2022, buy a new entry level bike, discover a mild "wobble", I search, and come here to learn the difference between a freewheel and a cassette, and also why the wobble occurs. Underrated channel. subbed!
Bikeman, I just noticed a very slight wobble on my freewheel, infant freak out, bent? Money? Aaargh! On to Google straight to your video, instant relief! You sir are an asset to cyclists everywhere! Thanks!😀😀😀
my SRAM PG1230 cassette wobbles, and its causing ghost shifting. I figured out the aluminum body that mates with the freehub had worn unevenly so that is sat on the freehub at a slight angle. It took a bit of trouble shooting so hopefully this helps someone else. Nice dance moves bikeman, btw; good video.
I have been fixing my own bikes for over a decade, so I know a bit about them, but I never knew what caused that wobble. Thanks for teaching me something new today, bikeman!
I appreciate the explanation, and will assume that unless the wobble is near to or worse than that first example, it's not worth fixing..? And given that every bike I've owned, (cheap ones) and every other medium to expensive bike I've had the opportunity to examine, have ALL had at least a slight wobble, and that none thereof have suffered in any measurable way from this affliction.... Well, I'm guessing it may be ignored. I am grateful that you have left me with a sense of mystery, of unfinished business.. I think.
Great video thanks for taking the time to make this video and upload it, I appreciate it. Thanks from London England. I noticed my rear brake pads were rubbing, so I adjusted the brake. No cigar. I couldn't understand it so I put lifted up the bike and span the wheel, about an hour ago. I thought my eyes were deceiving me. The cassette was doing the wobble. This is on a Giant Escape 3 with negligible mileage.
Bike Man you ROCK!!! Just Subscribed, sorry it took me so long. I was searching for the reason for the wobble and came across this. Your explanations and examples are awesome. Love the humor, and the way you take care of your customers.
Love your videos, I too am a person of the old school 70's/80's stuff. Recently rediscovered my love of the Schwinn voyageur 11.8 when I got a mint condition 1981 model. Ride everyday now again was delighted to find it has a cassette gear system.
Threading, yes can be an issue. But it is not the only one with thread on freewheels. One other thing that was not mentioned. Lower quality freewheels will also do this/any freewheel if the cones inside the freewheel are not machined squared. If your freewheel has a loose lockring, this can be a big reason why it's wobbling a lot. A minor issue, having sightly oversized and undersized ball bearings will result in a wobble too.
Here I was trying to find out more about my gravel bike and find a fellow FPV pilot! Your username checks out haha (I raced with you during the first sports champs)
I expect the worst wobbles are a combination of freewheel bearing assembly misalignments AND hub treading. I have seen wobbles that seemed worse in some particular alignment of FW with the position of hub and less wobble in another position of hub/wheel.
I'm going for "The Adam West award": Oh no BikeMan. It's not that you're calling that POS bike a POS (or BSO), but it's how you're laughing at it, the poor saps who don't research before buying, and having WAY too much fun about it. Every bike is a winner & even last place should get a trophy! If not, the poor wobbly Titan bike will develop insecurities & later life chrisis's-es. With love & neutering even the Titan bike could be a winner, a very special winner. Where we're all winners. God bless us all, everyone. I'll prepare my award acceptance speech for this Friday. Thx in advance.
Bikemanforu mentions the inexpensive bikes sometimes sold by large retailers. I bought one, a Dynacraft made MTB called a Rockrider ST 50. It arrived with a faulty front derailer (pardon my English!). I could not fix it because the routing of the shift cable was directly down when the cam needed to move the cage horizontally, outward - away from the frame. The retailer gave me a full refund and told me to dispose of the bike, if I wished. I decided to try to re-route the shift cable around the outside of the bottom bracket instead of under the bracket. By so doing, arlound the small outer projection of the bracket, I was able to apply an outward component of tension to the cam, I was then able to shift into the 3rd or largest gear. Moral of the story: sometimes one can fix a problem with an inexpensive bike. I have since made many changes to the bike: I added a handlebar stem extension and replaced the flat handlebar with a "swallow". I can now ride my MTB in an upright posturre; much more comfortable for city biking. Also I added a springy seat and with the front suspension of the MTB, I now have a full suspension for the city bumps. Why not just buy a city bike in a bicycle shop? Because they begin at $400 and was a single speed, all steel. The bike-shop, $400 "Special" did not even have a front suspension. My MTB was priced at $98, and it was refunded to me. Bike shops may be better when shopping for top of the line bikes.
You should mention what is the best thing you can doto solve the 'Wobble' problem. Also make sure you adjust the rear wheel on the pioneer titan as It's about to fall off. However, you're fun to watch and very annoying. You shouldn't disrespect the cheaper bike, that's all some people can afford. I bet you don't explain this when selling one?
Uhh.. That was nice pointing out the problem. But how do you fix it??! I just brought a brand new mountain bike that came with this wobble and I’m highly ticked off. Smh..
Need to set the record straight here...cassettes "CAN" wobble too, just not as pronounced. I just tested mine, and I know it's a cassette, and it has some slight wobble. For freewheels, it's more often than not related to the machining of the hub shell. If it's not machined perfectly internally (meaning slightly off axis), as the body rotates it will experience a high-to-low movement. It's explained very well here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-OI6JxL-zjXc.html
Other than very minor thread defects... 1. Freewheel / Cassette wobble is primarily caused by NON-CONCENTRIC hub shell machining. The hub shell will wobble if the bore and profile of the hub shell is not directly centered from one end to the other. The motion translates to the freewheel / freehub cassette 2. Occurs mostly in high volume production of budget or entry level products. 3. Can effect freewheel spec AND freehub/cassette spec hubs. 4. Has little or no effect on shifting. If shifting issues are present, the problem will be elsewhere. Yes, you read #3 correctly. Freehub / Cassette spec hubs are not immune from this. =8-)
99% of the time it is a badly made back wheel freewheel mount threads ( hubs are crooked. All freewheels will wobble based on the wheel thread mounts being straight or off center. This video is very important.
the fix for a free wheel is as easy as backing off the nut on the opposite side of the freewheel, turning in the little holding piece then tightening the nut back up. i just did it this morning.. you may want to grease your bearings but its a bit of a pain. i did it the hard way.. i always do everything the hard way..
I don't think wobble in the freewheel is caused because of the hub, because if it was the freewheel would wobble going forward too, and then the gears wouldn't shift properly. No, I think it's caused by the internal bearings that allow the freewheel to ratchet while the wheel spins backwards. They're not made to be precise that way, but durable.
I've got a rear wheel with cassette (SRAM X/O) on the stand right now that is gyrating. To say that cassettes aren't subject to wobble is inaccurate. Components within the hub can wear out or become damaged and cause a similar problem...now to figure our if we need to change spacers, replace a bearing or two, or give the customer the news that he needs a new rear hub & cassette.
Awesome Video Bikan more please. My freewheel doesn´t wobble as much as the posin.bike. Is it because i have a really good freewheel and a high quality freewheel hub??? i have an old maillard sachs in combination with a shimano freewheel, guess the posin bike has a too low quality for 170Dollar it is cheap but not good or?
Just bought a mongoose mountain bike durham 29 inch yesterday from Walmart my first ever mountain bike it was already put together i didn't bother to examine the whole thing but I do like the bike i am going to do some upgrading on it i could have bought a 780.00 bike but i like to put my own touch on it Ilike to be different and it's my first beginner bike
Okay, so how about when a cassette has a slight wobble like on my mountain bike (correct 9-speed cassette with a Deore 525 disc brake hub). It's a ton less then the two free wheel's you showed, but a slight wobble is def present on it. I'm not overly worried about it - the wobble has been present since the wheel was new 10 years ago and works fine. Just wondering what you think. I figured it's a machining problem and nothing to worry a-boot. On a side note, just something I find funny - my old Bianchi Sport roadbike has it's original Suzue hubs and original Suntour 6-speed freewheel and it has no wobble (none at all) - so my bikes are backwards ! LOL
Cassettes can wobble if the hub surface they're on isn't perfect, or if there's a defect inside the ratcheting mechanism of the hub. So it's not 100% that they won't wobble. And given the age of your bike, they hadn't refined the art of cassettes at that time either. They're much better at it now so on new bikes it's more likely for a freewheel to wobble than a cassette. That wasn't always the case. Some of nicer older bikes they didn't mass produce them with much carelessness, so they'd make sure the threads were machined correctly. They were practically flawless.
It's not because the thread is bad, it's because it's a thread. Threads are like a record grove in that no two spots on that thread are in the exact same spot. The higher the thread count (per inch) the less wobble you will get, but it will always wobble. A high thread count means the beginning of the freewheel is extremely close to the end of the freewheel and a low thread count means the beginning of the freewheel is further from the end of the freewheel. If there is a spacing of .25mm between the threads, the freewheel will be .25mm off from straight.
tarstarkusz "No two spots on that thread are in the exact same spot". Thanks for this insightful truism, you can even replace "on that thread" by "in the universe", it would be no less true and it would provide a nice generalization. Now for your post: I don't get your explanation. Can you tell me again why the thread count (per unit of spatial measure) should matter in the wobbling? If the freewhel has the same density of threads as the hub, they should be perfectly alined. Why should it wobble, then, if not because of a bad thread? To provide an intuition, when you screw a screw, the axis of the screw and that of the whole remain aligned: the screw does not wobble. Why should it be different here, if not because of a faulty thread?
wiwh Because screws have much smaller threads (in diameter). A low TPI makes the freewheel slightly tilted and so the wobble is more noticeable. Even with the same density, the leading edge will be slightly closer to the spokes than the trailing edge and that seems to be where the wobble comes in. What is your hypothesis? How could a bad thread cause this? An out of true thread (especially by this much) would be difficult to screw on the freewheel.
I have a freewheel that was doing that when I inverted the piece that makes the axis which is slightly bended in one side, then I inverted again (put the bended sided away from the freewheel) and it's fine... I don't know if it makes just a little sexy lady but it definitely doesn't make the opaganda style that it was making.
I have a 2011 Felt road bike with 105-5700 10-speed drivetrain, which came with Mavic wheels with Felt-branded hubs. The cassette absolutely wobbles on the freehub. I'm not sure what the actual make of freehub is on the rear wheel. Conversely, I also have a Vuelta Corsa Lite wheelset with a Vuelta-branded Novatec F172SB 10/11-sp freehub, and the same cassette does not wobble in the slightest on that one. So what's causing the wobble on the 10-sp freehub on the Mavic rims?
You are wrong Bikeman, I just got a brand new Shimano Dura-Ace 9170 wheelset today. Once I installed it on the bike I found a wobble. Bad wobble too. Obviously the machining of the hub shell was not done properly. I would expect better from Shimano's flagship wheel but it is what it is and I'm returning these for a new wheel.
Hello Bikeman, thanks for the explanation. I have a Shimano cassette with a unknown hub, 9 sp. I did a clean up of the whole thing, but after I did some miles last night, the lock ring is getting loose again (It was loose when I removed the cassette). I'm sure it was tight when I did the assembly. What could be wrong that causes the lock ring to get loose? Thanks for the help!
Can this also cause the wheel to wobble a little? My freewheel wobbles a little like the second example shown in the video, but my wheel also seems to wobble and kisses the right hand brake block at one particular point. Could this be related to the poorly threaded freewheel or is the rim just out of true?
here is my question : real quick - mine is a cassette set up like you showed not the freewheel yet the wobble is definitely looks like what you showed. and the axel looks straight, I'm going crazy over this - please help if you have any other possible reasons for this ...
paul C The short answer is "it's bent." The union where the cassette splines meet the hub is unsupported internally and can flex/bend under high load. Freewheels are more prone to this because the bearing supports the hub, leaving the outside of the freewheel unsupported. One good stomp on cogs 5-7 from a stop is usually enough to "pull" the freewheel forward creating the bend @ the hub union. Cassettes are supported by the bearing at the outside of the gear stack, making them overall stronger and more resistant to drive flex, but NOT immune. If this is your problem, replacing the hub is the best option as this will cause uneven loading on bearing surfaces and chew the bearing races/cones up, regardless of cassette or freewheel.
The hub has manufacturing faults and it's machined crooked - one side or both sides of the cup are not in the center of the hub. Most hubs are faulty. That is why the wheels get loose and start wobbling on the cones. Replace your hubs, but you have to check them before you pay for them.
I need help !! Lol . When I back pedal then pedal forward the freewheel doesn’t connect to hub motor , so it feels like slack for like a half turn of pedal . Any advice ? Thanks Dave
Hello, can you please help me? I have the same problem, but the freewheel is standing still and the wheel wobbles. I taught that the wheel was decentered so I changed it, but same problem. It affects me because the wheel wobbles while I ride the bike and the chain moves left and right and it hits the front derailleur. Help please
