Monday, November 28, 2011

Freewheel Hub + Freehub = Frustration

How many of you know the difference between a free hub wheel and a freewheel hub?  I didn't until yesterday when I finally had a chance to dismantle my warped wheel and install its cassette to my newly ordered wheel. Alas, here are the confounding details:
Freehub Wheel (what my cassette fits on)

Freewheel Hub (what I ordered anew, arrhh!)


More detailed schematics of these two types are available at Wikipedia. Unfortunately, my former lack of knowledge left me with the wrong wheel. Further investigation also taught me that I am likely to need spacers to properly fit my old 7-speed cassette to a new hub because the latter are generally designed for cassettes with 8-10 gears. Those of us who are satisfied with merely 7 gears will need to cope/adapt. Anyway, this additional wrinkle made it likely (to me, at least) that additional online shopping for spacers could lead to more error in parts selection. Therefore, this morning I opted for the bike shop, where my Trek sits being repaired in a well-stocked shop.



4 comments:

Amy said...

Oh no! Sorry to hear that! I came close to making the opposite mistake (ordering a wheel set for a freehub cassette instead of with a freewheel for my existing sprocket cluster). Good thing I had double checked on Sheldon Brown (http://sheldonbrown.com/free-k7.html) before I ordered! At least your bike shop can sort it out for you.

anniebikes said...

I ran into this also when I had someone replace the wheel on my Miyata. I didn't have a clue until one day the freewheel came loose-what the heck? That was my first thought because I thought those cassettes screwed on, but I now had a freehub.
Post is here:
http://anniebikes.blogspot.com/2011/04/strange-occurence-and-new-freewheel.html

Ben said...

Amy, I will definitely keep Sheldon in mind for next time!
Annie, thanks for sharing your tale!

I thought our bikes were simple?!!?!

Mark said...

Didn't know you could still get a Freewheel hub wheel anymore.

Hopefully, the LBS (assuming you got it from one) will take it back in exchange for the right part.