The drill whines!
A customer came in saying
they were about to grease up the front wheel of their Zonda,
but realized it might turn into a "new shaft explosion incident" (← that's what they actually called it),
so they brought it in before things got worse.
We took the Zonda's front wheel on deposit.
That said, I'm not blaming the customer,
but they had slightly damaged the 14mm grip surface,
and even with our custom-made tool
we couldn't loosen the left-side end bolt,
so I used a drill to shave down the flange of the hollow end bolt
right to the point where it would just barely come off.
The reason it wouldn't come off was only the surface pressure of the flange—
the threads weren't corroded due to galvanic corrosion or anything like that—
so once the flange was removed, the rest of the threaded portion came out easily.
We didn't damage the hub axle,
and just needed to replace the end bolt,
so it wasn't a serious disaster.
From now on, I've set it up so that when a 5mm Allen key is applied to both ends,
the left side will almost certainly loosen first.
↑Replaced parts
I think I've written about this before,
but regarding Campagnolo/Fulcrum cup-and-cone hubs:
except in cases where the bearing adjustment has loosened and there's play,
people who say "I don't touch it because there's nothing to adjust, so I do absolutely nothing myself"
versus people who say "I grease it myself about once every six months to a year"—
the former group overwhelmingly has hubs with less internal wear.
While these aren't truly maintenance-free,
the actual maintenance frequency is lower than most people who like to do their own work imagine,
and in this case too, the rear wheel that came along as well
was in a state where greasing wasn't necessary.
Since we had the ends off anyway,
I did grease the front hub,
and for the rear hub I only added grease around the freewheel body pawls
(the maintenance frequency for the freewheel body pawls only
is higher than for the hub bearings).
I told the customer, "As long as you don't go out of your way to ride in the rain,
you don't need to open it for at least the next three years."
A customer came in saying
they were about to grease up the front wheel of their Zonda,
but realized it might turn into a "new shaft explosion incident" (← that's what they actually called it),
so they brought it in before things got worse.
We took the Zonda's front wheel on deposit.
That said, I'm not blaming the customer,
but they had slightly damaged the 14mm grip surface,
and even with our custom-made tool
we couldn't loosen the left-side end bolt,
so I used a drill to shave down the flange of the hollow end bolt
right to the point where it would just barely come off.
The reason it wouldn't come off was only the surface pressure of the flange—
the threads weren't corroded due to galvanic corrosion or anything like that—
so once the flange was removed, the rest of the threaded portion came out easily.
We didn't damage the hub axle,
and just needed to replace the end bolt,
so it wasn't a serious disaster.
From now on, I've set it up so that when a 5mm Allen key is applied to both ends,
the left side will almost certainly loosen first.
↑Replaced parts
I think I've written about this before,
but regarding Campagnolo/Fulcrum cup-and-cone hubs:
except in cases where the bearing adjustment has loosened and there's play,
people who say "I don't touch it because there's nothing to adjust, so I do absolutely nothing myself"
versus people who say "I grease it myself about once every six months to a year"—
the former group overwhelmingly has hubs with less internal wear.
While these aren't truly maintenance-free,
the actual maintenance frequency is lower than most people who like to do their own work imagine,
and in this case too, the rear wheel that came along as well
was in a state where greasing wasn't necessary.
Since we had the ends off anyway,
I did grease the front hub,
and for the rear hub I only added grease around the freewheel body pawls
(the maintenance frequency for the freewheel body pawls only
is higher than for the hub bearings).
I told the customer, "As long as you don't go out of your way to ride in the rain,
you don't need to open it for at least the next three years."