Have you ever removed a Topolino freehub?

[Louis]

A while back I did a longish ride in the rain and halfway through picked up a new noise from my rear hub. (a C19 wheel in my case) I’m not sure where it’s coming from, but now that the wheel and cassette are off the bike I can feel some grittiness that I’m pretty sure is due to crud in the pawl mechanism. As best I can tell, all the “real” bearings are fine. I’d like to take the freehub off and clean it all up, but unfortunately Topolino doesn’t provide any info on doing this. (They just have the standard “take it to your LBS”.)

On most wheels I’ve worked with, removing the freehub is pretty simple. Have you ever done this on a Topolino wheel? How straightforward a job is it?

TIA
Louis

[rnhood]

I had the exact same problem. Sent mine back to Topolino and they rebuilt it. It was like new.....for a while. Then the same thing started happening again after about 3K miles. Today they are sitting in my storage closet. Topolino told me to send it back again but I just have not taken the time to pack it up and ship it.

I recommend shipping them it back to Topolino. They will probably tell you the same thing they told me, that these wheels are not meant to be ridden hard every day. Yet I did not ride mine hard. Heck, the problem starting showing up after only about 2000 miles. Mine have the ceramic bearings and I've often wondered if that is part of the issue.

Nice riding wheels, but durability is a serious issue.

[Louis]

I sent Topolino an e-mail and they responded with an exploded view and some suggestions. Looks like it's no big deal, so I'm going to try to do it myself.