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Thought I'd give my Hello Dave a once over yesterday as it's not moved in 2 weeks. Back wheel didn't want to turn. Turns out the non-drive side bearing is shot already at 5 months old. Just bad luck?
Dunno but I have a brand new wheelset I'm about to build up today, I'll report back in five months (from when I can ride it properly, obvs).
More usefully, I did see they are clearing out existing stock ready to launch the V6 "Evo". Hoepfully Neil will pop up to explain what needed improving and how any problematic non-Evo hubs will be resolved under warranty.
No idea without looking. Might be duff might be jetwashed, if you think it’s faulty then send it back with your order number
V6 is SKF bearings so can’t get better. It’s a 6903 so super easy to swap out in a minute or so.
New V6 EVO, well now we are tens of thousands of hubs in, we have the data and experience to tweak them in lots of ways to make them better for the next run. Made sense to do it now as we don’t have much stock on the shelf.
Everything is retro compatible so nobody can complain and no we aren’t doing it because there is something wrong with the old one. If hope launches something new everyone jerks off over it but when we do the same the antifanbois are straight out saying everything is faulty
Lighter axle with more machining, same on hubshell, straightpull options, tweaks on some of the tolerances to pull them in now we know we can hold microns running 24/5. Faster engagement, 10% weight saving with no downside other than increased machine time
Just making a nice product nicer
Neil SuperstarComponents
Less than 6 months old / not fit for purpose its up to the retailer to sort.
*awaits personal attack*
Thanks Neil. As you say, dead easy to replace. Have ordered some new bearings. Will post the bad one back when I get a moment.
I have a second pair of wheels on back order (Arc Ultra's - order #0000000470775). Will they be V6 Evo hubs and any idea when they're likely to ship please?
Incorrect trolling as usual TJ. For the first 6 months it’s upto us to prove it wasn’t faulty from new rather than the other way around. If it’s been smashed to pieces by abuse or rammed full of mud by jet washing then it’s not faulty and not covered even in the first six months. It’s not guaranteed physically indestructible for six months.
I’ll happily send bearings off to SKF and they will say the same as you or I. So use your common sense, then if it’s faulty we sort it no problem like we always do. If it just needs replacing then replace it, we have nothing to hide, not that TJ would know as he has never bought anything from us....
The backorder arcs are the original version as they are already in production and held up by the whole situation we are in. New ones are still months off as engagement rings need hardening and parts need making in volume.
I’m busy today programming up medical parts to make next week so I’ll just ignore any future trolling as I have much better things to do with my time.
Neil SuperstarComponents
Neil - if you are doing stuff for vents then good on you.
Less than 6 months old / not fit for purpose its up to the retailer to sort.
Got to sit with Neil on this one, 5 months through winter and then left to sit for weeks will not be good for bearings, and it certainly isn't a definite warranty case. It's not hard to change bearings (although these days it can be tricky getting decent ones at a decent price with the weird sizes we use to get them working with through axles).
Strictly speaking it might be up to the retailer to show it wasn't a fault present when manufactured, but let's be reasonable here. Neil might pull it apart and find something's perhaps out of tolerance, but equally he might pull it apart and say "please ride through less muddy puddles".
Shame thats not what the law says and riding thru muddy puddles is the purpose of MTBs - so if it fails because of that its not fit for purpose.
the law is simple and clear.
Saw that about the medical parts on their webpage but I'm not modern enough to be on facebook, twitter or whatever youngsters use these days. Some of you trendier people should promote/like that as it's great to see a decent UK company helping out.
I'll just add a bit to this, my free hub failed on my v3 hub last week. I mailed Superstar and sent some pics on Friday. Absolutely fell over when the postman delivered a brand new free hub this morning. So big thanks to Neil and his customer service crew.
TJ it's not that simple. Any product can fail. That's a shame but a statistical inevitability. In the instance of an attempted claim under consumer law, the first thing any company will do is pull together data of units sold vs returns/failures. If the ratio is high, then **potentially but not definitely** that indicates an issue. If not, it's just an outlier, and due to the massive number of potential variables involved, could be down to anything, but generally falls to goodwill on the part of the company.
I consulted to an industry sector a few years ago, partnered with trading standards to develop a "preapproval" scheme for businesses with good processes and products. And one thing that I will always remember is the team I worked with at TS telling me that any time a consumer tries using incorrect use of NFFP or the threat of TS to try and leverage a result, they rightly go bottom of the pile.
An early bearing failure on a product produced in the tens of thousands is not evidence of NFFP. 1500 failures in 10,000 maybe. But we'd have heard about 1500 early bearing failures given how vocal and active on social media the average mountain biker is.
Has anyone tried hitting it with a rock yet?
I built some up for a customer (customer supplied the hubs), SuperStar sent out some replacement pawls early on (FOC Upgrade)
He also had issues with the ratchet ring stripping the thread in the hub body & the rear axle also snapped.
Not great, but to be fair to SuperStar they replaced all faulty parts.
Bearings went in fine today. Freehub was tricky to fit. My Hope one just pushes on. In the end I used a zip-tie held around the pawls and that worked fine. Back in action 🙂
5mths in not great, but skf as Neil says so hard to really get on the SS are rubbish it’s all their fault band waggon, maybe unlucky maybe badly treated, maybe heavily used in bad connies etcetc.
I’ve just pulled apart some DT 240s that are years old just to check and was amazed the bearings felt perfect!
Still no comparison on price, and I’ve had SS wheels in the past, aside from a couple of go rounds with a spoke key worked fine and was happy...
But blimey he doesn’t help himself with his tone in the response up there does he! Super defensive, I have to deal with so many unreasonable people who are all out to get me! He needs a PR person to respond to this sort of stuff really or just not comment! Cut out the whole woe is me stuff and his response is good, imo
As Neil might be looking in here, what is the position on microspline hubs?
And good on you for helping out.
Hope do tend to change designs much less frequently, to be fair.