Couple of years ago 😉
Been running them on my hardtail for 18 months. No problems to report, being tied into proprietary rotors isn’t ideal, but they’ve not given me any issues.
There’s a sprag clutch version in development too, not sure how far away that is from release though.
Couple of years ago 😉
I was off that day 😂
I assumed as it was a new (3 day old) video, and what with the title of it, that it was a new thing and I would be forever remembered as the brave pioneer that broke it to the Singletrack masses!
Oh well.
I had some upsetting news about Joe Cocker I was going to share too but I don't think I'll bother now...
Yeah I watched that video a few days ago. Can't say I've ever really had an issue with current hub designs that warrants the lengths this one has gone to, usually sealed cartridge bearings last a very long time in hubs now and aren't hard to replace anyway. But it was interesting in an 'enginerding' way.
Good rational and I've gone through enough hubs/bearings/freehubs over the years that their design caught my eye - plus I've a lot of time for Peak Torque, both his video quality and engineering knowledge/experience.
I signed up to KOM's subscription, but couldn't work their pricing.
I think if you're really into the engineering then they're worth the money for that, or if you're a particularly heavy ebiker that's damaging stuff then also yes, personally I think they look like a great design but I've never snapped an axle, bearings last a couple of years and spares availbilty being good (Hope hubs) doesn't make it worth £550 for a rear hub.
I like the look of it… but it’s funny how when you watch a video like that or see an new product, your current set up which felt great the day before suddenly feels kind of inadequate or vulnerable to instant failure until you have a word with yourself and remember how nothing has gone wrong to date and a bit of preventative maintenance is all that’s needed. <br /><br />Saying that, I must admit when the free hub was first introduced I thought it was a bit bonkers until I stopped breaking axles due to having the bearings close to the dropouts (and stopped breaking spanner’s with freewheel removers of course).
As a distinctly hetfty E-MTB rider who's never bent a rear hub axle I'm also not sure just how much a big deal the problem they're trying to solve it is, once a rear hub axle has been reinforced by the frame's own thru-axle and tightened up properly, that's a pretty robust assembly.
I also wonder how much faff and money it's going to be to convert this hub from Sram to Shimano or vice versa.
Durability wise I would have some concerns about fairly thin bearings required to make the 'axle within an axle' system work and the wisdom of moving the pawl system right to the outside of the hub where it'll right in the firing line as opposed to being tucked away deep inside the hub.
However, full points for thinking outside the box in an area where innovation isn't easy.
I watched PT's video about them and yes those KOM hubs look great, but they're really not cheap and the problem I often find with PT is that he tends to ignore cost/pricing in favour of the 'best engineered' solution and get a bit hyperbolic about things, he even sort of alluded to that at the start of that video. He's doesn't seem to be someone who would ever accept "good enough" as an answer to anything...
Its costly solution to some problems I don't really have, I'm not killing the bearings or Freehub Pawls on much cheaper hubs that often TBH, plus you need to buy their special rotors as well, so I'm not going to be buying these any time soon.
It's been sitting on my Youtube feed for a few days so I also watched it for the first time this weekend. Something must have triggered the algorithm.
I quite like it in some ways and not in others - I can't help thinking they've just moved the Driveside bearing support issue away from the axle onto the freehub tube but then at least that's a bigger diameter and able to carry load better. I doubt there's any perfect solution to rear hub design for a modular bicycle but this is certainly interesting.
I'm just surprised I'd never heard of them or the tech before. KOM are obviously not very good at marketing.
Saying that, I must admit when the free hub was first introduced I thought it was a bit bonkers until I stopped breaking axles due to having the bearings close to the dropouts (and stopped breaking spanner’s with freewheel removers of course).
Yeah - I am (and was close to...) 10-ish stone and regularly bent freewheel hub axles until freehubs came along. Since then I haven't bent a single axle. I do like their design, but it is addressing a much smaller problem imo - freehubs changed the loading enough to fix the problem for most people. Incidentally the Peak Torque video seems somewhat simplistic on the load path imo - what he describes is essentially the old freewheel hub setup, which practical experience shows was greatly improved by the freehub. Clearly the extra support provided by the freehub shell pressing against the hub body, or the much more rigid axle/freehub/bearing end of the system does 'just enough' to fix the problem for most people (which does seem slightly odd, but I can't see any other possible freehub/wheel differences) - his FE analysis in the video just considers the axle in isolation, and either way the story is a bit more complex than that.
Some nice ideas for sure, but it I don't see the market unless the whole point is to sell a few very expensive hubs as proof of concept and real world testing in the hope that you can get the design taken up by the major manufacturers by selling or licencing the design, or flogging the whole company to them. I mean, if I have spent £6k on a ebike and the axle snaps or the freehub gives out, I'm chasing the warranty though the retailer/manufacturer rather than forking out another £1300 on KOM wheels. Sure it's nice they have a solution, but it's not their problem, it's Giant's or Spesh or whoever.
IMO it's a problem that exists on paper but not really in metal. Or at least, doesn't have to, so when it does exist it's because of design failures.. Obviously you can find examples of hubs that deal with it badly, but in the same timescales you can find hubs that deal with it so well that it's basically a nonissue. This looks like a better engineering solution and I do approve of that but it's still just a very late solution to a long-solved problem. Maybe not solved to perfection but solved to much-more-than-good-enough.
I mean, essentially this is Pro 2 vs DT240S. Both hubs that pre-dated 12mm axles but dealt with the change in different ways. Hope literally just made the hole bigger and created a too-weak axle. And so the problems the video mentions are there- they snapped in normal use, they wore the bearing faces, and they had poor bearing life. Meanwhile DT tweaked the axle a little, had a more supportive hub, and made a 12mm hub that worked right out of the gate and was barely changed over its whole lifespan. And not just Hope and DT of course, lots of manufacturers have good hubs and lots have bad.
So it's not really about the bearing location in the end, it's about how good some companies are at making things, how good some companies are at selling things, and how good we are at choosing products. I mean, Hope made a bad product for years but so many of us bought it, the problem isn't just engineering. I bought 3 replacement axles for my pro 2s and then paid RRP for the Pro 2 Evo upgrade to fix the problem permanently, I must have paid them almost as much as the bloody hubs cost
I love that someone is exploring other options.
One advantage is that it moves the freehub mechanism away from any cleaning agent you're using on the cassette.
The only hub bearing I have issue with is the silly tiny ones in the freehub and even then, it's normally just one of them.
My current hub runs 5 bearings. There's an extra one in the middle so I doubt there's much axle deflection in my hub.
Another way to deal with those tiny bearings would be a steel bolt through axle as a bearing interface which would allow the good old 6001 bearings to sit in the freehub.
Sprag version sounds interesting though. That would put the price on par with people like Chris King or Onyx.
Weirdly I had a fairly new hub fail over xmas on my eeb.
The freehub bearing basically collapsed, the freehub came out of the splines and I had no drive.
The symptoms leading up to this were, brand new wheel fitted and first ride it developed a rubbery-sounding squeak.
I contacted the company and they suggested I lube the O-ring and that it was normal and would settle down.
On another ride, I needed to remove the axle mid-ride because it was squeaking again and I wanted to inspect it.
I couldn't remove the axle at all. It was stuck fast in the freehub side. Unwinding the axle simply caused the dropout on the disc side to get pushed outwards but nothing moved on the drive side.
At home I managed to drift it out, check it for burrs or anything, checked the wheel spun fine. Everything seemed ok so I refitted it, lubing it as I went.
The squeak went for a bit.
Went for a ride in the Peak over xmas and the very top of a big hill the cassette started wobbling all over the place and it wouldn't stay in any gear.
I took the axle out, the freehub fell out along with mangled pawls and I saw that the freehub bearing was completely collapsed.
Stuck it all back in together so that I could limp back to the car, and basically had to balance bike it 3.5 miles back to the car which wasn't ideal.
When I got home, I removed the wheel and fitted THE SECOND of these bargain wheels I had bought from a company that we all know pretty well and inspected the first wheel and ordered a new freehub.
The next ride I went on, on the new rear wheel, the exact rubbery squeaking sound returned, and lo and behold, my rear axle is now stuck in again!
That's on one ride.
I've not contacted the company yet but it's not a good sign.
But yeah, in my case at least, the bearings and freehub placement does seem to be a weak point. Though of course, I've never had this issue with any other wheels in all my years riding.
Calling @big_scot_nanny .......
The fea animation perfectly replicates the failure mode he has with Hope fatbike rear hubs, which were only fixed with a custom solid stainless steel axle. The failure wasn't actually permanently bent axles, but rather destruction of the freehub mechanism due to flex of the axle and resulting misalignment of pawls / ratchet etc under pedaling load.
There might be 5 bearings in the Pro2 etc style of hub, but the freehub ones do very little to strengthen the weak point where the two parts meet. Especially if someone has put a 12mm hole through the axle.....
He’s doesn’t seem to be someone who would ever accept “good enough” as an answer to anything…
We need these people. I mean, I can’t afford to take their advice immediately, but the hope is that improvements can spread across brands and down the price brackets to a future bike of mine.
Think about aheadsets. Threaded headsets were “good enough”, but aren’t we all glad that people created a better solution, and them some people championed that solution, and now it’s everywhere on nearly all our bikes?!?
Think about aheadsets. Threaded headsets were “good enough”,
No they weren't. They were rubbish, they kept coming loose and headset spanners weren't exactly practical to carry on a ride.
Even 1" headsets were a massive improvement over threaded systems.
Unlike aheadsets, these KOM hubs look like a clever solution to a non-problem. People have always had the option of running Shimano hubs which are better from an axle support point of view. The fact that so few people do suggests that this isn't really an issue for the vast majority of riders.
For a small number of people it isn't a non-problem and Shimano doesn't cater for everything. I've just looked back through my WhatsApps with big_scot_nanny showing his trail of snapped and stripped hub carnage from all kinds of bikes (broken stuff from at least four different hub manufacturers).
Think about aheadsets. Threaded headsets were “good enough”, but aren’t we all glad that people created a better solution, and them some people championed that solution, and now it’s everywhere on nearly all our bikes?!?
They had to be good enough because there weren't any other options. I went back to threaded a few years ago because I wanted a steel framed track bike. The headset continually came loose (I did ride it off road so may not have helped) but they were indeed as shit as I remembered.
Luckily I can sit back at laugh at people with free hub issues as don't get a single issue with my steel axled fixed gear hub (I don't even use a screw on cog as use a Halo Fix-G hub)
*waves at Mick*
Definitely interested in this. The proprietary discs are bit off putting esp if/when this company ceases to exist, but it describes (see video at 5mins) perfectly the issues I have experienced, and seems to solve.
Yes, Hope, Hunt and Mavic in particular have been superb with warranty over the years. But the greatest impact the failures have is that I know it will happen. At some point, somewhere on a ride, a hub will go. If you do not experience this, it is hard to describe just how negatively it can affect a ride.
Mick's wonderful solid stainless axle, with gert big 8mm M12 bolts, for my 197mm Pro 4 is now the ONLY hub/bike that I can trust to just ride. (even my brand new 148mm Hope Pro 5 E version rear hub has started to make some tell tale noises... nooooooo!)
So, yeah, I'm interested.
Ah, this bubbling back up reminds me - I went off to have a look at a few rear hub designs to see how they transfer the load from drive side dropout to hub flange...seems to me that of the conventional hubs Chris King looks the best - big overlap of the freehub shell into the hub shell, and the hub shell bearing sits on the freehub body, rather than the axle in most other designs. Give their general reputation, and the fact it uses standard discs...I'd probably go there if I had axle problems. Probably very little cost difference mind.
but he so ****ing dull and long winded.
But the greatest impact the failures have is that I know it will happen. At some point, somewhere on a ride, a hub will go. If you do not experience this, it is hard to describe just how negatively it can affect a ride.
Had this with the tandem. Freehubs mainly failing at the ratchet but also bearings and axles. solved with a rohloff
but he so **** dull and long winded.
Have you not dealt with engineers before?
My issue I described up there 👆 with my collapsed freehub bearing.
Well, I've been in contact with the company and they are suggesting that my particular bike (Orbea Wild fs) that uses a concentric axle pivot bearing, is the cause of the failure. 😐
They seem to be suggesting that this design introduces flex or movement into the system and this strains the freehub bearing which led to the collapse.
Trek also use this design apparently.
Hmmm, not convinced 🤔
They seem to be suggesting that this design introduces flex or movement into the system and this strains the freehub bearing which led to the collapse.
Trek also use this design apparently.
Hmmm, not convinced 🤔
It doesn't sound too far fetched to be honest. I had an Occam for just over a year and had to replace the tiny bearings in the concentric pivot twice in that time, both times the telltale sign was what seemed to be play in the rear axle (grabbing the tyre and moving the wheel from side to side). Even when the bearings were ok it seemed to me that there was more play in the 'wheel' than on my other bikes that used a DWP pivot design and therefore had a solid rear triangle.
but he so **** dull and long winded.
I find he explains things very well, in an engaging way. Perhaps if you know more of the engineering basics than I do then you'd rather he took a few short cuts, explained less. But for me, he gets it spot on.
I think now we have big holes for through axles, rear hubs are at the limit of being just about OK for the average rider and average bike. If you throw in any additional loads (extra wide hubs, heavy riders, strong riders, axle based suspension pivots, E bikes etc) then it can tip them over the edge. And without changing the freehub standard you can't make things bigger without a radical redesign like the KOM hub.
But saying all that, we've proved that you can change a problem configuration of hub / rider / frame into a durable setup simply by making the axle from a more appropriate material - you just have to accept that it has to be heavier.
but he so **** dull and long winded.
I like him, there's enough detail there to prove he knows what he's talking about.
Also - and this is a massive point in his favour - he's not Hambini!
I found the video fascinating - the CAD drawings were really useful; in my ignorance I'd never really questioned the less than ideal placing of rear hub bearings.
It'll be really interesting to see if this becomes widely adopted, or adapted, given the patent.
...this changes everything
Hello there!
