My rear hub has been dragging pretty bad. My LBS rebuilt it with Ring Drive lube and still nothing. If I put the bike in the stand and turn the cranks it barely freewheels. If I press my der. cage forwards just a tad to take some of the tension off of the chain it does not freewheel at all. The resistance is noticeable and problematic and I want to know if anyone else has had this happen or if this is standard drag for King hubs. I'm about to order a wheelset with a different set of R45s and don't want to if this is how they are supposed to be.

I feel dumber reading that.... You believe their hubs are designed to have so much drag they won't freewheel?

Some possible causes of drag..

Rebuilt incorrectly.
Too much bearing preload.
Is the hub new? They do have drag when new and need to be broken in..
Something between your cassette and spokes...
Your locking rubbing on your dropouts..

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Quite a few prominent wheelbuilders have told me that King hubs have more seal drag than normal, hence the question.

IDK about R45, but my CK rear disc hub would spin for days with no free hub drag. And continued to do so after several years of mountain biking.

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Chris King hubs have a lot more bearing drag then other hubs. You have to be very methodical with how you grease them. Literally one drop too much grease in the bearings and you will have what you are describing. I've always resisted CK because of this. . .

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KWalker,

What you are experiencing is not normal for a CK rear hub. Either something in the hub is broken or the rebuild was not done properly, including not setting bearing preload properly. I have been using CK hubsets for many years, both Classic and R45 and have never experienced what you are describing, even after a rebuild.

As I recall (and it has been many years since I did this) CK will rebuild the hub for you at not charge if you pay for shipping. This may or may not be worth the cost of shipping for you but it is (or used to be) an option.

We took a look at it this morning and it appears that there is quite a buildup of lube around the ring drive area. Hopefully cleaning that out and reinstalling will help.

this sounds weird. I have 2 sets of R45 hubs and have no probs.

NB CK states you are not meant to use RingDrive lube in the manual.

I called King and they said ring drive lube II is fine, as is mobil 1 synthetic.

Cleaned the hub out and the problem has subsided some. I believe that maybe it was a bit overlubed and riding in the rain and snow turned it into a mucky mess.

I have had ZERO issues with mine. I would even say they are the nicest and free-ist spinning hubs I own.

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I did quite a bit of heavy winter riding on them and the freehub is not completely sealed. Stuff can get in there and it helps to just wipe a bit of it off. The problem I had is that too much additional lube was applied, which slowed down the engagement a bit. Easy fix.