Originally Posted by
cyccommute
Huh? This may have been true about 30 years ago when Shimano introduced the freehub but that’s no longer the case. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of hubs that use the bearings that use Shimano’s style of freehub. I would agree that using a freewheel hub is a bad idea but there are lots and lots of other choices. Some of those choices even use more bearings to carry more weight than Shimano does. Phil Wood, for a very expensive example, uses 4 bearings on the axle, 3 of which are on the drive side. Most all boutique hubs use the same bearing set up.
Mate, I'm not talking about the difference between a freewheel hub and a freehub. I'm talking about the difference between a proper Shimano-style freehub and everything else.
Your vaunted Phil Wood hubs, as far as I'm aware, are the same crappy design as all the other pretenders: undo a locknut or something on the axle, and the cassette body just falls out of the hub. The drive side axle bearing is inside the freehub ratchet bearings, not outside where it should be. This requires a ridiculous amount of over-engineering to compensate for, and I'm not sure even the likes of Phil Wood or Campy
has fully compensated for the weakness this introduces.
Mavic does something similar to Shimano, but the inboard ratchet bearing is a poxy bushing, so they're junk. That only leaves Alex and Joytech as far as I'm aware. So Shimano, hands down.