In point of fact most cassette hubs are perfectly happy running in oil throughout; the main problem with it is that it tends to leak out. If you use the right semifluid grease then it has all the advantages of oil (keeping the seal lips wetted etc) with none of the disadvantages (it doesn't leak out at anything like the same rate). Since you can get semifluid greases with solid lubricants, extreme pressure additives and corrosion inhibitors, I suggest that you use those.

One or both of the ratchet rings can slip in and out on the freehub on splines machined into their outer edges, which mesh with teeth in the freehub and/or hub body. Internal gear hubs usually use oil, but it's important to use the correct lubricant. Some hubs like the NuVinci hub literally are designed around the special oil they use. For other hub types, the grease doesn't usually matter.

Freehub standards

Once a hub is running in SFG, it is simply a question of adding more from time to time. With a rim brake hub this can be done via a drilling, and you should expect to have to wipe up excess coming out of the hub for the first few hundred miles. after each top-up. With a disc brake hub it is better just to add it in the RHS, else you may get leakage on the left side which may contaminate the disc. Now we’ve had a look at the internals of the freehub, let’s turn to the outside of the freehub – the part on which your cassette mounts. This is a question that a lot of riders struggle with to get right, I think. It depends on many things — although every ride is probably too soon for most people (unless it follows a degrease and scrub session first). And that’s not entirely necessary either unless you like your bikes to be showroom quality at all times. A complete turn of the wheel is 360 degrees, so the angle of engagement is 360 divided by the number of points of engagement. After drive side bearing replacement i decided to put some drops of gl-4 synthetic gear oil into it to see how it would perform. Why, cause i had some sitting on the shelf taking up space. Specifically... Mercury high performace gear lube (90w).

I prefer a lighter lubricant during colder months and a little heavier lubricant in the heat of summer. Dumonde Tech makes a freehub light oil and a grease. You can also use Dumonde Tech Liquid Grease. Shimano and Mavic also make freehub lubes. One of my favorites that is no longer available is Paul Morningstar's Electric Lube which is more of a very light grease.However, the teeth will need to be smaller, as will the pawls, so some brands use pawls with multiple teeth to spread the loads, or they offset the pawls in a multi-phase configuration so that not all pawls engage simultaneously, thereby reducing the angle of engagement. There are many different standards used by the different drivetrain makers – that’s mainly Shimano, SRAM and Campagnolo – as well as different ones for mountain bike and road bike freehubs. So my opinions are based only really on what I’ve seen, and the conditions I find myself in. What works for me may not be as effective in a different environment, or a different application, so it’s important to really feel things out and keep an eye on how things seem to be working. Talking to an experienced mechanic in your home environment may give some insight into what works well locally for the application you require. Local bike shops are probably the greatest underutilized resources to really dial in your lube theory if you can find a good one. Unfortunately it's not very clear which grease and additives is best, because bicycles are different from lots of other applications in that speeds are quite low, and temperatures not too high. Durability is likely to be important. Can you tell us a couple of the specific lube practices you use with Kate’s race bikes that you might not use on a customer’s?

Internal hub grease. This is with calcium hydroxide 5-10%, white solid lubricants 2-3.5%, & 2.5-4.1% bentonite, other additives and mineral oil. This grease is calcium-based for wash-resistance, and temperatures are not high. The ratchet’s teeth are angled, so when you’re freewheeling the angled faces of each ring slip over each other, sliding against the force from the springs. When you pedal, the flat faces mesh with one another to transmit your driving force to the wheel.Another grease-based product is carbon assembly compound, which typically is grease + silica, which adds friction to enable parts to grip with a lower torque. This is used with carbon fibre parts, which if over-torqued can fracture. It may be considered cute to have a noisy ratchet but it will likely slow you down whilst coasting. You'd want a higher viscosity grease on the pawls than you'd use in your bearings but you'd better verify the pawls pop up correctly.

I, for one, used to suffer from freehub bearings running out of lube because I cleaned the chain and cogs with an agressive degreaser and probably using too much of that good thing in the process. Oh god. The things I’ve seen. First of all, do not spray ANYTHING on your disc rotors or calipers. I’m worried the world isn’t ready for disc brakes. Or bike shops aren’t doing their job educating consumers. Something is wrong here, that is for sure. I will also say I think road cyclists tend to be less concerned about maintenance things than mountain bike riders, maybe because the road bikes are a bit less dynamic so it’s not something many road cyclists obsess over in the way some MTB riders do, and the bikes have less tunable functionality in general. Most people just get on a road bike and go, at best maybe they pump their tires up every time to a specific pressure but even that is a long shot for most road riders.Bottomline is to first look at what the manufacturer recommends and try to understand why they do so. Then look at how you clean your bike and how that is affecting the lubrication of the freehub system. Additionally, the lighter lubricants will assist in reduced rotating friction. As you might have already noticed, the DT Swiss freehubs are not the best free-spinning rear wheels, so they can always use a little help. One thing that you will notice is how much quieter they will be. Some prefer the louder freehubs to the quieter ones. I prefer the stealth mode.