You were talking about cracking freehubs and XT spiders, chubs.
Them too. Short of Peter Sagan and Adam Brayton I'm probably pretty close to the worst use case outside of e-bikes and tandems.
The wheelset that had the cracked XT spider is on my road bike, so it sees the most miles. I've got a power meter in it so I know that my threshold power is 375 watts (2.5w/kg, so Ineos aren't calling me any time soon) and peak is touching 2,000 watts. I've also managed to enlarge the bearing seat on the steel freehub on this wheelset to the point I need to use retaining compound.
It's not just this wheelset that munches the oem bearings though. I've had a pretty short life out of the inboard freehub bearing with every set of Hopes I've owned going back to the Pro2s and Pro3s. Normally the inner freehub bearings will be the first to go followed by the main bearings in the hub shell. The front bearings and the outer freehub bearings go forever. I think it's related to the choice of stainless steel bearings which pit more easily and then destroy the balls.
I now have Japanese KSM 6803 bearings for the inner freehub bearings and a mixture of KSM, Enduro and ceramic 6903 bearings for the hub shell and this seems to working well.
For comparison an I9 Torch freehub uses an Enduro 3803 which is essentially a double row 6803 for the inboard bearing and a 6903 and 6804 for the hub shell.
DT 240s use 2 of their own 6802 bearings in the freehub and 2x 6902 in the shell.
I haven't noticed a pattern of bearing wear in my I9 or DT hubs but I haven't had near as many kms on them either. The weak point on the I9s are the pawl coil springs, and for the DTs it's getting the drive ring off to change bearings.
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