You'd also think they could make a sealed cartridge bearing hub, but they choose not to in spite of the obvious shortcomings of cup and cone setups.
36 isn't enough?
Air shifting is so 1999. The new hottness is midget shifting! You have a little guy strapped to your chain stay that uses a lever connected to the derail. You don't even need to know the shifting up/down high/low terminology. You just yell harder or easier. All the blackbox riders are going to be using them this season. I even heard Sram gave Sam Hill two midgets, one for up and one to shift down. And keeping with the whole truvativ naming formula, all the midgets are named Gunther. Look for the "Womens Specific" midgets, Helga, around early 2011
The idea behind it is correct. Ideally a hub should have angular contact bearings like of those we find in a headset, but that would likely greatly increase the cost of a hubset based on the necessary size it would need to be as angular contact bearings are a good bit more expensive than your normal ball bearing. Shimano gets around this by essentially making a cheap angular contact bearing assembly in their hubs. Of course one of the biggest detriments to angular contact bearings is flaking and failure due to an excessive axial preloading. Shimano hubs need to be preloaded, and therefore they usually fail.
Hmmmm.
Hell no. 72 at least, 108 ideally (spoken like a true Hadley fan).
I agree, they're great in theory because of the angular bearings. But in reality, the cones often come loose, and when they get grit and stuff in them, they kill the entire hub body because the cups get pitted. You can't just replace $10 worth of bearings and have the thing good to go again.
Yes, but you also NEED to maintain them a lot more than cartridge bearing hubs. Even my cheap-arse WTB hubs went FIVE YEARS without me having to do anything to the bearings. Five years. Try and get two months out of a cup and cone setup that you're riding hard without needing to adjust it at least.
In 2008 Shimano started making lighter XT hubs and they are also 36 pt 10 degree engagement which is comparable or better than the hubs made by hope, mavic (improved for 09 though), and a few others. Yes there are others that are even better but 10 degree is not bad.
They had them for skunk riders in the mid 90's. Never made it to market though.
I managed to get over 2 years out of an XT hub, never touched it once. Then again it was in a Demo 8, so there was pretty much 0 lateral loads on the thing. Not saying they're great, but I have had good experiences.
So what arguments would you have to support companies like I9, Hadley and King if Shimano makes a 108 poe cartrige bearing hub that costs half of the other offerings? You are trying to put your favourite companies out of buisness!
Seriously, a good loose ball hub can be phenomenal if set up properly. I've got a pair of 20+ year old Campy Record hubs in my basement somewhere that are unbelievably smooth, even after all these years. Loose ball hubs tend to get a bad rap, I think, because 1) nobody makes really great ones anymore and 2) some people just can't set them up properly.
And Sram. Talk about changing two extremes.
that is awesome, I can't wait.
Can't wait.
Saint hub races can be removed from the hub body.
