Originally Posted by
TejanoTrackie
I've been following this thread for a while, and it seems to me that there are some misconceptions regarding cost versus quality of any any given product. Having worked for 35 years in the nuclear power industry, I am familiar with the cost of the government mandated zero failure rate requirement for all equipment that is used in domestic nuclear power stations. A common circuit breaker that might cost $50 in your neighborhood electrical parts store, will cost about $2000 when supplied to a nuclear power station. At first sight this might appear to be a total ripoff until you realize that each and every item must be exhaustively tested to meet every specified requirement and that perhaps as many as 50% of the manufactured parts will be rejected. So the expectation of zero defects in better than average products such as Phil Wood hubs is not reasonable, however, a much lower failure rate should be expected. Mihlbach had a bad experience with a Phil Wood BB, so he has biased his outlook on that basis. But unless more than one experiencial data point is collected, it is hard to compare the relative quality/value of different products. I could tell you that I have not 1, but 4 Phil BBs that are 25-35 years old, have all seen extensive hard use in all kinds of weather conditions and are still working smoothly today. However, that really does not mean much until it is compared with the outcome for a much larger sample from production over the years.
I agree with you and don't doubt your experiences with Phil BBs. In most instances, cost increases are exponential relative to failure rate or any other measure of "quality". That is true of bikes, bike parts, and many other products.
I'm not debating the quality of Phil Hubs, but I haven't seen convincing data suggesting that the failure rate of Phil Hubs is lower than any other hub, perhaps with the possible exception of bearings, which are cheap and easy to replace with any hub. Most of Phil's reputation, particularly among the FG/SS crowd, is based upon a cult-like following and has little to do with any sort of proven superiority. Even if it could be demonstrated that Phil hubs are less prone to failure, last longer, or whatever, hubs, in general, have very lower failure rates. Moreover, bike hubs and nuclear power plants have very different consequences when they malfunction. For bike parts, I'd rather pay exponentially less for something that is going to work 99.999% of the time rather than 99.9999% of the time, particularly if the most likely failure (such as premature bearing wear) is a gradual and non-catastrophic event that is cheaply repaired.