Angry bees in my hub!
 

Hi all. Got some new wheels (Roval, i.e., Specialized) with a very loud buzzy freehub - almost as loud as Campy or Phil Wood. The freehub is also pretty "sticky" -- in higher gears (i.e., smaller cogs) the pedals move forward while the rear wheel is coasting (with bike in workstand, obviously); if I hold the pedals in place, the wheels stops spinning pretty promptly, doesn't keep spinning forever.

Question: Will the freehub loosen up? Is it a problem? I suspect not, but thought I would ask.

Thanks in advance for your advice.

which roval wheels did you get? the roval wheels come with one of two different free hub bodies, one, made by DT swiss, using their star ratchet design, and the other, i think is made my KT, or possibly alex that uses multiple pawls with light action springs, packed in light grease.

i have the fusee star wheels, which use the non-DT free hub it has loosened up over time. some of the grease spun out and there is now less resistance. if you got some of the new fusee SL wheels, they use a DT swiss free hub body, which will almost always have a little resistance, but the engagement is superb. it is possible to open it up and lube it with a mixture of tri-flow and a thicker lube, like phil wood tenacious oil. this will make is slightly less noisy, and it should spin very freely.

They are the Fusee E5 wheels -- non-star hub. I don't know who makes the freehub, but I would suspect not DT, as these are NOT among the wheels that Specialized describes as having "Swiss-made internals." I'm not worried about the sound, but rather about the resistance. If you think they will loosen up, I won't worry. For what it's worth, they do seem to have more rapid engagement -- at least, more rapid than my Shimano hubs.

If the hub is tight in higher gears, you may want to back off the cones...unless these hubs are sealed bearings. I'm not sure what your options are in that case.

I don't know about your specifics, but there is a quick way to find if it's the hub or the freehub.

Remove the chain. If the problem is with the freehub, the chainless rear wheel will spin ad infinitum, which would then mean that the hub doesn't offer resistance. If that's the case, I would not worry, because most of the time anyways, you pedal, therefore the freehub isn't "free".