Hadley Racing Hubs Built and Mounted

It was a great night of wrenching tonight. I got the Hadley Racing hubs back from John at Kovachi Wheels built up on Notubes.com ZTR Flow rims with red nipples. With some new Kenda rubber (more on this later…) and a simple parts swap…we are ready to go!

Seeing the red Hadley Racing hubs in a full build is even more satisfying than out of the box. These hubs really build a great wheelset. Everything went together perfectly and as you can see…they look incredible on the all black frame. With the initial setup, I am using heavy tubes from Kenda. Eventually, I will switch over to lighter tubes or use the supplied tubeless valve stems, but in the meantime…I will be able to run really low pressures without worrying about pinch flatting with a little extra rolling weight to push up the hill.

What better bike to review these red hot hubs on than the spanking new Rocky Mountain Slayer SXC 70? The Rocky Mountain Slayer should be the perfect sled to really give these Hadley Racing based wheels a true singletrack bashing. Their lightweight but strong build makes them very capable of conquering any part of the mountain and that is exactly what the Rocky Mountain Slayer is built to do. You didn’t really think I was going to leave that black XT hub on there did you? Wheel builds greatly effect how a bike rides, and that is why I decided to review both products at once.

Hadley Racing Build Overall Weight

The overall build weight of this NoTubes.com/Hadley Racing set was very respectable for the amount of abuse they can take. This 20mm TA front and 10mm TA rear wheelset weighs in at 1920g total (860g front and 1060g rear).

All weights are calculated with an Ultimate Digital Alpine Scale.

One Small Complaint On the Hadley Racing Build

One complaint…the Hadley Racing front 20mm hub uses similar end caps that the Ellsworth AM wheelset had that I reviewed late last year. The only thing holding the 20mm thru axle end caps is a rubber o-ring. This o-ring provides a tighter fit than the comparable ones from Ellsworth, but they still aren’t secure to the hub body. This makes installation and removal a little more daunting.

To stay current on this review as it moves forward, subscribe to the free rss feed or get articles delivered to your email inbox. You can see the individual hub stats in this introduction post on the Hadley Racing hubs. For now…enjoy the pictures and thanks again to Kovachi Wheels, Notubes.com and Hadley Racing for putting this build together for review.