To go along with their new Select Male Freecoaster Hub, the guys over at Proper Bike Co. have released their new Select Female front hub. Like the freecoaster, we wanted to know all about this new hub, so we got ahold of Jamie Cameron to get the scoop. This hub starts out with a 6061 alloy shell that has a very smooth look with thicker flanges to give it a stiffer feel. Inside you can find two 6902 sealed bearings and a chromoly female axle with 17mm chromoly bolts with 6mm broaches and 7075 cones to keep it all tight. The Select Female hub is available in black, polished and oil slick color options and there is also an optional Ultramid® Nylon hub guard that replaces the hardware and protects you hub from wear and tear.
This hub is available now through BMX shops and mail-orders that carry Proper Bike Co. worldwide.
Get the full scoop below direct from Proper!
“Our new front hub is generally going to look much like any other, however, there’s a load of thought and years of research and development behind the scenes.
One advantage of making BMX hubs for over a decade is that we’ve probably seen just about every potential problem over the years. Here’s the key areas where front hubs can go wrong and what we’ve done to address that;
– Alloy axles can strip (even with a helicoil)
· Alloy axles can be “crushed” slightly, causing the cone nuts to push straight onto the bearings when the wheel is done up tight.
· Flanges can be deformed when heavily abused
· Bearings can be incapable of taking the loads of modern street riding
· Hubguards aren’t always available
We’ve used alloy axles in the past and for the most part they’re fine. Riders that like to crank up their front wheel super tight would occasionally run into problems though. We wanted this hub to be a product you could literally bolt on and forget about, so we’ve used a chromoly axle. It’s slightly heavier than alloy but it makes for ‘bomb proof’ hub. We’ve actually used chromoly axles on all our hubs for a year or so now and they’re issue free.
We’ve thickened up the flanges on this hub. We also set the spokes holes much further down the flange than most hubs. This makes the wheel stiffer and prevents any deformation from the spokes pulling over time.
We’ve used larger bearings than most other front hubs. These are tried and tested to be durable enough to cope with whatever loads BMX (in all it’s variations) can demand.
We’ve got a matching guards available with the hub. Our guards replace the cone nuts and (because they’re made from new the super-tough new Ultramid® nylon) there’s no need for a metal inner and they’re cheap and easy to replace. The guard is slightly wider diameter than most popular pegs (including plastic pegs) so you should protect your spokes and flanges and avoid grinding on top of the guard. James Curry was able to give us some helpful grind advice with the guards.
Anything other than a 17mm socket bolt (with 6mm broach) means carrying extra tools so we kept things simple and went with a standard bolt.”
You can find out more about Proper Bike Co. and their products on their website — ProperBikeCo.com (Note: at the time of this post they are updating their website so it might be down.)
You can also find more information on Proper by visiting the IMG Distribution website!
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