Bicycle Hubs
Your bicycle's road performance depends on many parts working seamlessly together. As long as they are working smoothly, there are many parts you may easy to overlook, including your bicycle's hubs.
The hub is easily identified as the center of your bicycle's wheel. The axle is fitted through the hub, which is connected by spokes to your bicycles rim. This configuration allows your wheels to spin.
What Is a Bike Hub And What Does It Do?
- Allows the wheel to spin freely
- The central part of a wheel
What is the Front Hub?
Your front bike wheel consists of a metal body with set of bearings on each end. These bearing types can be:
- Adjustable cup and cone with loose ball bearings inside bearing race held by locknuts
- Cartridge type bearings pressing in as a single unit
Adjustable type bearings can be adjusted while the cartridge type bearings are not and are available as:
- A thread-on freewheel
- Freehub type-an additional cassette cog attaches to the freehub.
What is the Rear Hub?
The rear bike hub allows the bicycle wheel to spin freely. It attaches the bicycle wheel to the frame. Lastly, it transfers the driving force of your pedaling into the back wheel (typically through a chain and rear socket).
A bicycle rear hub consists of:
- Bearings
- Axle
- Body and wheel spokes
- Sprocket for transferring pedaling power
These bike hub types include:
- Geared (single or fixed gear)
- Internal gear hubs
- External derailleur hubs with cassettes
Which Hub Is Best For Your Bike?
Switching out your hubs for more lightweight and quality hubs is possible, as is finding replacement hubs for hubs that are defective and broken. These allow you to add in a bike accessory that was not included straight out of the box.
Bicycle wheels with cartridge bearings are worn out with time, requiring the entire cartridge unite to be replaced.
Before you choose one though, you must take into consideration your bicycle's:
- Type
- Axle dimensions - it must be compatible with the fork axle
- Budget
- Your riding preferences/locations
- Bearing type
- Rims- must have matching number/type of spoke holes
A wheelset designed for a lightweight cycling bike will never sustain a cyclist during a strenuous mountain biking adventure. Naturally, when it comes to use, a road bike for cycling is subjected to fewer forces than those exerted on a mountain bike hub.
Consequently, they are simpler and more lightweight. So before you purchase a bicycle hub, consider which road you will be taking.