best rolling hub?

[gogo419]

Im looking at building up a deep dish front wheel for track and time trial use and want to know what would be the best rolling/aero hub to use (in your opinion). price is not really a problem. Any suggestions appreciated.

cheers

 

[RDV4ROUBAIX]

Since I'm totally sick of hearing myself and others say that DT 240's are the answer for everything hubs, they really aren't.

Try C–4;

http://www.c-4bicyclecomponents.com/site/FH-76-Front-Road-Hub.html?st=menuJump

 

[bc_hills]

Since I'm totally sick of hearing myself and others say that DT 240's are the answer for everything hubs, they really aren't.

Try C–4;

http://www.c-4bicyclecomponents.com/site/FH-76-Front-Road-Hub.html?st=menuJump

What do you think of American Classic hubs?

 

[Greyhound Velo]

I like White Industries and Chris King hubs once they have a few hundred miles on them, very high quality and nice to look at. Any modern hub with cartridge bearings needs to be "broken in" before it really starts to roll freely.

As far as what to look for, front hubs are all pretty much the same as long as they aren't totally cheap, but look for a rear hub design that has low friction freehub body internals. DT, Chris King, and White Ind. all fall into this category, while some of the more popular wheels out there (Mavic especially) have lousy designs, at least as far at friction in the freehub body is concerned.

American Classic used to have pretty bad internals, but I haven't seen their most recent designs so they may have improved them. Check their website, they may have photos or diagrams of their hub guts posted.

 

[BroDeal]

Use oil instead of grease for lubrication.

Some people have accused hub makers of hubs with ceramic bearings of using worse seals to make it seem like the ceramic bearings make a difference, but I don't know if it is true.

Personally I don't see how it makes much of a difference. Check out how little force it take to make a wheel rotate. It is like nothing.

 

[lostintime]

These days with cassette hubs, you have to consider the availability of freehub bodies in the long term, if you keep your wheels.

 

[Notso Swift]

I can't answer the question but I will throw something out there for someone with more experience (like RDV) to consider...

What about Dura-ace style?
they have adjustable cone and cup so you can tension the bearing load a little lose You can also get ceramic bearings dirt cheap individually compared to cartridge
They weigh about 125gr including steel bearings, which is only 20 gr more than DT240's with ceramic, so the real difference is minimal. Also since the aim is for a deep track/TT wheel a few grams mean nothing.

The only issue is that while the fully built wheels are 16 or 20 spoke, I think when you buy the hub separate they are 24+, which may be a problem for your selected rims

 

[RDV4ROUBAIX]

I can't answer the question but I will throw something out there for someone with more experience (like RDV) to consider...

What about Dura-ace style?
they have adjustable cone and cup so you can tension the bearing load a little lose You can also get ceramic bearings dirt cheap individually compared to cartridge
They weigh about 125gr including steel bearings, which is only 20 gr more than DT240's with ceramic, so the real difference is minimal. Also since the aim is for a deep track/TT wheel a few grams mean nothing.

The only issue is that while the fully built wheels are 16 or 20 spoke, I think when you buy the hub separate they are 24+, which may be a problem for your selected rims

The perfect plan. I failed to notice the track portion of the OP. Run any Camp or Shim loose ball bearing hub with just enough tension and no grease, very light viscosity oil, just enough to keep your pants from catching fire, and your hub will roll like you're on ice skates. Weight means nothing on the track or TT, and you don't have to worry about warping your races from over heating because the events are so short.

 

[gogo419]

no grease, very light viscosity oil, just enough to keep your pants from catching fire, and your hub will roll like you're on ice skates.

I currently have a zipp 900 disc should i clean out the hub and put some oil in it as well? to be honest i havent ridden it in too much yet. But im sure this would help it run better. What brand oil do you suggest? i have never put oil in my hubs before.

Cheers

 

[Black Dog]

Phil Wood tenacious oil works great. Or you can use synthetic motor oil.

 

[RDV4ROUBAIX]

Yep, Phil Tenacious, or even the lighter Bio-lube, really thinly applied. Be prepared to do some labor though, gotta totally clean out all of the grease before you apply any of these alt lubes.

 

[User Guide]

Goldtec pro competion , $100 ish(£70) 90gr roll well and are bomb proof, uses standard size bearings instead of teeny ones in "boutique " hubs

 

[madcow]

Bearings probably shouldn't be the main focus on the hubs, particularly in the front wheel. I'd consider flange placement to be as important or more important.

Front bearings consume very little of your power, about 0.25w in our example. So the difference between one good set of bearings and another is going to be insubstantial. Finding a hub built specifically to decrease the bracing angle of the front wheel will probably have more benefit by lower aero drag than any change of the bearings between brands of hubs.

As RDV said, take a look at C-4 bicycle components, they have a new deep rim specific hub coming if it's not already out. It has a reduced flange spacing that both helps create a better angle for the spoke at the rim but also reduces the amount of spoke that is exposed to the wind. The hub is the FH-70DR.

If you really wanted to take it to the extreme, you could talk to Rob English about this one that he created: http://fairwheelbikes.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=6975

Here is a snippet of our hub review in which we discussed bearing drag:
------------------------------
Notes on Bearings and drag: Since ceramic bearings became the rage a few years ago, bearing drag has been a hot topic among cyclists. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be much public information on just how much of a loss the wheel bearing drag contributes. According to Bicycle Science the drag of clean, lubricated, properly aligned and adjusted ball bearings is very small. The friction coefficient is ~.0015... which is the ratio of resistive force generated in the bearing divided by the load it is carrying. If you are familiar with tire rolling resistance coefficients, this functions in the same way... except that you need to multiply this force by the bearing/wheel radius to get a comparable factor. So lets say we have a hub with 15mm axle, and the bearings are on a radius of ~12mm. The wheel's radius is ~335mm, so 12/335 *.0015 gives us an equivalent rolling resistance coefficient of .000054. To give you an idea of how small this is, typical tire rolling resistance coefficient is about .005... so the bearing resistance is ~100 times smaller. Another way to look at it is that a 200lb rider+bike traveling at 25mph will lose ~0.5W from the bearing rolling resistance. And these are not fancy bearings we are talking about... just decent steel ones.

There is another major component to bearing drag though, and that is the resistance of the seals. John Swanson did some interesting coast-down tests of wheels shown here: http://www.bikephysics.com/rails/wheel/list Aerodynamic drag was part of it, but his instrumentation was sophisticated enough to back out the bearing drag alone. Ron did the calculations on the bearing coefficients he obtained, and got an average power consumption of 0.25W for front hubs and 0.40W for the rear hubs at 25mph... or 0.65W for both wheels. Note that there was a lot of variation, but even the worst set of wheels was only ~1.3W. Since the only load in his tests was the weight of the wheel we'd consider these values additive to the 0.5W determined above... so typical losses are about 1.2W total. Though the losses in this test would capture any effects of misalignment or preload in the unloaded state, we should point out that under typical loads these factors can result in additional friction.

Does this mean that bearings don't matter? We wouldn't say that. Instead we'd emphasize that the most important factors are cleanliness, adequate lubrication, alignment, and adjustment. If any of these are off, then the drag can be much higher. Even though smaller bearings might have lower resistance in an ideal world, larger bearings (higher load rating) will be more tolerant of un-ideal situations, probably resulting in a lower practical resistance in addition to a longer life span. If your typical hub set in good condition is only consuming ~1W then be realistic about how much improvement is possible. The added expense of ceramic bearings and the added hassle of having light seals and grease (which probably will result in quicker bearing contamination and more frequent replacement) may not be worth it.
------------------------------

If you'd like to read the whole thing you can find it here: http://fairwheelbikes.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=65&t=6940

 

[Bustedknuckle]

Im looking at building up a deep dish front wheel for track and time trial use and want to know what would be the best rolling/aero hub to use (in your opinion). price is not really a problem. Any suggestions appreciated.

cheers

Get a shimano 7900 or Record 32h front hub, loose balls, use 16 holes...Lube with Oil, as has been mentioned. cart bearings all have seals. You can remove the seals from the cart bearings which will make them spin very easily but don't ride them in the wet.

 

[gogo419]

Get a shimano 7900 or Record 32h front hub, loose balls, use 16 holes...Lube with Oil, as has been mentioned. cart bearings all have seals. You can remove the seals from the cart bearings which will make them spin very easily but don't ride them in the wet.

whats the easiest way to pull the seals off? i have tried to do this before to some old bearings i had lying around but i couldn't seem to get it off?

cheers

 

[usedtobefast]

whats the easiest way to pull the seals off? i have tried to do this before to some old bearings i had lying around but i couldn't seem to get it off?

cheers

you have to pull out the axles first. Shimano has exploded views of the hubs online. also Park Tool has some nice online help.

 

[gogo419]

Yep, Phil Tenacious, or even the lighter Bio-lube, really thinly applied. Be prepared to do some labor though, gotta totally clean out all of the grease before you apply any of these alt lubes.

if i remove the seals on the bearings and use Phil Tenacious how often will i need to reapply the oil?

 

[RDV4ROUBAIX]

if i remove the seals on the bearings and use Phil Tenacious how often will i need to reapply the oil?

How often do you do a track or TT event? Should last a few times out, just as long as you don't let it go dry.

 

[purpletezza]

White industries. Going beyond track the freewheel rear hub is awesome. I have run them on my commuter for years and 1000's of kms and had no issues except repacing bearings. But bearings wear out in all hubs. Replacement bearings at $5-$10 each. Recently trise Hope hubs, they seem pretty good too.