Phil Wood held out long enough, but the demand finally outweighed excuses and now they have a Centerlock hub option. You’ll find it compatible with their 135 QR and 142 thru axle systems. They’ll also offer new end caps are available to convert their 15mm thru axle hubs to 12mm thru or QR for road, cyclocross and gravel bikes.
Retail will be $450 rear for the rear, $220 front. Weight is TBA, but expect it to be slightly lighter than their 6-bolt hubs due to a lot of material missing (see how much thicker and more metal there is on that silver one in the background?). They’re Available now in silver and black for immediate shipment, other colors as requested and done in batches.
They share the same 5-pawl freehub body as the original hubs, which were updated last year (along with lots of other stuff worth revisiting!) to use individual wire springs for each pawl rather than a single spring running all the way around.
Phil Wood also has new 1” threadless headsets, by request from the fixed gear crowd. Will be available in about 2 months in their full range of colors. Retail will be $150. Find them at PhilWood.com.
Alto Cycling
Last year, Alto Cycling updated their mountain bike thru axle hubs to prevent over tightening. Now, they’ve carried that design over for 12mm thru axles for disc brake road, gravel and cyclocross bikes. One of their big claims to fame are the insanely smooth hubs, which comes from the non-compressible axle design of the original quick release models. To replicate that with a thru axle, they had to redesign things a bit.
It works by having a one-piece axle that runs all the way through both bearings, like most hubs, but puts a threaded preload adjuster on the non-drive side. This adjuster isn’t there to load the bearings, it simply takes up any slack in the system and sets the end caps where they need to be. On the rotor side, the end cap is part of the axle. On the driveside, the cap presses onto the axle…
…and hits a lip to prevent it from being pushed into the bearings as you tighten the thru axle to secure the wheel to your fork or frame. This keeps the bearings spinning freely with no side pressure on them, and allows them to be set as wide as possible. Check them out this video we did that explains their hub system, and find them at AltoCycling.com.
