Definitely ended up with way too much preload on the cone for the freehub bearings (which is also the cup for the axle bearings), so that’s been sorted.
I used Phil waterproof on all the bearings in there and am now wondering if maybe I should have used a lighter grease or oil. That’s just what I’ve always used for everything (except pawls of course).
I’m glad I was able to get the cassette off using just one chainwhip and the rag method, but I think I might get a $7 whip from the Amazon to have a second one for the future.
At any rate, the freehub acts like a normal freehub now and not a bound-up one.
[Edit] There’s a very good chance that the chain fell off due to the freehub not being very free, or at least I feel like that’s a major contributing factor.
Got the shifter worked out as well.
Now that I’ve taken a closer look at it, there are two settings on it, and it works for 7 or 8 speed.
It has this sort-of friction mode which says F7 and F8, but it’s like “indexed lite” to me because it isn’t purely friction unless you really loosen it up, just looser indexing.
To change it, you loosen the top cap thing and spin the lower ring thing to set it how you want. Maybe this is standard shifter behavior!
The click is very strong and nice when it’s indexed though. Got the limits all good on the derder. Shifting beautifully, at least on the stand.
Front brake is sorted.
The only thing I’m still on the fence about is removing another link pair, which I’m leaning more towards doing than not, because I see no disadvantages to it. I could probably even take out 2.
One thing I noticed that I don’t like is that when in the smallest cog, the cage is super close to the dropout, like almost touching it, and shortening the chain would pull that a little more taut.
Here it is as-is on the big gear:
Roughly how it would look with another link out:
I’m probably overthinking it.
