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EB15: Hope Tech goes orange, shows new hubs, brakes, cassette and much more

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For 2016, Hope Tech painted just about every part they make with the upgrade brush, dipping it in orange ano first to provide a new color to replace gunmetal grey.

Starting with their well-sealed hubs, they’ve added Boost 148 rear and 110 front options to the mix. Even better, if you’ve already built up a set of wheels with their hubs, they’ll be offering disc brake spacers and new end caps to make those wheels fit into a Boost frame! So, while they joked that they’d have a new hub compatible with any future standard, these at least get pretty close.

Inside, the new Pro 4 gets an upgraded the ratchet ring to 44 teeth, providing 10% quicker engagement than the Pro 2 Evo these are based on. They increased flange diameter to make stiffer wheels, and added an 11-speed compatible Shimano freehub.

To go on those hubs are an all new wide range cassette, and so much more for every other part of your bike…

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The new hubs are compatible with just about every axle standard you can imaging: Front QR/9mm/12mm/15mm/20mm and rear QR/10mm/12 x 142. That, along with freehubs for SRAM/Shimano, Campagnolo and XD mean they’re good for road, mountain, cyclocross and anything else.

For DH, they have another new version that pushes the flange spacing out wider, and it’s built around their 7-speed DH cassette cluster. The result is an almost dish-less rear wheel.

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As usual, the shell, freehub body and axle are all made in their own facility in the UK. If you’ve never ridden Hope’s hubs, they can feel a little (or a lot) tight at first, but that’s likely because of the heavy duty sealing required to keep out the constant damp and muck UK riders are subjected to for so much of the year. The new hubs (and cassette, below) will be available in January 2016.

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Their new wide range cassette option pulls double duty…and shows off the new orange color that’s now an option on just about every part they make. Like the lightweight cranks they introduced in January.

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Their wide range cassette is really their steel 7-speed DH cassette coupled with a one-piece alloy upper cluster.

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The lower cluster is a one-piece unit machined from hardened stainless steel. Two versions are available, one for use as a 7-speed DH cluster and when paired with the 3-speed upper to create a 10-speed system, and another with the correct cog spacing to create an 11-speed system.

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The upper is also milled from a single piece of billet, except it’s alloy. It’s available in 3- and 4-cog parts to work with 10 or 11 speed groups. These will wear faster, but they’re easily replacable. Complete cassette options are:

  • 10-40 (10spd) – 250g
  • 10-40 (11spd) – 273g
  • 10-44 (11spd) – 284g

The catch, as we learned when they showed it in prototype form, is that you’ll have to use their freehub body (and thus hubs) to use the cassette. The 10-tooth cog drops down off the end of the freehub body, which requires their own shorter body.

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At the other end of the drivetrain, they’ll now offer a Boost compatible narrow/wide single chainring.

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To go with the new DH hubs are the new Tech SD 27.5 DH rims. They’re 600g alloy rims that measure 33mm wide and made to withstand both practice and competition runs without getting bent outta shape. Available in October 2015.

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Bringing all those parts back down to speed are refined two-piece floating rotors. The rivet and center sections were reworked to save a bit of weight. They’ve also formally adopted the 180mm diameter standard, down a bit from their previous 183mm options (which they’ll still manufacture, too). To go with the 180s, they’ll have new mounting adapters to fit. This also opens up the rotor to use on other brand brakes without special adapters. Brand fans may also notice the new profile for the steel braking surface. The harsh sawtooth edges are gone in favor of softer, rounder indents, and the holes are rounder.

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In the past, all of Hope’s lights used an external battery to keep the head unit small and offer versatile placement options for the power source. But some folks bugged them enough for an all in one, so the new R2i integrates the battery pack into the body. It’ll come in a standard R2 version, also, with remote battery. Both claim 1,300 lumens (1,000 lumen measured output) and run times from one to 30 hours depending on which of the six settings you choose.

Not shown, the R4 gets bumped up to 2,000 lumens (1,500 measured). The R2s, R4 and R8 all get backlit switches with multi-colored LEDs to show color coded battery charge level.

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Last year, Hope invested in in-house carbon fiber manufacturing, teasing this very seatpost. Now, it’s here, and it’s their first carbon product made in England from their own factory. The post body is shaped with varying thicknesses internally to put strength where it’s needed and save weight where it ain’t. It uses the same aircraft grade micro adjust alloy head as their Eternity post, but comes in as light as 195g for the 27.2. Also available in 30.9 and 31.6.

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Coming up next is a full carbon fiber riser bar. This prototype shows what it could look like (along with a lot more of the orange color!), but it’s still in the development stage.

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HopeTech.com

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18 Comments
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Ripnshread
Ripnshread
8 years ago

“New…brakes…” Where? Did you mean rotors?

overweight crusader
overweight crusader
8 years ago

44 poe….not that great

Ryan
Ryan
8 years ago

All the ORANGE!

Konstant
Konstant
8 years ago

I thought the adaptors to convert older wheels were just for the front wheel?

FoolCyclist
FoolCyclist
8 years ago

Take my money!

Matt
Matt
8 years ago

Orange is the new black

Bob
Bob
8 years ago

I had the rear hub on my Wide Lightnings replaced with a Hope Pro 2 EVO 40T and feel it’s worth every penny I paid for it. Engagement with the 40t is great.

Groghunter
Groghunter
8 years ago

Hey Hope, some of us have bikes with green on them. We’d like a color to use on those bikes, at least gunmetal was something, but now we’ve got nothing at all.

I get that you use the bright green parts as team rider stuff, but really, you can’t come up with another option for the rest of us?

broseph
8 years ago

never understood the fascination with hope hubs. I think the only reason people buy them is for their obnoxiously loud freehub. Their engagement is crap and always has been. The stock OEM hub that comes on most peoples bikes have better engagement than that. What are you buying when you buy a hope hub? Loudness, that’s about it. Which is so 2005.

Nick O.
Nick O.
8 years ago

broseph,

I personally like the high engagement stuff “just because”. Every low engagement hub I’ve ever ridden; I never once complained about it while riding. I complain when I spin the freehub by hand…but never while riding. I’m sure there are thousands of other people in the same boat as me. It’s a marketing point for the masses, and it works….even on me; knowing it’s foolish.

I use the Hope SS/Trials hub. That was originally developed as a Trials hub, as that’s where it really matters. That much engagement for a fair weather MTBer is quite a bit overkill….yet, I still love it for what it is; A very robust hub with great bearings and seals, easily maintainable, and not overly flashy.

haromania
haromania
8 years ago

I love the noisy hubs personally, but I understand why some might not. Hope had what I think was a very good reputation for their “smaller” hubs, but when they went big, as in 170 and 190 with the quick releases, something happened. I cannot think of another fat hub with a worse reputation, except maybe the Spesh hub. However, when their wider fat hubs went thru axle, I believe most if not all of those issues went away. There were to many for me to ignore and buy one of their hubs, but they have a loyal following for a reason, and if a bike I bought had one of their hubs now I wouldn’t change it out unless it gave me a reason, assuming it’s a thru axle. If it was a QR, it wouldn’t make it out of the bike shop.

Ck
Ck
8 years ago

I love how some people are saying the engagement is crap when there are a number of other popular wheel/hub brands still holding on to 24t engagement. They might not be on the same level as Profile or Industry 9, but they sure as hell beat out a lot of the other options out there when you compare all other specs in addition to engagement.

Jon
Jon
8 years ago

Isn’t the big news that Hope is producing adapters to allow 142 x 12 hubs to fit in 148 x 12 frames?
That’s incredible. So you can run your existing wheelset in new Boost frames.
Any word others following suit? Hello Mavic?

Skidsy
Skidsy
8 years ago

Hope makes great hubs for the money. If you want one set of hubs that is as convertible as can be, durable, easily serviceable and available in colors, Hope is your ticket.

You can get more POE with Onyx (instant POE), I9 (3 degrees) or CK (5 degrees), but you’ll pay 1-2 hundred dollars more to get there. Only DT 350 stacks up for value, durability and versatility in my mind and those are only 15 degree engagement vs the 8 degree engagement on Hope

Alex K.
Alex K.
8 years ago

@ Broseph – I recommend you check your facts:
-DT Swiss: 18 is standard, they offer 36 and 54 as ($70/$120 upgrades)
-Shimano: entry level stuff is 18, some is 30 depending on how high up you go

The old Hope Pro2 were at 24 POE, the new ones are at 40, which is a significant increase over any entry level hub you can find. Hope hubs may be loud, but so are Chris Kings. With the 40/44T options, Hope represents one of the best values for reliability, weight, engagement and most importantly: interchangeable end caps to adjust to the variety of drop out standards.

Antipodean_eleven
8 years ago

I have a hard time going past Hope hubs. I used to lover their brakes, until Shimano produced the xt’s, which really, for the money are hard to pass up but I’ll always go to Hope for hubs.

That guy
That guy
8 years ago

No one talks about the fact that they’re made in the UK. There are better and worse, but their effort and commitment to domestic production are commendable. What have you made lately?

SurlyWill
SurlyWill
8 years ago

Cool stuff … I do wish Hope could make a more robust freehub body up to par with King and DT Swiss.

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