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Metal expands and contracts with temperature. At -5°C, things will be smaller than +40°C. Given the tolerances of modern manufacturing, this could be enough to explain the behaviour you describe.
J
All the parts are steel, so they expand and contract together, in the absence of a large temperature differential within the assembly.
I have always thought the skipping problem is very temperature and mileage related,....
It is entirely bound by the viscosity of whatever you have inside your freehub body. IME if you run your freehub body in oil (only possible if the seals are super) or a fairly runny SFG (semi-fluid grease) then provided the freehub body is correctly adjusted (so that there is just no free play, with no preload on the bearings) then all will be sweetness and light for extended mileages.
Things that don't work include
a) using a #2 grease in the RH bearing and hoping it will get into the freehub body. It probably won't do, and if it does, it will gum the pawls up (= slippage)
b) leaving the freehub body bone dry so that you can hear the pawls ticking. This can cause one-pawl engagement through pawl dragging and of course this leaves plenty of room for water to take up residence within.
3) using a #2 grease on the seals. Very few such greases are sufficiently immune to drying out or thickening when road salt gets at them and the result is that the seal runs dry, then wears, so that water gets in very easily.
4) having any free play in the freehub bearings; this causes the seals to wear out prematurely, and often causes gaps that are big enough for the water to get in even if the seals are still intact.
If the seals are Ok and the adjustment is good ( if the thinnest shim won't do it, I recommend lapping the lockring about 5-10um at a time until the free play is gone) then all that is needed is to introduce more SFG at the main hub bearings (say once a year) and that ought to be it.
One method of doing this without bothering with cone spanners is to drill a small hole in the RH dustcap, then using a small seal ring (eg made of closed cell foam) which is held in position (with low force) by the cassette lockring. More SFG can be introduced through the hole using a nozzle-type grease gun.
It isn't a bad idea to experiment with adding oil to SFG until you get the required consistency for your conditions of use.
cheers