At Sea Otter, Novatec showed off a clever take on the singlespeed hub, using a wider shell to take up the space left by the missing cogs. Now, they’ve turned their attention to the inside of the freehub body. Consider that we’ve been turning our rear wheels around by putting all of our torque into a contact patch between pawl and tooth that’s barely a couple square millimeters. But we’re riding harder than ever, and e-bikes are further challenging this potential weak link. To solve this problem, Novatec simply made the pawls and teeth wider, effectively adding 50% to 100% more contact area for heavy duty applications like enduro and DH.
Like the KMC chains we saw, they’re also looking at the differences between people-powered bikes and those getting an electric assist. To better handle the added torque from the motor, they’re creating an offset, dual pawl system that puts about half the load on one tooth inside the ratchet ring, and half on the next tooth…in an alternating pattern.
2019 Novatec Jetfly SL
