Tom - I appreciate your perspective, and believe me, I have a lot of Campy and Shimano hubs too, but I have never found a hub to stay as smooth without attention for so long as a Phil. I remember many years ago, in an idle moment of boredom, I had a bike with well-used Phil hubs hanging up for cleaning. I turned the wheel valve-side up and let go and counted the oscillations. It went 85 times before it rested. Try this with any cup and cone hub. The failure mode in my Phil hub bearings has been wearing out due to old age. My oldest ones are now 19 years old, and have had three sets of rims and three sets of bearings in them (and three pairs of tires too, but that's another story!) in their countless thousands of touring and commuting miles. I never had one that had end-load on it from the skewers, unlike some of the more recent sealed hub designs out there. And while I agree that Shimano's use of sealed bearings in Bottom brackets is the best thing since, well, Phil Wood, nonetheless they do go bad in a relatively short time, and since the bearings are non-replaceable (mistake in my opinion) you must buy a new cartridge. And a further note on shimano and hub play. Anyone ever had this happen? One year one of my Dura Ace front hubs developed some side play that I could not adjust out of it. I disassembled the hub and found that one of the cups could spin quite easily in its socket. I extracted it, cleaned it, and locktited it back in, and it is still smooth and tight. And yes, the newest Shimano hubs are pretty well shielded (not really sealed), but what a pain they are to overhaul. No way to adequately clean and lube the cassette body. Plaudits to Campy's new easily-adjusted-on-the-bike hub design.
Bob Freeman
> I humbly differ. Check out Sutherland's comments on
> cartridge vs. cup & cone hub bearings. Essentially he
> says that radial bearings, as foud on most
> cartridge-bearing hubs, are good at supporting radial
> loads but lousy at supporting axial loads. If the
> bearing is preloaded enough to eliminate play at the
> rim, it is only because the inner and outer races are
> shearing the balls. Failure quickly follows. A
> properly set up Phil, or MAVIC, or what have you, will
> have play at the rim. While I find such play
> annoying, it is not so terrible, but with a
> "conventional" hub this play is unnecessary. I give
> Shimano a great deal of credit for sticking with a cup
> and cone design on this particulay bearing. It looks
> like Campy has switched over to cheaper-to-produce
> generic cartridges, at least on the top-end stuff. I
> further give credit to Shimano for knowing where to
> apply cartridge bearings. Specifically, at the BB
> where the load is almost completely axial. In
> addition, they have done a good job at replicating the
> oblique bearing geometry of a conventional headset
> within a disposable cartridge.
>
> As for the notion that cup and cone hubs are easily
> contaminated, such is simply no longer the case. Ride
> a Dura Ace or XTR hub for a year, open it up, and tell
> me what you see. These hubs are no more easily
> contaminated than most cartridge models, and far
> easier to clean out if they are.
>
> Tom Dalton