More on broken axle
 

In case you missed it, my Trek 820 has had 2 broken rear axles in 14 months. I called the LBS today to see about replacing the freewheel with a freehub. He said it would cost about $75. He also said most bikes today have freewheels, and that they are generally not a problem.
That's not what I'm hearing on these threads.
What gives?

i mean alot of bikes do use freewheels...theres just more lower end bikes than mid or high end ones. they DO work fine though, id be intreted to know more in detail what your issue is.

are they planning on just getting you a new hub and relacing it?

If you go to Wal-Mart, Target, K-Mart, etc. and look at bikes, probably most or all of them have freewheel hubs. If you go into a bike shop, almost all the bikes will have cassette hubs. I think it was covered in your other thread, but the issue is the difference in the placement of the bearings, axles on freewheel hubs will definitely be more prone to break or bend because of that-

All geared bikes used to have freewheels, though the early 1980's, and most bikes had freewheels until Shimano decided to force freehubs on the market by offering their 7-speed indexed shifting only in freehub design. This was a good thing, as freehubs are structurally superior to freewheel design because they don't have lots of exposed axle between the bearings and dropout, just absorbing torque and shear force until they bend or break.

Of course, it's possible to produce very strong-axled freewheel hubs (and Phil Wood still makes excellent ones) but even low-end freehubs will never break axles, simply because the design is superior.

The heavier the rider, or the bumpier the terrain, the more chance of bending/breaking the axle on a freewheel hub. (Also, more gears mean more exposed axle, more shear force and torque, so more chance of breaking. I weigh 180# but rode with a 5-speed freewheel on my commuting bike for a long time, with no problems. But I would regularly bend the axles on 6- or 7-speed freewheel hubs.)

Anyway, nicer bikes haven't had freewheels in nearly 20 years. Dept. store bikes still do, as do lower-end bikes from major manufacturers.

So who cares about "most" and "generally not a problem"? If the odds of something bad happening are 1 in 1,000 but you happen to be the 1, that's still serious.

If you're breaking rear axles, that means that you are using your bike quite a bit. If that's the case, it's worth spending a little money to fix it up so that it doesn't break axles anymore. $75.00 should buy you a freehub rear wheel that's about 1 step above department store bike level. If it was my bike, that's what I would do.

It would be cheaper for you to just replace the rear wheel with one equipped with a freehub with the same amount of cogs.