Servicing a Hadley rear hub

Saturday I got out for a good long solo ride on the Surly:

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The trails were barely dry enough, I had to walk a few sections so not to damage the trail.  But still a fantastic ride, it felt great to get out.

Took the Surly because I’ve been lazy about tending to my mountain bike’s rear wheel.  The rear hub had developed some side to side play as well as a loose spoke (thanks Michaud..).

With another round of MBM coming up, needed to fix it.  My initial goal was to just fix the side play, bare minimum to get it back rolling.  I found this handy link as a reference for servicing a  Hadley 72-point rear hub:  LINKY

The service calls for a 21mm cone wrench and pin-spanners to remove one of the axle end caps.  I have pin-spanners, but no 21mm wrench.  Instead, I just used adjustable curved pliers with some rubber on the teeth to prevent marring.  The end caps aren’t supposed to be super tight, and since mine was loose already, the non-drive side spun right off practically by hand.

After removing the axle, the freehub body, pawls, spacers, needle bearing all pulled right out.  Used a rag to clean everything, bearings are good, re-greased it all with super-slick, reassembled, tightened the end caps and voila!  Done.  Took all but 15 minutes for a overhaul.

Really makes me appreciate the simplicity and design of the Hadley hubs, not needing special tools, or being overly complex to reassemble.  They are bomb proof hubs, and excellent value (sorry King).

After that, tightened up the loose spoke, minimal truing… ready to roll.

MBM is in Denver today, lets hope the rain holds out.

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