Folding Bikes - Which Front Hub for my Raleigh Twenty?

I was able to score a 36-hole 90mm front hub on ebay for $1 (R20 front fork spacing is 90mm) to build a new wheel and mothball for now the stock dynohub equipped steel wheel. While poking around in my garage I spied an old 26" steel wheel from an old 3-speed Ross. I checked the hub and it is also a 36-hole 90mm. The camera angle makes the bottom one appear wider, but they are both 90mm OLD. I cut it out of that wheel and cleaned and re-packed both hubs. Both had caged balls which I changed to all loose balls on both hubs. Now, which hub is better? The top one has thinner flanges and those flanges are closer together (also, the flanges are taller on the top hub). Bottom hub (Ross) has thicker flanges spaced further apart. Is one obviously better or is it a toss up?


http://i82.photobucket.com/albums/j242/hawkingnovember/DSCN7722.jpg

I have no idea who made either of those hubs so cannot comment on their quality... the bottom hub is period correct and has thicker flanges which will make for a better spoke fitting while the upper hub would probably rate spoke washers.

I am partial to re-spacing my R20 forks so I can run 100mm hubs although with my new R20 I want to leave things as correct as possible so will use a vintage Raleigh front hub for my new wheel build.

The vintage Raleigh hubs are very well made but you have to remember that the adjustable cone is only on one side and needs to be fitted on the non drive side and adjusted when the wheel is installed.

Sixty Fiver, I'm kind of leaning towards the silver hub on visual grounds, but I just measured the flanges of both hubs with a micrometer and they're the same so that's not a factor anymore.

I vote the silver hub. FWIW if you are playing with Raleigh branded hubs the older the better. IIRC somewhere around 1964 or so they changed the way they were hardening the cones and the later ones are not nearly as good as the earlier ones.

Aaron :)