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Rotor engages innovative RVOLVER radial cylindrical pawl bike hubs

Written by Cory Benson Aug 25, 2017 8:59 a.m. ET

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Rotor’s all new Spanish-made Rvolver hubs take a completely unique approach to engaging a freehub body with the hub. Most basic designs use flat, spring-loaded pawls to ratchet along & grab a toothed ring in the hub to transfer power, but Rotor wasn’t satisfied with that standard solution’s friction. Instead the Rvolver uses a series of cylindrical posts set at an angle into the cassette body and an engagement ring that moves out-of-the-way when freewheeling to cut down on drag even more…

The interface of those cylindrical pawls & the precisely machined floating ratchet ring are what really set the hub design apart. And for now we have just this one image of how they look from inside the hub. The cylinders are not set straight into the alloy body. But instead they sit at an angle, offering less friction when freewheeling, but plenty of bit when you put power to the pedals. Then their round shape means that when you coast, they push the engagement ring away into the hub shell a few millimeters where it is out-of-the-way from friction a bit more. Pedal forward and the top edge of the cylinders grab the tooth ring and pull it back into line for full power engagement. The totally unique design cuts down on internal friction and apparently helped Rotor keep the hubs very light as well.

The Rvolver hubs offer 25 point of engagement between what looks like 5 cylindrical pawls and the floating toothed ring to connect every 14.4°. Looking at that cassette body, it may even be possible to add 5 more pawls to cut that engagement time in half.

Rotor has developed the system into two basic hub sets – rim & 6-bolt disc brakes. That means they have you covered for everything from classic road to road disc to mountain with Boost spacing (you can build standard MTB on the road disc hubs we presume). All of the hubs get extended hub flanges optimized for either standard or 2:1 lacing, all with J-bend spokes and sealed bearings. The 7075 machined alloy hubs are all made in-house by Rotor at their factory just outside of Madrid, Spain.

Road rim brake hubs

Road disc brake hubs

Mountain Boost disc brake hubs

Cory Benson

4,468 articles

Cory Benson is the EU Tech Editor of Bikerumor.com.

Cory has been writing about mountain bikes, enduro, cyclocross, all-road, gravel bikes & bikepacking for over 25 years, even before the industry created some of these names. Prior to Bikerumor, Cory was a practicing Architect specializing in environmental sustainability, has designed bike shops & bike components, and worked as a bike shop mechanic.

Based in the Czech Republic for 15+ years, he is a technical mountain biker, adventurous gravel rider, and short & medium-haul bikepacker. Cory travels extensively across Europe riding bikes, meeting with key European product developers, industry experts & tastemakers for an in-depth review of what’s new, and what’s coming next.

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Pawel Planeta

7 years ago

“Spanish-made” – sounds funny 😉

7 years ago

Innovation is always good. But seriously…freewheel drag?! BR, if you’re publishing the marketing literature, publish the data alongside it.

Wiscomark

7 years ago

Reply to SB

The site is called BikeRumor. What do you want from them?

Beat_the_trail

7 years ago

Reply to SB

If you’ve ever owned a Mavic Kysrium hub with a bushing and a labyrinth seal, then you’ll appreciate less drag.

myke2241

7 years ago

There appears to be some engagement lag. Maybe the hub has a more positive feel while riding. The video is less than convincing though

Chader

7 years ago

Reply to myke2241

The “lag” you mention is present in nearly every hub on the planet. Per the text above:

“The Rvolver hubs offer 25 point of engagement between what looks like 5 cylindrical pawls and the floating toothed ring to connect every 14.4°”

360* / 25 engagement points = 14.4* between engagement points

So, no surprises here. Some hubs are better, some are worse with respect to engagement delay.

If that matters to a person, they just have to choose the one that meets their needs.

sal

7 years ago

Reply to Chader

‘Lag’ and ‘engagement’ are different things.

Yes, it does look like there’s lag in the system between forward motion of the freehub body and when the piston-things interface with the ring.

Chader

7 years ago

Reply to sal

Yes, technically they are different, but one leads directly to the other.

Lag is any delay from the moment of pedaling input to the moment the hub actually rotates.

The number of engagement points essentially dictates the lag.

The 25 engagement points in this design yields a 14.4° lag.

Greg

7 years ago

Reply to Chader

With clutched systems like this and American Classic, there is extra rotation do so the engagement, so more lag than the degrees of engagement would suggest. If a ratchet on a conventional system has a huge back cut, it would also lead to extra lag

bart

7 years ago

It will be interesting to see how it wears, but super nice to see more companies moving past pawls which seem to the weak spot in many designs… at least through what I see in my world.

Tim

7 years ago

Not a lot of points if engagement there. But- as another commenter noted, if lots of p.o.e. are your thing, there are other hubs that have that.

Zoso

7 years ago

Too much room for fine dust to work it’s way in there. Maybe for the tarmac though.

thesteve4761

7 years ago

And what do you do when the ratchet ring wears out the hub shell?

TimE

7 years ago

seriously, do you folk really think that this is any less reliable than existing systems? No it fact it probably more robust.
“wear out the hub shell..” seriously, is that the best negative comment you could think of? The movement of the ring is very slight and it moves in a well greased area. Less chance of this system wearing out when compared a ratchet and pawl system.

“Too much room for dust to work in”… LOL. I guess you missed the seals and also all the available space for dust to migrate into compared to other systems where the dust is trapped and causes wear.

p.o.e….. Oh come on, this is the idiots complaint to every new hub design. Notice there are more cavities available to fit more pins for more points of engagement. However,more p.o.e means more friction.

thesteve4761

7 years ago

Reply to TimE

Yes. Seriously. The drive ring is probably steel, moving in an aluminum shell. Yes, it’s just a guess, but over time I would expect the harder steel drive ring to dig into the softer aluminum shell. The same thing occurs in a DT Star Ratchet hub with the aluminum ring nut, but at least the ring nut is replaceable. Certainly cool to see something new, and I hope I’m wrong, but that looks to be a fairly obvious Achilles heal.

myke2241

7 years ago

Reply to TimE

No one has ridden and abused this design long term besides testers. Testers do miss things. The general public more time that not becomes beta testers unknowingly. So if you want to be that go ahead. For most people wheels are big investments.

jon

7 years ago

Reply to TimE

So, we are supposed to know how this design fails? Without specifications? Without even a review of the actual product?

Usually people criticize for ‘armchair engineering’ but you’re pissed that people didn’t do a good enough armchair engineering with no information but a couple pictures?

You never can win.

ascarlarkinyar

7 years ago

I hope you like replacing parts often and I bet they are not cheap.

1158156

7 years ago

Looks like it will work just fine

Veganpotter

7 years ago

I’m honestly surprised these aren’t more expensive. If they came in other colors, these would be part of my next build.

Dan

7 years ago

Just purchase some Onyx Racing hubs!

Hmmm

7 years ago

I’ll keep my Project321 (216 Points of engagement) hubs…. YES, 1.67 degree engagement!

Saturninus (@Saturninus_)

7 years ago

Hey ! Bring back the old Bikerumor layout.
Please 🙂

Gillis

7 years ago

Reply to Saturninus (@Saturninus_)

RED

7 years ago

Reply to Gillis

gibbon

7 years ago

Reply to RED

+100

jon

7 years ago

They are light, and YOU are the guinea pig. Hope they last, my dentist friends.

mr. serious

7 years ago

Judging from these internet pictures alone and using my degree in armchair engineering, the ring is probably unobtanium, which will never wear on the hub shell or the cylinders, meaning the system will last forever. But like that other guy said, it doesn’t come in other colors so not worth buying. Now, where did I put my toothbrush to clean off this verbal diarrhea?

Rider C

7 years ago

Looks dangerously close to the Zipp Cognition hub – axial clutch technology: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXlVTAszPPI&t=0m51s

Greg

7 years ago

Reply to Rider C

Which is a reversed DT Swiss setup, which a lot of companies (Mavic) are going to. Big patents must have expired

Chase

7 years ago

Seems like we are in a constant cycle of new attempts and building a better mousetrap, but Chris King did this better than anyone 30+ years ago.
Perfect POE , über reliable with easy and infrequent maintenance and stable customer service.
Honestly I do not understand the obsession with chasing every new free hub idea with virtually ZERO track record of long term service.
Chris King, DT and Hadley are it. All others are chasing them in that order.

Michael Clayton (@CreekerMike)

7 years ago

This looks somewhat similar to the American Classic hub design whereby a cam plate drops out of the way when freewheeling and all engagement points (6) engage at once when you start pedaling. Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQaE0adv1FA