There is a front page article on ratchet-style hubs.
Linky
Anybody have any real-life experience using this kind of freehub mechanism? I’ve only come across this technology through a previous thread on this forum where somebody was considering buying a particular wheelset. Based on my reading I hear good things about instant engagement due to the far greater number of teeth vs fewer pawls, and a different kind of freewheeling sound that presumably is more of a whirl than the old clicky clicky thing.
One observation from Dan’s article;
You won’t see this hub style in inexpensive wheels for a while (other than the version DT Swiss has planned) because it’s not simple to make star ratchets.
Scribe wheels in the UK are using a ratchet design and they are certainly at the budget end of the spectrum, their pace wheels (30mm alu rim, aero profile, <1.5kg) use a ratchet drive hub which is apparently their own design, not 3rd party. They are currently 360 quid in the UK.
I got a set of LightBicycle wheels and upgraded the hub to the DT Swiss 240 EXP. They seem nice after a few months of riding. The freehub doesn’t release as quickly older designs. If you stop pedaling too quickly, you’ll get chain whip and have the potential to drop your chain, much like Cav. publicly highlighted a few times in this year’s Tour. It’s not as bad as worn in Mavic freehub a but still not as clean as other freehub pawls when they function correctly.
Other than the slow release I haven’t found a downside to them since May.
I have a set of the Scribe Aero 60 wheels that use this sort of hub. They are very responsive, and the wheels are quite light too - a bit under 1600 grams for the set. Cost was about half that of fancier wheelsets, although FedEx chargers 10% import, so factor that into the price in the US.
I got a set of LightBicycle wheels and upgraded the hub to the DT Swiss 240 EXP. They seem nice after a few months of riding. The freehub doesn’t release as quickly older designs. If you stop pedaling too quickly, you’ll get chain whip and have the potential to drop your chain, much like Cav. publicly highlighted a few times in this year’s Tour. It’s not as bad as worn in Mavic freehub a but still not as clean as other freehub pawls when they function correctly. Other than the slow release I haven’t found a downside to them since May.
did you read the article? near the bottom of it i mention the issues with with the EXP when it was first released. you may be a candidate for a new set of inners. i’ve been riding this style of wheel, with star ratchets instead of pawls, for some months now, and have not experienced what you mention. you’ll want to perhaps look at this video, from wheelsmith, which i think kind of over-harshes on DT Swiss, but it’s clear how you check your hub. while it’s possible DT Swiss has had other issues in the past with star ratchets i’ve never heard of them. it’s just this, the very hub you have, the 240 EXP. while the prevailing issue is not precisely what you describe, i could see how wind-up is possible if the star ratchet has a hard time retracting from its locked position. it’ll take 1 minute to check and see if you have a “0” as the middle digit of that 3-digit number. if so, i believe DT Swiss will perhaps send you out a new star ratchet, at a minimum.
i’m naive to the star ratchet design in scribe’s hub, but it seems to me to be pretty similar to the 240 EXP from DT Swiss otherwise mentioned here, in that there’s 1 floating star ratchet instead of 2. the second (kinda sorta) ratchet is fixed inside the hub, and is threaded in. it seems to me the 1-ratchet design saves on the inside ratchet ring (if i understand this process correctly), and perhaps saves on one of the very precisely manufactured floating ratchets, which have teeth on two axes, and must be very hard and expensive to make. so, it’s a little simpler, a little less hardware. but that’s still an impressive price.
Anybody have any real-life experience using this kind of freehub mechanism? I’ve only come across this technology through a previous thread on this forum where somebody was considering buying a particular wheelset. Based on my reading I hear good things about instant engagement due to the far greater number of teeth vs fewer pawls, and a different kind of freewheeling sound that presumably is more of a whirl than the old clicky clicky thing.
One observation from Dan’s article;
You won’t see this hub style in inexpensive wheels for a while (other than the version DT Swiss has planned) because it’s not simple to make star ratchets.
Scribe wheels in the UK are using a ratchet design and they are certainly at the budget end of the spectrum, their pace wheels (30mm alu rim, aero profile, <1.5kg) use a ratchet drive hub which is apparently their own design, not 3rd party. They are currently 360 quid in the UK.
Any stories to tell?
Cheers,
Rich.
I ordered a set of Scribe Wheels in September and every week for 3 weeks they tell me they are shipping next week but never do.
Im starting to wonder if these actually exist or if its a scam.
I think you are dead-on in your assumption, this video shows it a little better. They describe it as a “patented, single disc ratchet drive hub with leaf spring actuation”. https://youtu.be/mw_nG9vMVFg
Reminds me a bit of the flat burrs in a high end coffee grinder. Interestingly a replacement ring and spring are only fifteen quid which seems decent.
There’s already several inexpensive star ratchet hubs listed on aliexpress, and KT (manufacturer of a wide range of OEM hubs) announced star ratchet models earlier this year…
What depth wheels did you order? I got the aero 60, and they were at my house in Mass. about 2 1/2 weeks after ordering. They were in stock at the time of my ordering, though.
There’s already several inexpensive star ratchet hubs listed on aliexpress, and KT (manufacturer of a wide range of OEM hubs) announced star ratchet models earlier this year…
yeah. wow. i do wonder, tho, what this might mean in terms of hub failure. i understand (or thought i did) this to be a pretty high-precision process, making star ratchets. one thing about the tried and true pawl and ratchet ring system, you can make these, there are generations of examples of how to make these for hubs and they’re bombproof for years. yet we see that the “surface finish” on a star ratchet gave DT Swiss trouble. if it were my cheaper wheel, i’d probably opt for a standard pawl design until i knew this was truly now a commodity technology.
I love the star ratchet design but I’d be very wary of OEM designs. I think the performance can be very dependent on quality of manufacture and design and high standard of QC. DT Swiss have given this a good name because they’re a high standard manufacturer.
Teeth contact area and number of teeth in contact, as well as durability and wear need to be rigorously controlled and have a significant effect on performance. Standard pawl system has been around a long time and is well understood.
I’d compare the ratchet system to loose hub bearing design. Cheap stuff is poor but the top end loose bearing hubs from Shimano and Campy are outstanding. Less variability in performance for cartridge bearing hubs.
What depth wheels did you order? I got the aero 60, and they were at my house in Mass. about 2 1/2 weeks after ordering. They were in stock at the time of my ordering, though.
i ordered the 6588 which were shipping first week of October. After not hearing from them I emailed and they claimed that the wheel was discontinued and somehow my email fell through the cracks asking me to update my order for the new 7080.
I confirmed the change and they said they send them the next week. They’ve been saying that every week for 3 weeks now and the website shows they are sold out and not available till December.
My guess is they sold out by the time I made the confirmation and they don’t want to tell me. I’d be fine waiting till December if thats what I have to do but it bothers me if they cant just be upfront about it.
I ordered the 65/88 in May and didn’t get my wheels until September. The shipments just simply aren’t coming through for them and they are on a massively delayed timeline.
I wonder though why that sizing was discontinued…
There’s already several inexpensive star ratchet hubs listed on aliexpress, and KT (manufacturer of a wide range of OEM hubs) announced star ratchet models earlier this year…
yeah. wow. i do wonder, tho, what this might mean in terms of hub failure. i understand (or thought i did) this to be a pretty high-precision process, making star ratchets. one thing about the tried and true pawl and ratchet ring system, you can make these, there are generations of examples of how to make these for hubs and they’re bombproof for years. yet we see that the “surface finish” on a star ratchet gave DT Swiss trouble. if it were my cheaper wheel, i’d probably opt for a standard pawl design until i knew this was truly now a commodity technology.
I’d love to know what that ‘surface finish problem’ actually was and why.
There’s 10 or 12 or whatever times the number of cycles seen by each of the ratchet teeth than a traditional pawl freewheel. And I suspect the spring force is higher too on the start drive, so further increasing the wear on the teeth.
Was it just too coarse a surface (especially given the massive increase in cycles each tooth sees when freewheeling) or poor surface hardening, or a combo of the 2, or what ever.
I do have a different concern about longevity on the single moving ratchet ring - one spring only = a single point failure that leaves you stranded. With 3 or 4 separately sprung pawls, you still get drive to finish a race or get home if one fails.
(Maybe my n=1 bitter experience with a Campag hub design with a single pissy little thin wire hoop spring actuating all 3 pawls on a hub makes me overly wary - but being on the top of a moor when it’s prising down and sideways rain and miles from home when said shitty little wire spring fails resulting in no drive, colours my view !)
I do have a different concern about longevity on the single moving ratchet ring - one spring only = a single point failure that leaves you stranded. With 3 or 4 separately sprung pawls, you still get drive to finish a race or get home if one fails.
I’ve already seen this to comedic effect on a gravel ride. My buddy and I were headed up like a 15% grade, and suddenly his cranks give up all resistance and he starts spinning wildly, then falls over. More funny to me than him.
In this case it wasn’t longevity but a factory assembly error on a new wheelset, which the company immediately resolved. But the single-point-of-failure issue still stands. It’d be nice to have a design that failed-to-locked. Because a little fixie riding never hurt anyone!
I’ve had a set of Scribe Gravel Wide’s on my Crux for about a year and a half now. Zero issues whatsoever, they’ve been bulletproof and the ratchet hub works flawlessly. They’re definitely louder than any other hubs I’ve heard but the engagement is quick and you get used to the sound.
It’d be nice to have a design that failed-to-locked. Because a little fixie riding never hurt anyone!
True! You know, I was thinking about this earlier and decided I’d prefer the opposite failure mode. It might have something to do with that time I forgot that it wasn’t possible to freewheel on a track bike after a sprint and was promptly ejected over my bars face first onto the boards at Manchester velodrome, like a total noob.
I was thinking about buying the Scribe wheelset but like BobAjobb mentions above I was a little worried about longevity. If it was only a cost thing I wouldn’t sweat it, I think I posted earlier the floating ring and leaf spring are serviceable parts and only 15 quid for the kit which is cheap as chips and certainly helps. But that’s only if Scribe are still around to sell me one when I need it, unless it is available 3rd party. And then I’m not sure about the fixed part in the hub.
I got a set of LightBicycle wheels and upgraded the hub to the DT Swiss 240 EXP. They seem nice after a few months of riding. The freehub doesn’t release as quickly older designs. If you stop pedaling too quickly, you’ll get chain whip and have the potential to drop your chain, much like Cav. publicly highlighted a few times in this year’s Tour. It’s not as bad as worn in Mavic freehub a but still not as clean as other freehub pawls when they function correctly. Other than the slow release I haven’t found a downside to them since May.
did you read the article? near the bottom of it i mention the issues with with the EXP when it was first released. you may be a candidate for a new set of inners. i’ve been riding this style of wheel, with star ratchets instead of pawls, for some months now, and have not experienced what you mention. you’ll want to perhaps look at this video, from wheelsmith, which i think kind of over-harshes on DT Swiss, but it’s clear how you check your hub. while it’s possible DT Swiss has had other issues in the past with star ratchets i’ve never heard of them. it’s just this, the very hub you have, the 240 EXP. while the prevailing issue is not precisely what you describe, i could see how wind-up is possible if the star ratchet has a hard time retracting from its locked position. it’ll take 1 minute to check and see if you have a “0” as the middle digit of that 3-digit number. if so, i believe DT Swiss will perhaps send you out a new star ratchet, at a minimum.
I’ll pull it all apart and have a look. Until your article I had no idea. I know the original double ratchets had some issues but was hoping this Gen would be immune somewhat. Regardless, thanks!
Side note: when we can do the ST group buy discounts again, I’m looking for a gaming PC with an RTX 30x0 video card for Zwift (and maybe RGT) and Vittoria Pista Oro tires. Anything from Wattshop or SLF Motion would be greatly appreciated as well! 😘
