool to seat the seal but it can be fiddled in with a screwdriver if the tool can not be found. However seating the seal with a cassette installed on the freehub would likely be extremely difficult if not impossible.



For a wheelset that's not an insane price. I don't understand the rest of your comment. I build wheels because I want more durable, better wheels than what factory mades can offer. I do this by doing the build myself but also by combining the best possible bang for the buck compatible components. When I built my touring wheels my main choice for a Hope rear hub was general compatibility with the other components and wheel dimensions. I was completely ready to use a Shimano hub, but the ones on offer then were not AS compatible with the other components and dimensions as the Hope RS Mono I ended up using was.
While I do like cartridge bearings, if a hub has cup and cone bearings but fits the build better otherwise I'll choose the ball and bearing hub. Bearings do not make a wheel special. They are a component and do not factor too greatly in how well the end result works if the user has the know how to maintain the wheelset properly. A super expensive hub is also many times not worth the money in terms of performance gain (there likely isn't any performance gain, especially if we're talking touring as we are). Some freehubs are better than others and I do appreciate the ease of repair and maintenance of a Hope freehub. DT Swiss also has a pretty nifty freehub system but unfortunately their touring hubs are insanely overpriced for what they offer. Shimano freehubs sadly are not serviceable but they also aren't expensive so if you have to toss one and get a new one it's not a big deal financially.

I could compare a fancy expensive hub (like a Phil Wood or Chris King) to a boutique hand made shoe and shimano to a mass produced shoe. With shoes the fancy boutique shoe is hand made and the high price comes from that. It inefficient but it does have a certain feel to it. Someone made it with their hands so it must be special. A mass produced shoe is built utilizing as much machinery as possible thus pushing the price point down as the production stages take much less time. They are made more efficiently in terms of logistics. If both use the same construction and materials the quality will be close to same (mass produced quality shoes and hand made boutique shoes use pretty much the same materials when thinking of your standard oxford shoe)
The price for the phil wood or king does not come from better quality as such (the finish is good and they are pretty to look at because of nice anodizing jobs etc.) but from the fact that their product is fancy, it is produced inefficiently logistically when compared to Shimano and other cheaper brands and use more manual labor (not really a good thing in mechanical components when you start to think about it).

In terms of price for a touring wheelset, I could build an absolutely bombproof set of touring wheels for ~ 270 euros. Shimano M6000 + 675 hubs, DT Swiss TK540 rims and DT Swiss alpine 3 spokes. 36 spokes per wheel. And I can assure you that wheelset would be something special indeed. Or not, I didn't actually check the compatibility. But let's just assume that the compatibility is fine and so the wheelset is super special

TiHabanero

Tourist in MSN, I have great faith in the Shimano BB. Have a UN52 that has been on two mountain bikes and several road bikes. Must be 20K miles on it by now and it still performs like a champ. Just looking for lower weight, which really is not important, just a want. Sealed cartridges are simply wonderful on the service side of life, so it is a must for hubs and BB.
Oddly enough the Campy Nuovo Record BB and hubs I still use have zero wear on them and have been on 2 separate bikes and about 30k miles on them. No seals, just really high quality materials.

Tourist in MSN

Thanks for the response.