Thursday, April 20, 2006

6T Cassette Hub

I've been hearing rumours over the last month that a certain company will be bringing out a new cassette hub this september that will just blow away all other hubs. I'm always sceptical about such rumours, and they normally just pass through one ear and straight out the other...

But yesterday, I received confirmation that it's all true, and have some juicy details. Not entirely sure if I'm allowed to share this, so I won't give away the name of the company just yet... Anyways, this new cassette hub is gonna be ultra light. Prototypes weigh in at a mere 216g - that's lighter than a lot of the light weight front hubs out there! How do they do this? It's going to have a titanium axle and a 6T titanium driver. Yep, that's not a typo, it really does say 6T! This is made possible because they've replaced the bearings in the driver with a ceramic bush(?), and so allowing for a smaller driver diameter. One of the advantages of this is that there are no longer any driver bearings to blow up! To complement the hub, they're also bringing out some special cranks which have the spider bolt hole moved futher inwards to allow running of a smaller sprocket.

Is this madness? Or is this the next break through in hub technology? I guess we'll have to wait until September to find out. Happy waiting weight freaks!

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