UKC

Recently bought a campag zonda wheelset. Impressed with the improvement from my standard came-with-the-bike WARPs. Acceleration when putting it down on lumpy rides and hill finishes has seen a marked improvement.
It struck me today how loud the freehub is while out for a ride with my lady. Is iit normal to have such a loud freehub on a new wheelset? Never noticed with my old cheap set, but when riding past walls etc the echo of the clicking is really loud.

In reply to Double Knee Bar:

Normal for a Campag wheel.

The only way to stop it? - Never stop pedalling.

In reply to interdit:

Haha, are they designed to be a "stop resting" alarm?

In reply to Double Knee Bar:

It's a 'Your turn on the front' alarm.

Some hubs are noisy, some aren't.
If it really bothers you then apparently campags are reasonably easy to open up and quiet down with the application of a bit of grease to the pawls.

In reply to Double Knee Bar:

A mountain biker friend loves the noisy free hub, they are like rude boy fat exhausts for Mountain Bikers, drive me nuts though.

In reply to Double Knee Bar:

As the proud owner of a set of hope hoops, embrace it! the click of shame is there for a reason.

dead handy for alerting pedestrians, horses etc that you're there too!

In reply to Double Knee Bar:

What noise do they make. is it something like, you should be climbing, you should be climbing, you should be climbing........

In reply to Ian Carr:

Hahaha. I probably should be. Only plastic pulling on offer half the time with this lovely weather were having Ian. Keep in touch.

In reply to Double Knee Bar:

By bike came with Campag Khamsins and they sound like a gatling gun! I don't need a bell when riding on shared pedestrian / cycle paths. All I need to do to scare the bejasus out of unwary pedestrians is to stop pedalling

I upgraded to Campag Zondas, and they're stealthy by comparison.

In reply to Double Knee Bar:

My new Zondas also sound like a machine gun when freewheeling. In the MTB world (as somebody else mentioned above), there is no such thing as the 'click of shame' - noisy freewheels are quite trendy, mostly because they are more common on expensive hubs and people like showing off their expensive gear.

This has got less relevant these days as you can get even 'relatively' cheap hubs which make a loud noise, especially in the road world.

Personally I quite like the noise, regardless of its connotations. My favourite noise from my Zondas is the slight whistle the spokes make when you're going above 50ish kph. Cos it means you're going fast

In reply to Alun:

Ah -- my Zondas are 2012 models and are pretty quiet. Sounds as though they've put Khamsin freehubs on the new models.

In reply to Double Knee Bar:

Pack them with grease if you can.

I like mine quiet because you see a lot more wildlife with my stealth mountain bike, though my wheezing lungs often gives me away.

I've managed to get very close to foxes and badgers a number of times. I was once so close to a badger I coughed to make sure it knew I was there, before I frightened it into throat-rip action, which I believe badgers are renowned for.