Originally Posted by
rpenmanparker
Some critical thoughts:
* No data has been supplied to demonstrate any area superiority of the new Boyd hub over any other one. All the improvement claims are based on the notion that this particular design must be better. At least as far as the video is concerned. Other advertising materials may have more proof of concept.
* Speedy disassembly of hubs is cute but of little import. Inexpensive Taiwanese hubs are not all that difficult to disassemble with an Allen wrench, nor does it take very long.
* You can buy a lot of $40 aluminum freehub bodies for the price difference between the new Boyd hub and a Taiwanese hub like the ones sold by BHS.
* What is the angular travel to pawl engagement of other hubs?
* What is the weight of the Boyd hubs?
* Areas that are widely understood to need improvement in modern hubs are the differential rear flange spacing and or diameter from NDS to DS and/or the differential spoke tension from side to side that results. No mention was made of any improvement in this critical area.
* Wide flange spacing in front hubs is already readily available. See BHS for examples.
The new Boyd hubs are certainly slick. Whether all the features add up to any improvement in riding characteristics and durability (where the aluminum meets the road) has yet to be shown.
Yeah...comes down to cost/benefit. Boyd is wrong when he talks about rear bearing spacing of his design relative to the industry. Campy has two bearings in the freehub alone and Campy rear hub bearings are as outboard as Boyd rear hubs and it could be argued that the Campy freehub is better supported by having two bearings versus one. The devil is in the details and I just don't see any watershed with the Boyd hubs. In fact they maybe worse because even if the design is innovative, only test is hundreds of thousands of cycling miles to determine how robust the design really is.
The vast majority of owners won't notice an ounce of difference between Boyd hubs and those at half the price...same applies to CK and other pricey hubs.