However eventually I noticed the freehub on the rear wheel starting to jam up, especially in winter when the conditions were very cold. Essentially when you were riding along, if you took your feet off the pedals, the pedals would still continue to go round - ie the freehub was jamming up and not allowing the wheel to freewheel... well, freely.
When I started to strip the rear wheel down it became obvious that the job wouldn't be straightforward. I've stripped down a number of old freehubs in the past so was confident in doing this one, but unfortunately only got down to taking off the first 2-3 'cogs' or 'sprockets' from the freehub when it became obvious that I wouldn't be able to take any more of the sprockets off - effectively the sprockets had become embedded in the freehub body, with huge gouge marks having been made into the freehub body to such an extent that I couldn't shift the sprockets at all without resorting to a file to file down the huge burrs that had developed.
Eventually I managed to file down the freehub enough that I could remove the cassette completely, and the remaining mess wasn't nice:
This was after about 500 to 1000 miles or so, not a huge distance really, certainly wouldn't have expected it to look that bad after such a short amount of miles.
As you can see from the picture, the steel inserts that are supposed to stop the splines from being gouged by the cassette had disintegrated. In the picture above, that steel insert is the 'best' that was left - the other 2 inserts had completely disintegrated into tiny shards of metal and were stopping me from taking the cassette off to service the hub. As I said above, in the end I had to file down the freehub body completely to be able to remove the cassette, destroying the freehub in the process.
Various bits after I'd dismantled the hub:
So... nearly a year ago to the day (12th August 2014) I bought a replacement from Clee Cycles:
Cracking service from Clee, next day delivery more or less, £47 I think it was for the replacement... not cheap. Or at least you'd expect it to last longer than a year for £47 / a basic 'unit'.
Now then... just one year on after purchasing the replacement above (the pics above are from 1yr ago), and I'm nearly in the same position again... after very low use (only 200 miles or so), deep gouges are appearing in the freehub body splines and the steel inserts that are supposed to protect against the gouging are starting to deform and will no doubt break apart soon. As it is the inserts are falling out when I try to re-install the cassette due to the deformation.
Here below you can see the problem - the gouging is showing significant signs again (I had trouble getting the last few sprockets off and had to again resort to filing down the burrs, not too much work but still not good at all):
All in all, very disappointed in this American Classic free hub. I would have sent the thing back to get a refund or replacement, but to be honest it's not Clee's fault and I dare say they'd have a huge hassle getting anything back off the UK distributor. I tried myself to contact them by email a few times and they blatantly ignored me... not impressive service at all. As it is right now unfortunately I'm just resigned to staying well clear of anything American Classic, which is a real shame when the UK distributor is located in Derby. Goes to show you that supporting local services/companies doesn't always pay...
So, all in all, very disappointing product this American Classic freehub. The design of the American Classic 6 pawl hub itself is excellent, but the way this steel faced insert freehub body is designed is just awful - wish they'd just do a plain and simple all steel freehub body - I would continue using the hub without a doubt if they did that... but as it is I'm not prepared to pay £50 every year or two for a new freehub body... so will be building some new hoops... probably on Hope hubs which I know are built to last.
Here's how the inside of the hub looked today:
was actually very happy with that and in fact didn't bother re-greasing it at all - I just added a bit more grease on top of the pawls to repack the grease, then put the 'sleeve' back on over the pawls and re-inserted the axle + freehub body.
One final random picture - this is the hub from last year when I serviced it - I fully stripped it down, took all the grease off it, rinsed it off / washed it out etc and this is what it looks like:
As I say, really nice design of the hub itself. The pawl mechanism is so clever in the way that it works - the pawls only engage with the ratchet system on the freehub when force is applied to the pedals - ie when you're freewheeling, the pawls are almost completely retracted back into their housings (as in the picture above where you can see the pawls fully retracted), which is a very good thing because it means that the ratchet teeth on the freehub body aren't unnecessarily worn down when no pressure is being applied - unlike most other freehub systems where the pawls are constantly engaged with the ratchet.
Of course, unfortunately all of that design excellence in the hub counts for nothing because of the poor design of the freehub body splines - or rather the poor choice of build material which leads to the incredibly fast deformation of the freehub - aluminium with the steel inserts instead an all steel body.
