Friday, March 5, 2010

More rear hub information

I know, I'm getting redundant. One of the things that's bugged me about my delightful rear hub (with 14mm adapters from the manufacturer!) is the hollow rear axle. During the light rail portion of my morning commute I decided to take the issue to the source and e-mailed Halo about it directly.

My query:
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I have one of your Spin Doctor Pro DH hubs, and I was wondering why the axle is hollow. Is part HUHAPRA1 actually a solid axle? I was under the impression that the DH model was a MTB with a HUHAPRA1 already installed, but was surprised to find a hollow axle.

Also, just an FYI, as far as I know the SD Pro DH with the 14mm axe men is the only hub that can fit a 135mm x 14mm frame without modifications, and I'm grateful you make it. I use it in my Yuba Mundo cargo bike. Thanks for making a hub that fits this monster of a frame and lets me run a normal drivetrain.

-Dave Proctor, Portland, Oregon, USA
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Their response:
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Hi David,
Thanks for the e-mail and props for our hubs.
You are correct the axles that come in the DH hubs are hollow and the after-market axles are solid.
This is a peculiar situation that we are still trying to get to the bottom of with our manufacturers!
Cheers
Matt
Matt Andrews
Sales & Marketing Manager
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So the aftermarket axle is solid! Not that I've had a problem with the hollow one, but the load capacity has got to be higher for the solid axle. It's not too expensive either, too bad it's out of stock at BTI.

Also, Halo appears to make some generic 14mm axle adapters that might work better than the ones Yuba sells:

huha-axle-adapt-cro
The outer flange would act as a nice big washer, too bad it's not serrated. I bet a few minutes with a sharp file would fix that.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Heck, those are a standard BMX part - pretty much every BMX company makes them. Cheap, too. You just need to know to ask for them in a shop that does soem BMX. Val

melanthius said...

These looked different because the flanges are huge! I know the Dimension ones have tiny little flanges, and the ones that Yuba sells (I think they're from Wheels Mfg?) don't have flanges at all. If they are a standard BMX part, that's awesome, and Yuba should be carrying them instead of recommending people gouge their dropouts by using a tiny little axle nut or QR nut on a 14mm dropout.

I'd love to know who else makes something like this, preferably not a UK-based company using far east manufacturing, also not my local contract machine shop. I really miss having access to a machine shop...