Originally Posted by
mander
It's an "intuitive" word with no technical meaning. People debate the relative "smoothness" of different hubs, some mf in this very thread claimed that loose balls are "smooth" but phils are "smooth" in a different way... but no one can actually say what it means. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that no bfssfger who runs their mouth about this stupid **** has ever looked at a chart comparing friction coefficients (or whatever the actual technical terminology is, I don't understand this stuff either) for different hubs. Let alone what kind of difference that would make on the track or off. My guess is, it's certainly not something you could ever notice without careful use of a stopwatch under controlled conditions. I could barely tell when my hub was just about locked up from a cartridge bearing exploding... it felt like a mild headwind.
But if I pull off my cartridge bearing front hub from my fixed gear, and my loose ball front from my road bike and spin them i can certainly feel a difference. I havent ever read coefficient charts or anything of that sort, but I can certainly feel a less "smooth" roll when I spin both hubs, as well as notice a considerable difference in how long said wheels will spin for. If you REALLY want your hubs to spin, you would use a thinner grease, as has been common in many cycling events in the past.