View Full Version : Prickly Pawl question for the wheel experts
crossjunkee
03-07-2016, 02:57 PM
Last weekend I heard a strange click coming from my rear hub, immediately new it wasn't good. Got home and took the cassette body off. Sure enough, broken spring on 1 of the 3. Not too much damage on the inside which surprised me.
Can I ride the wheels with a missing pawl? What's the worst that can happen? I just need to get through a week or two before I put my Zipps on for the season.
Disclaimer, I'm not an expert, so I could be totally wrong.
As I see it, the worst that can happen is that you break either the pawls, or the engagement ring of the freehub body. If that happens, your hub may freewheel in both directions, and you have to walk/scoot home. With one of the pawls not engaging the others are subjected to more force, potentially more than they were designed for, and could fail.
I don't know how likely the others are to fail. If they did, you'd be in for new pawls and/or a new freehub body. I wouldn't expect anything else to be damaged.
Again, I could be wrong on this, and I'd welcome corrections from someone who knows more.
sweet_johnny
03-07-2016, 03:23 PM
the other end of the worse that could happen is that you break a pawl and jam the freehub. If that happens, you'll suck the chain around and maybe lock the rear wheel.
Ralph
03-07-2016, 03:42 PM
Why not fix it? Tonight?
zmudshark
03-07-2016, 05:18 PM
the other end of the worse that could happen is that you break a pawl and jam the freehub. If that happens, you'll suck the chain around and maybe lock the rear wheel.
And bend the derailleur drop out and ruin the RD as it gets sucked into the spokes, trashing the wheel, and maybe have some oral/plastic surgery, too.
You feeling lucky?
crossjunkee
03-07-2016, 05:25 PM
Why not fix it? Tonight?
Laziness? Haha! I did exactly that, found the springs locally and everything is back to normal.
Thanks, everybody.
the other end of the worse that could happen is that you break a pawl and jam the freehub. If that happens, you'll suck the chain around and maybe lock the rear wheel.
Good point. I hadn't thought of that. For sure, much worse than what I thought of.
crossjunkee
03-08-2016, 11:41 AM
I have to give a shout out to ROL Wheels. They helped me at the 7th hour yesterday.
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