Freehub vs. Freewheel

[thephat]

Originally Posted by el_d00der1n0

oddly enough, after all of that trouble looking for a 20t cog, i've found 18t is just perfect for me.

White Industries makes the trials freewheel in 18 tooth. With the trials FW, you have plenty of engagement points.

I used to be obsessed with instant engagement, but now I am not doing as much ratcheting of the cranks, and I don't care as much about engagement points.

There is also reliability to consider. I feel DT, and King own this category. WI is good though.

If you are thinking of Paul hubs, I would recomend White Inustries hubs instead.

Originally Posted by brownlandshark

You are more likely to break an axle on a freewheel set up than a freehub.

Why?

Originally Posted by el_d00der1n0

so, if i put a 75 dollar white ind. freewheel on a 125 dollar paul word, it would engage as well as a 500 chris king?

Pretty close if you use the trials version, which only comes in 18T.

[el_d00der1n0]

Originally Posted by thephat

I used to be obsessed with instant engagement, but now I am not doing as much ratcheting of the cranks, and I don't care as much about engagement points.

I never noticed until I went SS. The freehub I have converted has like 20 points.

[drclark]

I am most concerned with ease of maintenance and parts compatibility, especially if I am on a bike-vacation or when I used to travel to do the national series races. If you manage to break or bend a cog in the middle of west virginia, are you more likely to find a freewheel cogset or a freehub cassette at a small town bikeshop? (Note: I admit this is a geared-bike centric view... didn't realize this was primarily a SS thread)

I've never noticed or thought about "engagement lag", so I'm not sure how it affects my riding. I've never done any SS riding, so I don't know why SS'ers might be more sensitive to it than riding with gears.

As for cost, I have a set of chris king hubs I bought 10 yrs ago that are still going strong. They probabaly have several thousand miles on them, and they've only been apart once for lubrication. The only problem with them is that I bought them before disc brakes were popular and I only have two bikes that are still vee-brake equiped. They might be expensive, but they'll last forever.

drc

[Abui]

Originally Posted by drclark

I've never noticed or thought about "engagement lag", so I'm not sure how it affects my riding. I've never done any SS riding, so I don't know why SS'ers might be more sensitive to it than riding with gears.

drc

The sweet spot in which you can effectively apply torque gets smaller as the gearing gets higher (and the slope increases). On a geared bike you just gear down. On an SS you ratchet the cranks back to recover the sweet spot. You don't want any part of the arc wasted by sloppy engagement.