riding broken hub?

nhodge said:

i broke out a 2 spoke hole section on the brake side of a 20mm front hub. anybody w/ some real knowledge out there know if it's wise/unwise to ride it at all? i plan on keeping the bike on the ground. wheel is retrued & is holding true just cruising along, keeping a cool wind going. any of you guys actually done this& got away w/ riding it for a short time?

Click to expand...

Sounds like you have already gotten away with it for a short time.

I wouldn't ride a hub like that, with the possible exception of 'limping home' from the boonies. Also, I would stay well away from using that front brake.

Just out of curiousity; what sort of hub was it, and how did the breakage happen. Just Riding Along, I expect ;-)

I'm more curious about how it was laced... cross 2 maybe? A picture would be nice

Hope CS

:thumbsup

a hub review wouldn't take , so i thought i'd post here.
bought a Pro II front 3+ yrs. ago & recently had it fail on the brake side taking out a 2 spoke section. didn't know it when it happened, so it wasn't a particular event taking it out. i wouldn't say i was JRA since it had about 3500 mi. on it , but i wasn't doing anything i haven't done plenty of before. i built the wheel myself w/ somewhere around 130 on a tensionometer on the brake side. bottom line, Hope replaced it for free after being out of warranty 2 yrs. Way beyond something expected. i think Chad from Red Barn had something to do w/ that. thank you Chad. the bearings on the new one don't spin anywhere near the old one, but i'm not complaining, just pointing it out. the original hub would spin forever., far longer than a friends King or I9. WAY longer.
anyway, for the price of $65 & 2 yrs. out of warranty, i'm mighty satisfied. but, if it goes again, i'll buy a Hadley, to match the rear.

Given that you put a lot of miles on it and no particular event killed it, maybe metal fatigue over time? Or you could have cracked it some time before it actually failed. Cracks are supposed to sometimes take some time to progress before leading to catastrophic failure.

Anyway, I wouldn't use the hub any further than what it took to get back to my truck. Tearing out two spoke holes worth of metal probably put a lot of extra strain next to the missing ones. A front wheel failure is a scary thing to contemplate. I'd say you've got a really cool paper weight.