joejack951

Not counting a replacement front hub for the one I cracked on a massive pothole in the rain at night, my American Classic hubs cost me $315 and so far have gone around 25,000 miles without any service. If they need anything, it will be some cheap cartridge bearings and eventually a freehub if the paws ever wear out.

Clipped_in

I have a set of DA9000 hubs. Pretty hard to beat at any price. Impossible to beat at that price. The one downside is the minimum 24 hole drilling which may dissuade some from using them on a set of race wheels.

So there's an interesting question. What are the aerodynamic gains of an 18 spoke (or 20) radial laced front wheel vs a 24 spoke radial laced front wheel. It is widely accepted that there is a difference. How much?

[thread hijack alert]

KBentley57

Assuming the same rim, hub, spokes, and tires, but only different drilling and number of spokes, a good approximation is probably 4/3 the spoke drag of the 18 spoke wheel. Something like Drag_total = Drag_(tire+rim) + Drag_hub + Drag_spokes. Where the only different in the total drag is in the last term, where the difference in the drag terms is proportional to the ratio of the spoke count.

FBinNY 

Yes, there's a difference, and it might even be measurable at higher speeds. As a rough guess (as pointed out above) the total drag would be reduced by 25% of the drag contributed by th spokes themselves, with the portion caused by the rim and tire unchanged. The 25% estimate because as spokes get closer spaced they get some slipstream benefit, that's reduced on low spoke wheels.

The net effect will be higher with a wheel spinning in place, as on rollers, but the rim/tire factor would be higher on a moving bike, reducing the benefit for racing.

But whether there's a difference is the wrong question. The right question would qualify that by asking whether there was a material or meaningful benefit in real world use. The answer to that is NO, because total spoke induced drag is too small a percentage of total drag to matter.