Rear hub silence...ratchet mechanism broken?

Hi.

Strange "problem" which hopefully one of you experts can solve .

I have a new-ish bike (about a month old) with Shimano Deore rear hub. I noticed today while cleaning my chain that there's no longer a "clicking" sound when I turn the pedals backwards. Indexing is fine, shifting is smooth and on a couple steep climbs this morning I didn't notice anything strange....my question is, could the ratchet mechanism on the hub have broken? If so how important is it? Do I need to replace the hub or can I carry on riding with it as-is?

Thanks in advance
Terry

 

Indexing and shifting are completely separate systems from the "ratchet", so there's not much of a clue there. The "ratchet" is a sub-assembly of the hub known as the body and can be replaced individually. BUT, if the "ratchet" engages as it should when you pedal forward and disengages when you roll forward then it''s doing its job just like it should. Unless it starts showing signs of NOT engaging/disengaging properly or some other sign of malfunction I'd keep riding. It might just be the grease inside that has become redistributed in a manner that silences the moving parts.

 

I had a Deore LX hub, a tech friend of mine diassembled it to take a peek at the proper settings for rebuilding his, I'm not sure if it was a torque issue, or mis assembly but it never clicked again. It worked fine, just no click. I never really used it, so I didnt sweat it, but just my experiences...

D

 

Thanks for the replies guys!

Main reason I was concerned was a friend had a freewheel lock up on him a long way from home.....one of the symptoms he had noticed was that it went silent a few weeks beforehand.

I was having visions of being stranded on my regular loop about 6 km from home

I took it to the LBS yesterday afternoon anyway and they are checking it out for me.

Cheers
Terry