Thanks to one of our inside sources, we scored this outline of DT Swiss’ new 11-speed road hubs. If you recall, all of their 2013 road bike hubs will be 11-speed, and there are rumors swirling that Shimano and SRAM will offer an extra cog soon.
This diagram specifically calls out Shimano, which means it’ll fit SRAM, too. Top half is the new 11-speed, bottom half shows current 10-speed for their 240 rear hub. The important numbers here are:
- Spoke Flange Spacing doesn’t change -50mm on both hubs- so no theoretical reduction of triangulation. The angles may change, which wouldn’t play in favor of the drive side, but that can be fixed relatively easily with offset spoke drillings on rims. Or just having the rim sit 1mm further to the left inside the frame.
- Freehub Body Width only grows 1.8mm. If you consider that Mavic’s current FTS-L freehub road wheels are 37mm wide and require their 2mm spacer to work with Shimano/SRAM cassettes, they shouldn’t need any adaptation to work with 11-speed offerings from either brand.
- Total Hub Width only grows by 1mm. This puts the hub at 131mm wide, which will fit into a standard 130mm spaced road frame with no problem and likely cause no alignment issues.
Some of the other numbers indicate the smallest cog may sit about 1mm to 2mm closer to the dropout, meaning some current gen frames might have clearance issues. We suspect it’ll be a very, very limited problem.
What all this does mean is that the chain is almost certainly going to be narrower, as will the space between cogs.
Looking forward, it’ll be interesting to see how they fit disc brake rotor mounts on here. As if it weren’t already pretty much a done deal, this all but seals the deal for 135mm rear spacing when discs take over the world.
The unadulterated graphic.
Just for fun, here’s the visual difference between Campagnolo’s Super Record 11-speed (left) and the new SRAM Red 10-speed (right). Looks like about 1.2mm difference between cogs.
Oddly, chain width isn’t much different at all. Granted, this isn’t a high tech piece of measuring equipment, but you can see a bit more space between the next-to-top cog and the chain’s outer plate. (Campy on left)
