Worked on these alot back in the mid-80s...pretty much if you bought a Peugeot it was almost a given you ended up with these.
Not a bad design - but as a previous poster pointed out already - the hub and the wheel as a whole did require regular maintenance.
Failure to do a yearly overhaul pretty much guaranteed cone or race grindout.
Failure to keep the tension up on the wheel as a whole resulted in spoke breakage at the heads on the non-drive side. Like several other 126mm hubs of the time with 36-38mm offsets on the non-drive side - spoke were excessively loose on the non-drive side when the wheel as a whole wasn't tensioned properly.
Their premature delivery to the dumpster wasn't so much a fault of the design as it was the fact that they were primarily spec'd on entry/midrange level bicycles - with entry/mid-range level bikes mostly being purchased by folks who
tend to bring their bikes in when they "break" instead of for regular maintenance.
Had one myself on my Peugeot 501 bike - overhauled it every year - trued my wheels when needed. Had no problems whatsoever with the Helicomatic hub.
=8-)
Robert Shackelford San Jose, CA USA
Quoting Jerome & Elizabeth Moos <jerrymoos@sbcglobal.net>:
>
> I hear the horror stories about Helicomatic, but I've never had any trouble
> with them. No flange failures, no broken spokes, no worn out bearings. I
> think a lot depends on rider weight. At 162 lb, when in decent shape, I'm
> not large by American standards, so maybe I'm just easier on equipment than a
> 200+ lb rider. Maybe the other thing is that I ride all my bikes, so no one
> gets ridden excessively. So maybe for a 220 lb rider who puts in 10,000 km
> per year on a single bike, Helicomatic is not a good design, but for me it's
> just fine.
>
> Regards,
>
> Jerry Moos
>
>
> --- On Sun, 3/29/09, Howard Darr <hdarr@embarqmail.com> wrote:
>
> > From: Howard Darr <hdarr@embarqmail.com>
> > Subject: [CR] Actually using a Helicomatic
> > To: "'Howard Darr'" <hdarr@embarqmail.com>, hsachs@alumni.rice.edu,
> "'Classic Rendezvous'" <classicrendezvous@bikelist.org>
> > Date: Sunday, March 29, 2009, 8:28 AM
> > Dear All,
> >
> > I was unclear about what hub I regaled as bulletproof in my
> > last post.
> >
> >
> > Snip <<<<<Actually I have been going back
> > and forth since before Christmas.
> > On one hand I have 3 bikes with this hub in either the 5 or
> > 6 speed
> > iteration that are bulletproof.>>>>>
> >
> > The quandary is that I am unsure of the helicomatic.
> >
> > The hub that I love is the Shimano 600 first generation UG
> > cassette hub. It
> > is not quite the hub of today because the free hub body is
> > attached by a
> > press fit spline system instead of the familiar bolt
> > attachment.
> >
> > I was drawn to them back in the day because of the bearing
> > placement and the
> > ability to really reduce the dish on a wheel. I have stuck
> > with them
> > because many miles have passed and I have not broken or
> > bent axles, nor does
> > the freehub connection with cassette body seem to have
> > accumulated any
> > sloppyness. I appreciate the value of the aforementioned
> > benefits balanced
> > with the uselessness but vintage look of the oil hole.
> >
> > The only warning I might give is that since the largest cog
> > is closer to the
> > spokes the derailleur hanger must be straight if you run
> > smallish cogs.
> >
> > Howard Darr
> > Kinsman OH USA
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> _______________________________________________
>
>
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