MountainBikeWheel.net
Home > Guide > Hubs
 |
|---|
If you're considering purchasing a mountain bike wheel, you must have many questions. Should you buy factory build wheelsets from powerful brands like Shimano? Or maybe you can pick your own components - hubs, spokes, and rims – and build your own sets of wheels. Before you embark on this, you should consider this: the core of any high performing wheel is the hub.
Mountain bike wheel hub consists of an axle, bearings and a hub shell. Some hubs have attachments for disc brakes or form a main part of drum brakes. Hubs have several duties, and depending on how well they perform these duties will determine how well your bike will perform. Namely, the main function of a hub is its bearing structure and rolling resistance. If rolling resistance is lessened, acceleration is enhanced. Basically, what you want is more distance with less effort. Mountain bike hubs should provide strength and reliability, and most importantly, faultless rotation of the wheels.
The main feature of the rear hub is the engagement system. Most hubs use a pawl design. When you speed up, the pawls bite into the central driven gear (inside the hub) and the wheel turns. When you stop pedaling and start to coast the graded side of the pawls slide over the gear teeth and your rear wheel spins freely. Usually there is a slight humming sound made when the pawls slide over the gear teeth. Most hubs have between 3 and 5 drive pawls and 24 engagement teeth, which allow a limited amount of engagement spots on the driven gear. .
There are quite a few types of mountain bike hubs, depending on the needs. For instance, heavy duty hubs are designed to be as strong and are a bit weighty. Mostly used in down hill bikes, as the extra weight helps speed up your time.
Mountain bike hubs are the ones that keep you going even on the roughest terrains imaginable. They provide with strength and reliability, while allowing for a seamless rotation of the wheels. Another type of mountain bike hubs is designed for normal street use. They are not made to handle rough terrain, more suited for standard urban bikers.
Lastly, we have the mountain bike hub designed for trial bikes. These bikes must be light and strong at the same time. Most mountain bike hubs designed for trial bikes are made from alloy materials, likes titanium alloys. The purpose of this is to provide tremendous resilience. More over, these hubs should very light in weight as compared to other types of hubs. Due to being manufactured in high tech laboratories they tend to be costly, and depending on your needs, well worth it.