You don't need to be an 'investor' to invest in Singletrack: 6 days left: 95% of target - Find out more
I'm getting very distracted trying to choose a 28h rear hub with a good engagement to price ratio.
I've a Hope 4 on one wheelset - that's fine.
My lighter duties bike has a Roval (DT Swiss 360?) and it's really lacking engagement, but I don't want to splash Hope money on a replacement.
Looking for a 12x148 28h HG isn't helping, but it's hard to find something at a good price.
Novatec seemed a good option, but I can't for the life of me figure out which of their hubs are any good.
Any suggestions?
Can’t you just change the ratchet in your DT Swiss hub to make it engage faster?
Bitex; 54pt engagement - I have a set built up by DCR Wheels.
The Bontrager Rapid Drive rear hubs are 28h and have 54 teeth. You can add 3 more pawls to take them to 108t.
Great engagement but they will make your Hope Pro4 feel slow and agricultural. I also have an I9 Hydra but still feel good riding the fast Bontrager hub. I sold all my Hope hubbed wheels after getting used to fast engagement.
@daffy - it's the crappy pawls hub that's fairly expensive to upgrade to the ratchet system.
Do you ride a full sus?
Is a faster-engaging hub better?
No, hardtail. It's the tight technical climbs where i'm ratcheting a fair bit where it's flipping annoying.
The only way to make a hub engage faster is to use a finer mechanism with more, smaller teeth, so there will always be a trade off between engagement and long term reliability.
If you're not afraid to service them regularly them you can offset this but if you're more of a 'fit and forget' rider a slower hub may be a better idea as it will generally go for longer without failing as things inevitably get in past the seals.
That said.... luck plays a fairly large part so I'm sure someone will be along in a second to say that they run XXXX hub that cost £30, engages instantly and never went wrong.
Bitex as above. Not too noisy either.
There's a thread on the DT Swiss 3 pawl to ratchet conversion. Expensive but might be less expensive than buying a new hub and rebuilding your wheel.
Shimano XT.
Fair enough for a hardtail, there’s no real downside to faster engaging. I still reckon it’s much more of a ‘feels nice’ than any performance enhancement.
I replaced the wheelset on my Occam due to the slow engagement of the DT hubs. It was really bloody annoying.
I've got some hubs that in hindsight I don't think I'd choose again over Hope even if they're significantly cheaper. Lighter than Hope but less well sealed and creating much more regular maintenance than I'd like. Depends on how much winter use though I guess. That's a Halo and, annoyingly, a quite expensive Newmen. But when I spoke to a wheel builder he suggested that the other value options, like Novatec/Bitex, were similarly sealed to my Halo, where Hope/DT are much better in this regard.
Thanks all.
Might be easiest/cheaper to get a Fortus 26 / Bontrager Line and keep the Roval as a spare.