Most of my kit is on old standards. I recently picked up some miscellaneous parts including a 157mm Hope hub. I have nothing this fits but I do like to have a stash of spares. Just wondering if it is worth keeping or are other standards more common on current bikes?

Boost is currently most popular on MTB’s, then some asshat came along with super boost, which luckily seems to have a very low uptake.

Superboost can do one!

135 for the win.

Maybe.

I also liked 26”

Actually, thru axle for the win and hub converters to go with. Here’s to Hope.

Your 157mm will fit Supdr Boost, although it won’t have the made up advantages.

Hope for the win!

I’ve got a set of pro 2 Evo to build into wheels for My gravel bike. With a 3min swap of adaptors they will also fit one of my MTB.

157mm for some pivot bikes.

Is it worth buying a new frame to go with a hub 🙂

The other hub standard to sort is of course freehubs…

Hyperglide, Microspline, XD…

nobody wins from the proliferation of standards. yes convertible hubs give you a work around but one standard hub is best by miles.

I like what Hope did with the rear end of the HB160. It’s how the back of an mtb should look if you started with a clean piece of paper and didn’t have multiple companies pulling in different directions.

The adaptability of Hope hubs is awesome.
The bloody noisy football rattle ratchet racket from the rear stops me from ever owning another.
I know you can alledgedy fill it with extra thick grease (or glue, or jam?) to quieten them down, but I’m already put off.
Or are they quieter now?

Hub “standards”, who is winning

The bike industry.
Assume the position.

The bloody noisy football rattle ratchet racket from the rear stops me from ever owning another.

The noise is to remind you you’re meant to be pedalling slacker. 😜

I believe that those new Saracen frames are super boost now, so could be the start of moving up again, not getting a warm fuzzy feeling in industry to a move to 157 though, more due to there being pros and cons, and of course having to sell a new standard to fix a problem that doesn’t really exist.

You can never know. I mean, right now it’s Boost but if you were paying attention, Boost started appearing at pretty much the exact moment that 15/100 and 142/12 achieved almost total acceptance.

But despite people moaning everyone went out and bought boost frame sets anyway. The industry must pinch themselves everytime they get away with it. Ultraboost must already be on the drawing board. If consumers refused to buy into standards they didn’t want in time they would dictate what the industry made. If no-one buys a stupid superboost Saracen I assume they won’t make any more. Is it me or has the use of press fit bottom brackets diminished since people actually stopped buying frame sets with them, cus they are poo…

Pressfit definitely seems to be less common than a couple of years back.

I was shopping for frames last month and looked at couple of options that were Super Boost and they were struck off the list as soon as I realised they were Super Boost.

Brace yourselves, “Road Boost” is being pushed now, it’s basically boost but the front axle is 12mm which sort of sounds logical, i.e. align road bike hubs with the defacto standard on MTBs…

Except they have already shifted a fair few non-boost road bikes, and absolutely nobody is asking for wider road bike hubs.

I do think the bike companies have maybe started to run out of tricks…

beanieripper
Free Member

But despite people moaning everyone went out and bought boost frame sets anyway.

Of course, because that’s what’s out there.

The mistake here is about who the customer is. People say “if customers don’t buy it, it won’t work”. But the customer that counts, isn’t you, it’s the bike companies. You buy maybe one frame, one set of hubs, they buy tens of thousands, so your buying power is tiny

And most people aren’t going out and buying a frame and thinking lots about wheel standards- they’re buying a bike, or they’re buying the frame they want then dealing with the standards. so that divides your tiny buying power by whatever proportion of people really do buy bikes and parts that way.

So in the end, you make your stand against the new standard, and nobody cares, except that you don’t get a new bike.

Correct, I dont get a new bike. I kept a 26″ hard tail from 2006 till 2018 as I just couldn’t be arsed with ever changing steerers, wheel sizes, plus, fat, semi fat, boost shit etc…I’m not alone either

Trust me, ever changing axle standards with no real benefit to the rider are a pain in the arse for most in the industry as well, not just the end consumer.

Yup. People say “the industry” like it’s a monolith but really it’s the same maths there as it is for the public, most companies can only follow the big ones. Like, we saw with 15mm vs 20mm that Fox and Shimano and to a lesser extent Trek could basically tow the entire rest of the industry into using an inferior standard- Fox because it was their horse and Shimano because 15mm worked better with centrelock and cup and cone and that was their (half dead) horses. Oh and the help of bike journalists that would repeat “lighter 15mm” over and over without quiestion, even when literally accompanied by pictures of scales showing it was heavier.

It doesn’t even take a majority, it just needs for their to be that bit more coherence and influence since frankly most of the industry doesn’t give a shit what half-assed standards they’re building around, they just want to know what parts to use this quarter when they’re making their new kick-ass bike.

Boost came along as soon as I bought a non-boost full sus, and instantly put me off ever buying any posher wheels for it.

Road boost has of course come along as soon as I’ve bought a gravel bike (that uses the same standards as my road bike) and I hope it disappears into a black hole.

So, all those 142mm disc road bikes are now obsolete old crap?

That makes me feel better about riding my obsolete rim braked bike.

I’m amazed I am able to get anywhere the wheels must be so flexy.