SHIMANO Special grease for pawl-type Freehub bodies 50 g,White

Product Information

DuPont Krytox is very smooth, very difficult to remove from surfaces (only solvent is freon, I hear), very expensive.

In theory, the larger number of ring-based contacts in a ratchet should be more reliable and transmit force better, although in practice pawl-based systems are well enough engineered that this is unlikely to be an issue if they’re maintained regularly. Thus if you keep the thing well lubricated, and the water out, the freehub should last almost indefinitely.Bikes weigh 8-10 pounds more when covered in thick mud so whatever can be done to offset this is significant.

Heavy grease is likely to gum up the internals and could cause your freehub to fail; most hub makers specify their own lightweight lubricants. Further, a DT Swiss Star ratchet design (a ubiquitous and in my opinion probably the best overall design licensed – or copied – by numerous other brands) has very small teeth on two ratchet rings with very shallow engagement. Campagnolo North America recommends our Freehub Grease as an alternative to their lb-100 Grease as it is no longer available in North America. Once I’ve degreased the bearings completely, I use Ceramicspeed Pulley Wheel oil and reassemble the whole thing carefully. I use it for special occasions and on things like repair stand handles that get screwed in n out with load all the time.

It's a shame that some companies pay so much attention to bearing drag by using the highest quality hybrid ceramics but lose all the benefits by not porting that same tech to the freehubs of the rear wheel. I am also considering Nulon Extreme Performance Grease (mixed with Teflon Oil) - its properties are . Your free hub pawls want a grease that is sticky, as in it adheres to the metal surface, but it should be soft enough to let the pawls move. As water enters the seat tube, it can catalyze chemical exchange between metals, so a complete coating of anti-seize can prevent this exchange.

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. Like Shimano/SRAM, there’s differential spline spacing to ensure that you can only mount the individual cassette sprockets in one position and one orientation.Finish Line Wet would probably work fine (that's what I used), or you could try car transmission oil if you have some. Pretty much anything will keep the parts inside well enough lubricated that they won't wear out too fast whilst freewheeling, but what will work best in any given hub will vary with the details of the particular hub that you have. Fortunately, we don’t race in extreme cold, but I’d imagine some different suspension fluids could be used to improve performance in extremely cold conditions. Dry lube doesn’t last as long as wet lubes/oils, and dry conditions are friendlier to chain lube than wet, so it comes down to these and other factors. I agree, some really light oil might thin out the grease a little, assuming that high viscosity is the problem.