SpongeDad

There were twigs mashed deep down in the cassette and the hub is free spinning with considerable more friction - probably have clean and rebuild it. One season of cross has put more wear on it than 5 years of road cycling. I'm hesitating to pull the crank to see what I find. Probably a dead squirrel.

edit - did the hub, there was plenty of junk in there. Pretty amazing considering that I overhauled the hub this summer after doing no maintenance on the wheels for 5 yrs and found barely anything.

Majestik

It sounds like you had a really good CX season.

bitterken

Nice. Definitely pull the cranks and BB. I had a liter of crap pour out of my BB shell.

Lithuania

i pulled my campy UT crank and there was a half inch of mud inside the BB shell.

dadoes

Luckily a local LBS (B. Dwight's shop) offered an end of the CX season deal on cleaning and tuning bikes. I just dropped mine off and had them do it. I cleaned my bike thoroughly twice already this season and wasn't going to do it again. You should check around and see if there are deals in your area.

Cynikal 

I guess I'm the only one who does most of this between races.

SpongeDad

I actually like doing the wrenching myself. I was lazy to do it after every race. Now that I've seen the sludge first hand, the frequency will go up.

dadoes

No you're not. I gave my bike a good thorough cleaning after every race this year. This was sometimes twice a weekend. I usually put my bike in my stand in the back yard. I hose it off, dry everything, and clean the small parts with a tooth brush and a citrus based degreaser. I found that you can get degreasers, lube and good shop rags at auto parts stores far cheaper than the LBS. I then lube everything and tighten things down. The process takes about an hour. Twice this year I dismantled everything including the BB, RD, pedals and greased/lubed. There is a lot of great info on wrenching on the Park Tool Website which I refer to often. I also found YouTube to be really useful. After our states race I was just sick of cleaning and it was so cold I couldn't use my hose. As it turned out the shop did a great job and even dialed in my brakes, which I was never fully able to do. I think I can do about 95% of my bike maintenance, but there are things that I want a qualified mechanic to do - simply for my own personal safety.

Lithuania

i was just messing around with the UT cranks I pulled off my cross bike and the non drive side bearing was totally seized. These bearings were blown after like 2 race last season but I couldnt afford to replace them so I went with them again this season. what a mess.

Cynikal 

The only this I haven't pulled apart are my cranks. Mostly because I lack the tools for the BB30 stuff. Our races aren't that muddy, mostly dry dirt and grass so I doubt I will run into some of the issues that you guys did. Who knows, maybe a frog will hop out of my BB shell when I pull off my cranks.

dadoes

Do you have a CAAD9? I saw you mention it in another thread. Our team bike is Cannondale this year so we are getting a pretty good deal. The deal and unbelievable amount of success CAADs have had this year are tempting me to get the BBQ frameset and build it up.

Cynikal 

Yeah, I have a CX9 that I got as a frame/fork set as a team buy. We got an unbelievable deal and the bike is awesome. If you do get one, get a BB30 crank for it. It will make a difference. Honestly, it's more bike than I was looking for but the deal was too good to pass up.