Servicing my Shimano 9270 C50 hubs. Free hub questions

[kyle2000]

Servicing my Shimano 9270 C50 wheels hubs. I've had these wheels for 2 years. Decided to apply new grease as the front wheel was making a subtle clicking sound. Using Shimano premium grease. On a side note the bearings on the front and rear wheels appeared to be bone dry which seemed kind of odd as I never ride in the rain.

I just applied grease to the hub bearings not the free hub. My issue is with the rear wheel free hub. After initially setting the preload on the cone/bearings I discovered that when I rolled the wheel by hand the crank would rotate with it. So I guessed the free hub was binding as the wheel itself rotated fine with no apparent resistance. I went back and forth on the preload adjustment and got it the point where there is no longer any play and it is not over tight and now when I slowly rotate the rear wheel the cranks don't move but if I spin the wheel faster then the cranks start to rotate. Maybe this is normal as one would think that the free hub is always going to add some degree of resistance to the free spinning wheel.

In 30 years of riding road bikes I don't remember if I saw this behavior before and didn't think anything of it? Perhaps this is normal behavior? If Ioosen the preload I will end up with play so I don't think I want to do that. Right now I have pretty much zero play. If I losen it up a hair I get play so I think I found the sweet spot as far setting the preload.

The free hub has 2 sets of springs in them. The small one has one end with a 90 degree bend in it. I installed the spring so that the the end of the small spring inserted into one of the smallest slots. There a multiple slots of different widths. If I just dropped in the spring I'm sure it would eventually find one of them. I just rotated the spring so that it landed on of the of small slots. I assume that 90 degree bend on the end of the spring is there for a reason? I assume this has nothing to do with the free hub possibly binding.

Anyone out there have experience with the 9270 hubs who can comment on this? Do your cranks want to rotate when you spin your rear wheel at faster speeds? Maybe all free hubs do this and I just never made note of it?

Thanks.

[tofumann]

Servicing my Shimano 9270 C50 wheels hubs. I've had these wheels for 2 years. Decided to apply new grease as the front wheel was making a subtle clicking sound. Using Shimano premium grease. On a side note the bearings on the front and rear wheels appeared to be bone dry which seemed kind of odd as I never ride in the rain.

I just applied grease to the hub bearings not the free hub. My issue is with the rear wheel free hub. After initially setting the preload on the cone/bearings I discovered that when I rolled the wheel by hand the crank would rotate with it. So I guessed the free hub was binding as the wheel itself rotated fine with no apparent resistance. I went back and forth on the preload adjustment and got it the point where there is no longer any play and it is not over tight and now when I slowly rotate the rear wheel the cranks don't move but if I spin the wheel faster then the cranks start to rotate. Maybe this is normal as one would think that the free hub is always going to add some degree of resistance to the free spinning wheel.

In 30 years of riding road bikes I don't remember if I saw this behavior before and didn't think anything of it? Perhaps this is normal behavior? If Ioosen the preload I will end up with play so I don't think I want to do that. Right now I have pretty much zero play. If I losen it up a hair I get play so I think I found the sweet spot as far setting the preload.

The free hub has 2 sets of springs in them. The small one has one end with a 90 degree bend in it. I installed the spring so that the the end of the small spring inserted into one of the smallest slots. There a multiple slots of different widths. If I just dropped in the spring I'm sure it would eventually find one of them. I just rotated the spring so that it landed on of the of small slots. I assume that 90 degree bend on the end of the spring is there for a reason? I assume this has nothing to do with the free hub possibly binding.

Anyone out there have experience with the 9270 hubs who can comment on this? Do your cranks want to rotate when you spin your rear wheel at faster speeds? Maybe all free hubs do this and I just never made note of it?

Thanks.

The short answer is -- NO, it shouldn't drag at all, as I remember how it rolled before when they were brand new. My friend's 9270 c36 (same DA hub) spins like butter without dragging the crank. The only difference is my friend hasn't taken the freehub body off like you and i have.

I'm experiencing the SAME issue with the rear hub on my 9270 C50 hub after opening it for the same reason as yours. I used oil and followed the exact installation posted in their manual.

I tried everything, including replacing the freehub (under warranty, and Shimano was very fast on that), and it still didn't solve the issue (it reoccurred after a few hundred miles or so). The wheel is now at Shimano for them to look at. Honestly, I think there's some special technique in putting the hub back together, and the factory failed to list it out clearly in their PDF manual.

I love Shimano products, especially Dura Ace as their stuff is usually well made. I will share more when Shimano gets back with me--hopefully next week.

-- here is the link to the manual in case you have not looked at it (starts at p 34):
https://si.shimano.com/en/pdfs/dm/RAWH0 ... 04-ENG.pdf

[mctrials23]

I love Shimano products, especially Dura Ace as their stuff is usually well made. I will share more when Shimano gets back with me--hopefully next week.

-- here is the link to the manual in case you have not looked at it (starts at p 34):
https://si.shimano.com/en/pdfs/dm/RAWH0 ... 04-ENG.pdf

Did you ever get to the bottom of this. I am having the exact same issue with my C50s. The freehub is now super sticky after servicing the cup and cone bearings. No idea why. Its super simple. Undo outer nut on NDS whilst keeping inner nut in place with 17mm spanner. Take outer nut off and then unscrew the inner nut. Remove axle. Clean and regrease bearings and races. Put axle back in along with the two spings. Reverse the process. I took it out twice because even before I put it back on the bike it felt sticky but after redoing it twice I just stuck the cassette etc back on and put it back on the bike to test.

Pedals now rotate along with wheel. Never did this before.

[mctrials23]

If anyone else has this issue, I think I resolved it. I followed the complete instructions to disassemble every part of the rear hub (except the non-servicable freehub body) and I believe that my problem was the plastic spacer with pins coming out of it that slots into the freehub body near the base. This needs to be rotated to sit flush on one side of the slot it sits in.

This is on page 45 of the service manual where it says "pay attention to the position of the spacer".