Was riding through town last night, and went to back pedal when nothing happened. The unmistakable ching of the rear cog dropping off the hub and an “OH FUCK” :-o moment where I almost dropped through a red light into about three lanes of angry Brisbane motorists.
The culprit was that the cog has essentially pushed the lock ring off the hub without unthreading it, taking half of the thread with it. The lock ring is screwed, the hub has good thread at the start, but nearer the centre it is a bit mown.
It’s a Velocity fixed/free flip flop. Obviously it’s the fixed side that has been stuffed. So what should I do?
[ul]
[li]Suicide it[/li][li]Run it as a freewheel[/li][li]Re-lace the rim onto another hub[/li][li]Try to get a wider lock ring so that it can get more purchase on the thread, do they exist?[/li][li]Bin it in disgust[/li][/ul]
Says best to do the full suicide treatment.
Cog screwed on tight. ( ride up a hill)
Bottom bracket lock nut then screwed on tightly followed by a hammer tap or two with a dab of locktite.
The real problem with this treatment is getting it off again.
Unless of course you have legs like superman
If you are going to bin it give it to me please. I have a one star malvern star waiting for a rear wheel
Thanks for the comments guys. I have learnt a bit more about the situation (thanks Peter!) and thought I’d share what I found out (hopefully this can save someone a similar fate!).
In this story the culprit is of course me :oops:. I had recently replaced my cog with a Miche cog (one of those two piece jobs that has a threaded mating plate and separate cogs that match the mating points). However I didn’t even bother to check how fat the cog was. Turns out it doesn’t quite take up the whole inner thread which means when I put the lockring on I ended up tightening it past the outer thread and onto the inner thread. Thus weaking the thread on the lockring and allowing it to be spat off the hub during my last skid stop.
Solution: I’m going to try a fatter lockring and an extra washer if required (I’ll try a surly first as they’re reasonably plentiful). Hopefully there is enough purchase on the hub to keep the lockring in place. Also I’ll use the Rotafix method to tighten the cog as well in order to take some of the strain off the lockring as it should then be just a security blanket.
I have a one star malvern star waiting for a rear wheel