cbtumedic

I was browsing for a hub or assembled wheel for a MTB that I want to convert to SS and am blown away by how much of a difference there is in price in regular MTB hubs and SS hubs, there seems to be a lacking in inexpensive SS hubs/wheels on any of the common sites I use. I am not looking to drop a lot of cash on this bike, but I was wondering why the big diff in prices?

2new2this

Supply and demand, perhaps? Maybe there is some other underlying purpose, but I don't see it.

loaf

pull the extra cogs off the hub you have and get the chainline right with spacers, you don't even need a new wheel.

tdot-miele

aren't cassettes a single piece?? or can you separate the cogs on a cassette??

Sixty Fiver

Good hubs of any flavour will cost a fair price...

I built up a few fixed/fixed wheels with Formula hubs which are pretty decent for the money... which is about $40.00 if you are paying retail.

Cassettes can be separated into their individual cogs and spacers but the teeth on cassette sprockets aren't quite as conducive to ss riding as they are ramped to improve shifting.

An ss cog has higher teeth and no ramps.

le'ehov

this might help if you have a freewheel.
https://forums.mtbr.com/showthread.php?t=373319

huerro

The ramps shouldn't really matter with a good chainline though.

And (at least on the fancy-lad cassettes I use) some of the larger cogs (I think the three biggest) are one piece.

cbtumedic

I made a suicide hub FG a while back on some steel wheels for another bike, this bike also has steelies on it and I want aluminum wheels for it, would rather buy some with the proper dish rather than having to dish my own, but I guess that's the route I'm gonna take for now, I can get weinmann rims from LBS for about $30 a peice.

flamingosketche

i think it's more of the fact that there aren't as many fixed/ss hubs in the market as others, so there are naturally not as many cheap hubs.
like you see 4-5 different groupos for geared stuff while usually just one for track stuff in a company, so the one track groupo is naturally expensive

jhota

don't forget the hipster tax.

MrCjolsen

Shimano has a very low end line of mtb components that they put on their entry level bikes and even department store bikes. No such groups exist with road or track components.

You can get a Shimano Alivo or Altus hub very cheap. But a Deore hub (the cheapest I'd actually put on my bike) will set you back the same $39.99 as a Dimension/Godspeed/Formula/IRO hub.

If they sold track bikes in department stores, you could probably find cheap hubs for them.

alheim

Ugh. Thank god. I hate that crap.