Originally Posted by
well biked
To further add to the confusion, I just checked Shimano's website and looked at the exploded view of the Dura Ace hubs, front and rear. The front is apparently available with two types of bearing assemblies, an A type or a B type. The A type uses loose balls, the B type uses the retainers. On the rear hubs, it's loose balls only, no "B type" available. It sounds like kleng's Dura Ace front hub is an A type (w/loose balls from the factory), and that's why there were loose balls in it-
Thanks for that, I was able to confirm Shimano directly that my Shimano WH-7801 wheelset front hubs should have retainers in them.
When I saw the loose bearings in the hub I thought I had a WH-7800 hub which had 14 x 3/16 loose bearings, but the funny thing was that the loose bearings were 5/32, so when I put in 14 3/16 bearings they would not fit and allow the cone to screw onto the axle. I was able to deduce that I indeed have a WH 7801 which can only handle the 5/32 bearing size and that the missing retainers were compensated by having an extra 2 bearing in each side.