Amazing hubs

21/06/26 21:43 Filed in: Gear

In 2018 I bought everything I needed to put two new road bikes together using Campagnolo Record with the new 12-spd and disc brakes. For commuting I got a red Checkpoint gravel bike with Shamal wheels, and for racing I got a green Madone aero bike with Bora wheels.
The red Checkpoint and its Record group are no longer with me - a frame issue led to Trek replacing it with the gen 2 Checkpoint. And that gen 2 Checkpoint was not meant to work with mechanical front derailleurs. Alas, the Record had to go, and Red AXS replaced it. But there was a freehub available to convert the Shamal from Campagnolo cassettes to SRAM cassettes.
Which means the Shamals have been my commuting wheels for 8 years now. In the neighbourhood of 30,000 km travelled in 11,000 hours on the bike. Thinking I ought to, rather than I needed to, I opened up the front hub recently to see what was going on inside. The original white grease put there by Campagnolo was still - pure white. It could have been put there yesterday. Amazing sealing on those hubs.

I've read a lot of complaints about unusual wear from ceramic balls on stainless races. The balls are too hard and the races take all the damage. Maybe for some, but not for the Shamals. The races were perfectly smooth and polished. Unlike traditional bearings of steel, there was not even a wear track on the cone. It, too, could have been assembled yesterday.
There was a fair amount of the original grease outside the seal - some escaped but no dirt entered. I wanted to add a little more grease, just for good measure. There are conflicting reports about appropriate grease for these hybrid hubs. I squeezed a tiny bead of my regular hub grease on each cone and reassembled the hub.
After checking the feel of the rear hub, I didn't even bother to open it up.

Those are some amazing hubs and they aren't even the "good" ones.

Michael Hanslip Coaching

If you want to go faster, you have to pedal harder

Amazing hubs