Freehub Set Free

There has been quite a bit of wear and tear with my body and my bike over the last month. Between Vision Quest, the 50 Mile Ride and Ultra Quest I've developed tan lines, cuts, scabs, bruises and various broken parts on my bike.

This last Saturday I went for what was supposed to be an easy ride with Andrew, Scott and Mark. Scott had remembered that I was intrigued by his Ibis Mojo and offered to trade bikes with me for a trip to Old Camp.

About halfway there my bike quit on Scott. The freehub in the rear imploded which rendered the drive train useless. There was no way to pedal and I ended up scooting and walking back to my car.

After talking with Andrew, the plan was to buy a new cheap rear hub and then remove the freehub and replace the new with the old.

I won't go into great detail about how I was able to do it. It only cost me 17 dollars (cheap Shimano hub at The Path) and several hours of tinkering. I had to take the hub to a bike shop so they could use a vice to detach the freehub, but other than that it actually went fairly smoothly.

My only concern is that I now have a table full of washers, spacers and ball bearings and I'm not sure everything I took off the bike made its way back on. (The bearings are from the hub I just bought. Not sure about all the washers and dust covers though.) *shrug*

I took the bike out for a ride yesterday (intervals at Riley) and it seemed to do ok.

My plan is to take the bike into Jake on Sunday and have him give it a final tune-up before Julian, which is a week from this Saturday. I haven't really spent a lot of time planning the trip and the ride in Julian yet. Life has been really busy and hopefully next week I can finalize my strategy.