Does anyone have recommendations re. Phil Wood touring hubs? I have read the discussions of cones vs sealed bearings and am considering Phil Wood if we go with sealed bearings. Do Phil Wood hubs require frequent service? Can anyone/any bike shop service them easily if needed? We are looking for extremely reliable hubs that require minimal service, and ones that can be serviced/repaired easily anywhere in the world.
We bought Chris King hubs for our new touring bikes and found they were not what we wanted (a very expensive lesson). Billed as extremely reliable and not requiring much service, we found they did not live up to the expectation. With less than 3000 miles on our hubs as we started our tour (in the US and Canada), we began experiencing problems (failure to engage) within the first 500 miles. Each bike shop we stopped at was reluctant to work on them as they require special tools and most shops don't have them. When we finally found a shop that could work on them my wheel was pretty much unusable, he rebuilt it with loaner parts and lent us a wheel for my wife so we could continue. A question that has come up frequently was "when did you have them serviced...?" That implies that the CK hubs need frequent service, something I don't want to have to cope with while touring - if I did I would go with cones and repack them every x000 miles... Historically, I have found that cheaper hubs (Campy) require minimal service and I usually don't have to do anything but keep the cones properly adjusted, repack them after about 10000 miles and they'll go for 20000 miles or more. Touring would probably require more mx than that though and I doubt they'd go as far. Chris King didn't work well for us, we ndon't want to repeat a bad (expensive) experience with Phil Wood hubs. Hopefully if we spend $ for Phil Wood they'll go for 20000 miles with minimal maintenance, otherwise it's not worth doing...
We bought Chris King hubs for our new touring bikes and found they were not what we wanted (a very expensive lesson). Billed as extremely reliable and not requiring much service, we found they did not live up to the expectation. With less than 3000 miles on our hubs as we started our tour (in the US and Canada), we began experiencing problems (failure to engage) within the first 500 miles. Each bike shop we stopped at was reluctant to work on them as they require special tools and most shops don't have them. When we finally found a shop that could work on them my wheel was pretty much unusable, he rebuilt it with loaner parts and lent us a wheel for my wife so we could continue. A question that has come up frequently was "when did you have them serviced...?" That implies that the CK hubs need frequent service, something I don't want to have to cope with while touring - if I did I would go with cones and repack them every x000 miles... Historically, I have found that cheaper hubs (Campy) require minimal service and I usually don't have to do anything but keep the cones properly adjusted, repack them after about 10000 miles and they'll go for 20000 miles or more. Touring would probably require more mx than that though and I doubt they'd go as far. Chris King didn't work well for us, we ndon't want to repeat a bad (expensive) experience with Phil Wood hubs. Hopefully if we spend $ for Phil Wood they'll go for 20000 miles with minimal maintenance, otherwise it's not worth doing...
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