Photo from the collection of Jeff Archer of First Flight Bicycles. If you think you know what this is, post your answer in the ‘comments’ section– the correct answer will be posted there on Tuesday!
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That is a “Real” front hub. I currently have one on my 26″ single speed beater. If you rotate the axl it would show the label. Another cool feature is that the axl is threaded internally at the ends so it “bolts on” to the fork so that it doesn’t easily get stolen without a tool. Not to stiff to say the least but free to me and works just fine for a super fun beater bike.
Everyone who guessed Hershey got it right. At Real Design, we made a few of these, but never any in 3DV purple (that color craze had passed by the time we started making hubs and I refused to do more…)
The end caps are the give away, our Real hubs didn’t have any gap between the shoulder and the bearing race.
…after some thought, I recall that we did a few axles for some of these as a ‘joint venture’ with Greg, though not many. So to RobO, you might have one of the few prototypes or small run we did of the Real laser etching on these. But we never did 3DV purple….though there may be a few gold ones out there!
