Interbike 2009 – New Chris King Swift Road Racing Hubs, Inset Headset and Tools

INTERBIKE 2009 - Chris King is showing off their new Swift road hubs, an ultralight set of racing hubs that come in around 320g per pair!

It’s a completely new hub with different internals than their classic road hubs, and they’re the first King hubs that are made to allow radial lacing.    They have low spoke count options, including 20/24/28/32 hole (front) and 24/28/32 hole (rear) drillings.  The hubs are sold separately and weights and pricing are:

• Front: 105g – $149
• Rear: 215g – $349

A big part of the weight savings comes from the new Titanium Ring Drive internals.  The all-new drive mechanism uses 45 teeth rather than King’s standard 72 tooth configuration.  Despite being Ti, they still come with a 5-year warranty.

They’re available in all of Chris King’s colors: Black, Silver, Navy, Red, Green, Mango, Pink, Pewter, Gold and Brown.  We asked why they didn’t have white and the answer was because you can’t anodize white, it has to be painted…but they acknowledged that it would be awesome.  They’re made in standard road widths, 100mm front and 130mm rear with 17mm diameter aluminum axles for use with normal QR skewers.  Freehub is 8/9/10 speed compatible with Shimano and SRAM cassettes.  Lastly, they use low-friction bearing seals.

Hit ‘more’ for lots of photos and to see their new Inset Low-Stack Headset and some new frame prep tools…

Front (above) and rear (below) in Red.

Rear in Orange showing radial lacing on non-drive side.

Green shown with full radial lacing on front (above) and radial non-drive on rear (below).

Not shown, they also have a new 15mm ISo Front Disc Brake mountain bike hub that’s compatible with 15QR suspension forks.  It’s available in two models, an SD hubshell and an LD hubshell that’s based on a 20mm axle.  There are also retrofit kits to convert your existing King hubs into 15mm axle hubs.  They have adustable bearing preload without removing the hub from the fork, too.  $179 MSRP, available in 28/32/36 hole drillings. 5-Year warranty.

The new Chris King InSet sealed bearing low stack NoThreadSet is designed to with with the newer mountain bikes that have inset headsets.  They’re available now and come in three versions: 1-1/8″ (120g – $129), Tapered (170g – $149) and Mixed Tapered (150g – $149).  The Mixed Tapered uses an inset upper and standard outboard bottom section.  They use aluminum cups and bearing cap with stainless steel bearings and are available in all the King colors (some colors not available until end of year).  10 year warranty as with all King headsets.

Chris King has also launched a new line of Ream and Face tools for Inset Sealed Bearing Headsets.  They’re available in a range of sizes to fit different size ranges of head tubes and configurations.  They come in Small Diameter and Large Diameter kits, and the latter requires parts from the former to function properly.  Available to the Trade only, not intended for (or for sale to) consumers.  Yeah, we know, that just makes you want them even more, but seriously, how often would you use these? They are designed to use a soy-based cutting lube that’s exclusively theirs.

Last but not least, they’ve created a SRAM specific bottom bracket (118g vs 106 for Shimano version).  In reality, it’s the same bottom bracket, except it has a self-expanding spacer (that bronze bit between the red bearing cup and the inside of the crank in the photo above) and a sleeve that fits over SRAM’s tapered axle on the non-drive side.  The bearings and cups themselves are the same as the Shimano compatible bottom brackets.  They come with a 5-year warranty and cost $129.  They’re available in both 68mm and 73mm versions.