Johan Bornman

Ja, my spell checker sounded an alarm when I typed it in but I had to trust the original text and turn on over-ride. I'm amazed they didn't use my favourite grease word "lubricity".

Theology

Yup. Just what we need on our bikes. Extreme temperatures Low temperature pumpability Low coefficient of traction Low starting torque Energy saving potential Excellent adhesion and Structural stability. How did we get by without all these features?

Rephrase and punctuation please.

Coolheat is not the culprit here. Those cups are just not available. I occasionally harvest some from trashed hubs and transplant them into expensive XTR wheels otherwise ruined, but commercially they're not available. If you got to techdocs.shimano.com where they have the exploded diagrams and spare parts, you can type in any hub model number for any year and you'll see they don't show them as parts. Maybe there is/was a third party that sold those to your not-so-local bike shop. I'd love to know and source some.

A choir from another church, you say. Funny. Yes, it is me again. Seriously now. You said you saw with your very eyes how this grease repelled the water. I want to know what this repelling action looked like. What did you observe? Marine greases use calcium soaps rather than lithium soaps but that is just to prevent the salt in sea water reacting with the lithium soap. Soap here is not soap as in washing your face, but as the substrate of the grease. Neither of these greases repel water. They can't. There is no mechanism for them to do it. Further, water contamination in any greased component that is agitated (like a wheel bearing) is bad news. The grease quickly forms an emulsion with the water ("waterproof" or not) and then the water is trapped, unable to evaporate but free to do its dirty work. Waterproofing by way of grease is a misconception. "Waterproofing" a seal by smearing grease on is counterproductive since the grease quickly forms a tiny capillary along the shear line that actually sucks water in via a mechanism known as capillary action. Please lets kill this waterproof grease myth for once and all. Edit: I do like your needle tip tip though.

You are thinking of Campag. Shimano never made the cups available as spares. CK hubs have labyrinth and contact seals in parallel. Good stuff. Hope hubs eat (expensive) bearings. I agree. I love Shimano hubs and like you say, with TLC they last forever. Mine is now going on 16 years. However, DT is crap. Period. Their seals are made from Swiss cheese and as you know, it has large holes in it.

He doesn't sell breaks. He also doesn't answer questions asking about wheel weight.

How do you grease your suspension?

I am intrigued. What did you observe?

Yes, the Rock Shox is a better fork by far. Fox durability is extremely questionable. The stanchions quickly suffer from rubbing through just under the seals. It happens on the Kashima coating too, so don't think that extra fancy option solves their problem. Further, I really like the Rox' hydraulic remote lockout option. It is the best in the industry by far. Some don't need remote but if you want remote, the Rox system is the shizz. Rox forks are more complex to service but I don't think that's a major issue. It is the mechanic's problem, not yours. Fox has all sorts of fancy options on their upper end forks, such as slow speed compression, but I'm yet to come across a user that understands what it is all about. It is useful on all-mountain bikes but our ride-for-hundred-miles-in-a-straight line races really don't require slow-speed compression settings.

It is huge problem for anodisers if there is steel in the component. Sometimes they stick a silicone putty onto small pieces but I can see why they declined your crank. It would be very risky.

You can't blame the hubbers for coming up with that. It was invented by the industry and perpetuated by the cycling magazines.

Sorry if this is off-topic. I have some tattoos I quickly want to have removed. I tried Prepsol but no good. Any other suggestions?

With enough force you can break your finger of in your ear, I suppose. I don't know how a left hand thread can be forced into an opposite threaded hole. I mean....the thing won't take. It just won't start? How the hell do they do that? This is the second time I hear this. Overtightening I can comprehend but the other scenario, no.

That's how pulleys wear. Bottom one takes all the chain tension and the dirt reaches there first. Nothing strange about that. Pulleys are consumables. The reason yours are worn is that you ride too much. Shimano pulleys are cheap. Just replace them.

Yes, but I am not holding my breath when I do deja-vu. I'm cynical but thanks for trying. I appreciate it.

If anyone thinks today's sprockets are soft, just try drilling through one.

Even sarcasm seems to be misunderstood nowadays. I should not have held such a straight face. Awesome, what I should have said is "forget it." There is such a term as "mature technology". Without dismissing any progress whatsoever, this usually means that the technology has been around for many, many years (in this case, the bicycle chain and sprocket was invented by the bicycle industry for the bicycle industry, more than 100 years ago) and many players have thought long and hard about the issues. Mature technology isn't the end of the road. Some disrupter will come along and move it onto a new and rapid growing path. Think CRT TV screens and now light, flat-screen TVs. Think about the leap in developments in cellphones with the advent of smartphones etc etc. I suspect the disrupter for the chain and sprocket will come from belt drive and internally-geared hubs. The growth of mountain biking is a big driver that will force a solution through. The problem of course being not cassette longevity so much but maintenance of the externally-oiled, open cassette. Back to hardening. Cassettes are not produced by a single dominant player in the market that holds us ransom with inferior products. What's available is the best technology that you and I can afford. Joe Low summed this situation up very well. However, I do have some advice for you. Follow the LCHF Version 2.0 thread to improve your health and supplement the advice there by riding your existing cassettes. The LCHF movement is now in the early adopter phase and I think it is cutting edge. Much more will be seen about that in due course. Also, there is some good chain and cassette maintenance advice on here as well, this will help you get the most out of your imperfect but current drivetrain.

Naah! Durban is dead. I tried zillions of times to get something going there. Each time a few okes take the lure but then surf comes up and they go all jhuz whah, smoke a joint and forget to pay.

Your derailer pulleys (those black things) are completely stuffed. They should have teeth, yours have pimples. With such a pulley, the chain jumps the pimples and runs next to the pulley instead of on it, causing the chain to rub against the derailler cage's side plates (the two black plates). Get new pulleys and take note of the instructions. Top and bottom are not the same and the bottom one is directional. It is directional not because the bearing likes to turn in a certain direction only, but because the pulley is offset.

I understand your fear but at the risk of pedantry, I want to point out that nothing of the sort can happen to your hub or bearings. There is no conceivable impact large enough that can do that. The only components under threat under those conditions are your teeth.

Phone me. I have here that a delinquent customer ordered and then never honoured his commitment.

/ I gave you a hint in my previous post but here's how to find out. Take a sprocket to a grinder and grind it. Report back on the spark colour. The resident metallurgists will tell you or you can google it.

Good luck with your hardening venture. Please remember to carefully drill out the rivets that hold the (case-hardened) cassettes onto a spider. Then gently remove the nickel or chrome plating from the steel rings but don't use the same process on the titanium sprockets, it will damage them. Then heat treat the individual sprockets nicely to anneal the existing hard shell. Let it cool a couple of times (I'm sure you know the cool-down periods and the exact starting temps). Once it is soft, heat and quench as suggested. Then reassemble the cassette using new rivets, repackage it and sell it at a price at which we'll all agree to give it a go. Oops! Sorry, I forgot to remind you to re-plate the carbon steel sprockets otherwise they'll rust.