Originally Posted by
stardognine
I did a little more reading last night, about the M770 rear hub failures. Some guys over in England suspect that the very early M770s had a weakness, which was solved somewhere along the way. A lot of people have no issues whatsoever, so theirs were "probably" made later. But who knows exactly when they solved the problem?
If I were just riding close to home on it, I wouldn't even really worry about it. But out touring, I don't think I'd want to gamble on it. 🤔😉
I do not really know if it was just the early ones or not. But one other problem was that some of the early ones had a freehub that was not well attached to the hub shell. But that was over a decade ago. I think that any hubs of that vintage now that have not yet gone bad probably won't.
That said, when I built up my Lynskey five years ago, I found that Shimano still made the M756A rear hub with steel axles which is what I used. I must admit, I do like the idea of quarter inch ball bearings in a rear wheel.
I have an aluminum axle on my front wheel on my folding bike, the aluminum does not bother me, as it is quite oversized should be beefy enough to do the job.