Originally Posted by
bulgie
...Related question, does anyone remember what freewheel space Phil Wood used BITD? Since adding an axle spacer is nearly impossible with that design, did they wimp out like the French and just throw more dish at it to make the frame clearance problem go away? If they stuck with the Campy standard of 30 mm, then their hubs wouldn't work on a lot of frames. I've used plenty of Phil hubs over the years but I don't remember what they measured there. Same Q for similar "unspaceable" hubs like Hi-E, Bullseye and the like, that don't use 10 mm threaded axles with washers. I used a fair number of Hi-E hubs but I made my own spacers for Hi-E to dial in the spacing. That's also possible with Phil, but a lot more difficult. Most people, lacking a lathe and an arbor press, could only send their hub back to Phil for respacing, so it was rarely done.
I can tell you that their 5s hubs kept the axle extension short enough to prevent use of even an Ultra-6 freewheel, and that some slightly longer examples were probably intended for Ultra-6 because they wouldn't quite take a standard 6s freewheel.
Campagnolo hubs similarly didn't leave a lot of redundant axle extension, at least compared to most others (where for example a 6s freewheel might replace a 5s freewheel by the mere addition of a 1mm washer to the driveside stack, as on many Normandy hub fitments that come to mind).
The Helicomatic hubs/freewheels, despite their narrow cog spacing, might be a best example of where they "just threw more dish at it", to all-around poor effect. Bent rims, broken spokes, cracked rims resulted.