Everythings cheaper up north...
Well, you can't argue with the price. This is about as good as it gets for a 20mm front hub, and a 10mm bolt-thru rear hub. These hubs will run you a total of £80 for both front and rear hubs from the Yorkshire based outfit On-One (or is it Planet-X? I can never tell).Close competition comes from Superstar's Switch EVO hubs, which are £20 more but do have four cartridge bearings at the rear, Halo's Spin Doctor, Octane One Orbitals, DMR Revolver 3-pawl, the inevitable Shimano offerings - SLX at this price point, and of course a huge number of others I haven't listed. It's a fairly competitive sector of the hub market - although the prices for through-axle style hubs have yet to drop to the level of QR hubs.
On One?
Well, no, only "sort of". On-One are not Hope - so no in-house manufacture here. These are the product of the Chosen Hub Co. of Taiwan (you might have guessed it was a rebrand from the price). Anyway, lets take a look inside...In One
The front hub is very much what you'd expect, an aluminium shell, with two bearings and a hollow aluminium axle holding it all together. A full set of adaptors come with it, standard QR, 15mm and 20mm forks are all catered for. Groovy. The shell looks quite nice. Not a huge amount to see here, but the major win is the fact that all the adaptors are in the box, included in the purchase price. The second win is the bearings, made by EZO (6805 - again, standard stuff), they're not bad at all.One More
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| 3 pawl freehub, definitely made by Chosen |
One Up
Plus: front hub includes 3 adaptors, rear hub includes 10mm QR, rock bottom price, decent bearings.Minus: rear hub has needle bearings in the freehub. With these being Chosen Hub Co, I'm willing to bet the freehub will be made
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| Front & adaptors | Rear | Complete bundle |
One for the (Off) Road
Overall? Yes, I'm happy with these hubs, so far, with one reservation.I'm mainly concerned with the freehub life, partly the bearings inside (which I expect will need greasing regularly - it doesn't have the finest weatherproof sealing), but also the cassette splines outside. I reckon the freehub unit will be the weakpoint of the hubset. Pawl life is an unknown at this point, and although the 3-pawl freehub is a very common design, the life will the freehub will also depend on quality of pawls, pawl springs and the ring the pawls engage in: the springs used are simple leaf springs, not coils, and I don't know how the drive ring is held in to the hub shell, pressed, screw-in? It would be nice if On-One were listing replacement freehubs - as they do for older hubs, so I'm sure they will at some stage.
By way of a comparison, one of the major upsides of the only-slightly-more-expensive DMR 3 pawl Revolver is the fact that a new (bushed, no cartridge bearings) freehub assembly is about £13. That's cheap enough to consider it "servicing" money.
What would be nice?
I'd like to see a steel freehub shell (or one of those alloy ones with a steel key). You can't have everything, I guess. Instead I have to find another XT or 990 cassette for these, to stop as much spline chewing as possible. Edit: spare freehubs for servicing would also be good to have available.I'd also like to see the 12mm version of the rear hub available. Chosen seem to list it as a variant - so maybe On-One will start stocking the different axle and end caps? It doesn't really bother me very much, as my personal intended use is in regular dropouts - but the 142x12mm axle option opens up their market a bit and might be a deal-breaker for many customers.
The 2012/2013 Chosen Hub Catalogue is here: http://www.chosen-hubs.com/files_datas/CHOSEN.pdf and I think the hub types are (listed in the MTB-DH section) DA4541B and DA8187BP-135. However, that rear hub shows 4 sealed bearings; so this isn't quite that hub, but one of their other DH rear hubs has the roller bearing freehub. I'd make a small wager on the freehubs being interchangeable.
Edit: If I'd looked properly, I'd have noticed the catalogue shows DA8187BP-135 has 2 bearings and a bushing. So, maybe this is exactly that hub...
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| EZO 6805 in front hub | KOYO 6002 in rear hub | Drive ring in rear hub + EZO6902 |
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| Rear Axle | End caps, non-drive side circlip | Needle rollers inside freehub |
Disassembly & Service
Front:
Type - Chosen Hub DA4541B (unconfirmed)
- 20mm adaptors are just a push fit. They were very tight - I used the 15mm axle to gradually lever them free, bit by bit.
- The 20mm axle is a push fit in the bearings. Tap out with rubber mallet, one bearing will be freed along with the axle
- Pop the bearing from axle using a soft jawed vice to support the bearing.
- Use the axle to press the other brearing out.
- "Reassembly is the reverse of disassembly"
- Bearings: 2x EZO 6805 (25x37x7)
Rear:
Type - Chosen Hub DA8187BP-135 (unconfirmed)- Pull non drive side cap off by hand
- Use a 17mm cone spanner on drive side cap
- Freehub can now be removed by hand
- Pick out the non-drive side circlip
- Tap the axle out from drive side with rubber mallet
- Non drive bearing comes out with axle
- Pop bearing from axle
- Use the axle to press drive side bearing from shell
- The freehub requires a special tool to get at the needle bearing - it may well be far easier & cheaper to simply replace the freehub as a complete unit.
- Bearings: 1x KOYO 6002 (15x32x9), 1x EZO 6902 (15x28x9), 1x needle roller (unknown type or dimensions)
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