Trek Spline Damage, Is it normal?

It is certainly not uncommon. Aluminum is of course softer then steel, but that is one of the trade offs to save weight. To minimize this type of wear, be sure the cassette lockring is fully tight. Many companies recommend torques for that ring that are over 300-inch pounds. Using a typical hand wrench and holding it about 6 inches from the axle, that is a pressing effort of about 50 pounds.

Thanks, the wheel is off a new bike, prepared by the bike shop. Presumably Trek will have torqued the lock ring up as per their own specifications.

Should i be expecting a replacement wheel? Do you know if the damage is likely to get worse or have an impact on the life expectancy/reliablilty?

Yep, alu freewheel bodies will give you that. Mavic uses steel for Campag while Ti (?) for Shimano. So these are much stronger.

It should be fun when the time comes to take that cassette off!

Thanks for the info.

rowskein said:

Can anyone tell me if it's normal for the splines on a rear wheel hub to be damaged as badly as shown in the attached photo? This wheel has less than 500 miles on it. The bike shop contacted Trek who say it is normal and the only way it can be avoided is by using steel as apposed to alluminium. I was changing the wheel over with a set of trusted Mavic training wheels when i discovered the problem. The mavic splines show very little signs of damage after thousands of miles!

The same wheel has also gone out of true due to a very loose spoke. The shop has agreed to sort that out.

Thanks,

Keith

Yup, it happens to differing degrees on Al freehubs. Allegedly it happens more to Shimano and less to Campy owing to Campy's deeper splines. I have almost 5000 miles on some White Industries H1 hubs, and the freehub is only just showing a little bit of that, not nearly as much, though, as seen in your pic. Also, my cassette is made up of loose cogs (Cycle Dynamics Ti cogs), so it would be more prone to showing such wear since each cog is free to move independently of the others. With that said, my freehub is titanium and not aluminum.

One piece cassettes will show less of this sort of wear, but such cassettes may not fit your needs. Campy cassettes are not one piece, but instead are 5 or 6 (I forget the number) pieces, witht the largest 3,4, or 5 cogs bolted together and the others loose. I can't remember how Shimano or SRAM cassettes are made. There are one piece Al cassettes, but in that case you trade less freehub wear for accelerated cassette wear and possibly dodgy shifting.

An interesting thing to try might be to hard coat the freehub with something like a TiN coating or summat, maybe even just anodizing. I suspect there might be enough tolerance in the freehub dimensions to allow that....but I'm not sure. Has anyone tried that?

alienator said:

An interesting thing to try might be to hard coat the freehub with something like a TiN coating or summat, maybe even just anodizing. I suspect there might be enough tolerance in the freehub dimensions to allow that....but I'm not sure. Has anyone tried that?

Hard anodizing is a .0002" to .0015" thick coating. While good at protecting against abrasion wear with a 68 Rockwell 'C' scale skin, it adds nothing to the strength of the still soft-as-butter substrate material...the aluminum in this case.

The deformation forces applied by the cogs under torque force will still exceed the yield strength of the aluminum.

alienator said:

There are one piece Al cassettes, but in that case you trade less freehub wear for accelerated cassette wear and possibly dodgy shifting.

and bugger all wear life in the cassette. Weight weenie parts.

I'm having this problem with Neuvations' freehub body. just over 1200km and its bitten in about 3/4 mm. Not good. Its fun removing cogs with a tack hammer.

Cheers folks, very useful information and tips.

So does this problem get worse through out the life of a hub until eventually you have to replace it? Or is it just a pain because of getting the chain rings off when you need to?

I've seen much worse freehub bodies.
You will not get a new wheel. At most you may get a new freehub body, but that is debatable since it is normal wear and tear.