jamesb Posted February 19, 2023 Report Share Posted February 19, 2023 https://www.pinkbike.com/news/first-look-hope-pro-5-hubs.html 108 engagements, less drag, most standards available. Could be the next big thing for trials riders! My I9 hydra has been faultless, but this could be a competitive option. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
La Bourde Posted February 20, 2023 Report Share Posted February 20, 2023 It has potential to become a good alternative, for sure. And their new brakes seem quite amazing too... Hope it will fix the reliability issue of the pro IV. Pinkbike mentioned a trials version, but did not see a picture of it. Nice to see they will be spares for the next 10 years. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
craigjames Posted February 21, 2023 Report Share Posted February 21, 2023 On 2/20/2023 at 12:12 AM, La Bourde said: And their new brakes seem quite amazing too... Hope it will fix the reliability issue of the pro IV. Do agree, really impressed with my Tech4 Trials brakes. What's the issue with the Pro IV hubs? I was considering getting one modded to 116mm spacing when my FW dies. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
La Bourde Posted February 21, 2023 Report Share Posted February 21, 2023 Some pro riders (e.g. Yohan Triboulat) had reliability problems with, like skips, broken inner ring or hub shell. The drag is high and sometimes the springs get broken. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maintenance Justice Posted February 22, 2023 Report Share Posted February 22, 2023 Insider info: Hope tell me the engagement system of the Trials S/S will be the same as the standard Pro 5 hubs - 108 with a 3 pawl offset. As far as I know, the actual hub dimensions and free hub design haven't changed, but no doubt there will be an aesthetic update. No idea on weight, will need to weigh one when they arrive, which should be early March. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Canardweb Posted February 28, 2023 Report Share Posted February 28, 2023 On 2/21/2023 at 5:27 PM, La Bourde said: Some pro riders (e.g. Yohan Triboulat) had reliability problems with, like skips, broken inner ring or hub shell. The drag is high and sometimes the springs get broken. I would not trust YT one bit. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
La Bourde Posted February 28, 2023 Report Share Posted February 28, 2023 (edited) 4 hours ago, Canardweb said: I would not trust YT one bit. Can you develop why? Too me he seems to be quite "emotional" and to have a limited know-how in mechanical engineering. He is a prorider and not an engineer (see edit). But at the end, I think he speaks from his own experience and it seems to me fair, although maybe too impulsive. I cannot recall exactly who were the other riders, but I think they were French (John Langlois maybe?) A lot of the pro street trial riders now ride with I9 hubs. Is this switch also related? I have 3 hope Pro IV hubs and no issue at all. But I am neither strong nor heavy nor a good rider. Edit: I did not mean that all pro riders do not have a sufficient mechanical background or that YT would not be capable of giving a good feedback. Someone without mechanical background or understanding can deliver a good feedback, mostly independent of a technical solution and its has to be considered. In addition an engineer or a scientific consider something true until proven otherwise... And assumptions are often wrong... Edited February 28, 2023 by La Bourde Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aener Posted February 28, 2023 Report Share Posted February 28, 2023 3 hours ago, Canardweb said: I would not trust YT one bit. I don't know anything about him so I'm not going to say whether you should or shouldn't trust him, but purely regarding the hub having issues, you need look no further than this forum. Many people have reported issues with the ratchet strip breaking or coming loose, amongst others issues. I personally have used two Pro4 hubs (one left standard, the other modified to 116mm) over the course of... maybe 8 years (?) and never had any issues other than a few skips at the start, but there are enough people saying it that there are definitely some issues with them. You don't have to take Yohan's word for it Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark W Posted February 28, 2023 Report Share Posted February 28, 2023 From experience I think some of the problems have been generated by Hope using some different pawls for a bit. They've had two different spec pawls, and the ones I've seen people break (which in turn chew up the ratchet ring and ruin the hub) were all the same type. They're clearly different visually - the ones I've seen break have a smooth finish all over, whereas the ones that don't have the little notches on the underside of them. I think Hope acknowledged a while back they'd had a 'batch of bad pawls' or something like that, so hopefully by now most of them should have been phased out. That doesn't really solve things like the ratchet rings stripping (I have a Pro 4 MTB hub on my desk next to me now that I've just got back from Hope after doing just that on my big bike), but that is somewhat less common. I think the Hopes suffer a bit from what other popular or ubiquitous parts suffer from, and that is that so many people use them that inevitably you'll see more failures out there with them, and they've got such a reputation for reliability that people comment on it more when things do go wrong. The flip side of that is that there are loads of Hope hubs out there that just keep on working and have been reliable for people for years. I still know people running the original Pro 2 and Pro 2 Evo hubs. 38 minutes ago, La Bourde said: A lot of the pro street trial riders now ride with I9 hubs. Is this switch also related? I think part of that was that Danny started running them, then some other high profile riders, and they took off from there. The engagement on them feels ridiculous - it really puts Hopes in the shade, even though they're not especially slow in the Pro 4. If I was buying new, at full retail, I think I'd probably go for the Hope simply because the Hydras are super expensive, but I do really like the Hydra I've got on my Arcade. They feel really nicely made (as you'd hope for the price), and do seem to work really well. I know one or two people on here appear to have obliterated theirs, but on the whole everyone I know personally who's running them has had zero issues with them. Those people who've broken the Hydras also seem to break a lot of other parts, so in some ways it's not entirely surprising to me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
La Bourde Posted February 28, 2023 Report Share Posted February 28, 2023 I think you are right Mark, to me the interest for I9 seems to be a combination of a hype and a good product. But it is also a niche product, and according to my experience a lot of user of niche, expensive products are biased by the price they paid the product. At least the few first months or years. I recall how the Reverb seat post was first hyped and then became a trash product when it became more affordable. In addition, there are so many different parameters (weight of the rider, level, riding style, frame stiffness, frame alignment, clamping force of the axle, wheel stiffness and deformation of the hub body...), it is hard to isolate where the issue comes from (user error, frame problem?) And as you many times said on this forum, the more a part is sold, the more defects (absolute scale) are expected. But I heard many times that hope does not communicate a lot about the defects and often refuse warranty. This does not match with my own experience I made years ago. The support was amazing. I am and was always satisfied with Hope products. That is sad if Hope had a faulty batch and did not communicate further about it. I think at the end it brings more discredit on the brand than it helps. It is quite difficult to know whether a product is reliable or not a few months after it was released. But later when the second hand market is full of a product or a product is quite difficult to find used, I think it is a good hint about the quality (in case the production numbers are comparable). And it seems difficult to find an used hope hub... I guess the goal of the fifth version is to address the few downsides of the current hub (drag, better standards support) and improves even further the reliability. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark W Posted March 1, 2023 Report Share Posted March 1, 2023 16 hours ago, La Bourde said: I think you are right Mark, to me the interest for I9 seems to be a combination of a hype and a good product. But it is also a niche product, and according to my experience a lot of user of niche, expensive products are biased by the price they paid the product. I wouldn't necessarily go that far - Industry Nine hubs are more and more common as OE wheels on mountain bikes, have a reasonable uptake with aftermarket sales and so on. There aren't that many trials riders using them but there are a lot of the hubs out 'in the wild', and have been for a while now. There will definitely be an element of people justifying their purchase to themselves, but that tends to end pretty quickly when those expensive things go wrong, and save for those 1-2 examples I mentioned before you just don't really hear much of that. Bear in mind too that those hubs have been out since March 2019, so if there was a big issue then I'm fairly sure we'd have heard more about it by now. They're genuinely a good, well-made product. I imagine part of the reason for their price tag is that they're made in-house in their facility in the US, so compared to most other hubs which are made in Asia they will naturally cost more. Hope are a little different obviously, but when you compare the Pro 4 to an I9 it's a night and day difference. The Hopes just look and feel fairly basic in comparison - part of that is because Hope like to go for simpler designs for reliability reasons, but also they just move incredibly slowly as a company and don't really seem to have much focus on innovation or development of products in a way. You can tell that some parts of the Pro 4 were optimised for lowering production costs too, so if you compare an I9 pawl to a Hope pawl there's quite a sizeable difference in design and quality to them (especially compared to the sketchy Hope pawls). Their initial offerings can sometimes be a bit iffy too. As an example, they launched the F20 pedals with a bang, but then almost immediately had to change the pins they supplied them with because the original pins offered virtually no grip. The pedals themselves lacked grip in general, and just weren't really as good as the price tag suggested. It took them 10 years to release an update to them in the form of the F22 which has some improvements, but reading between the lines on some reviews they're not really much different to the F20s in terms of performance and grip. Whenever a reviewer talks about how it's nice that they can adjust their feet easily on a set of pedals, that's a red flag... For what it's worth with Hope's warranty, I don't really remember hearing them refuse warranty to anyone that I can think of. I'm sure they will have done at some point but typically they're fairly reasonable about it (I even know of instances where they've warrantied clearly second hand hubs without really being too stressy about it). I was left a little frustrated with how the warranty process for my Pro 4 hub played out, but at least I've got the replacement here now even if it's taken 3 weeks. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Davetrials Posted March 3, 2023 Report Share Posted March 3, 2023 Just got one through at work, bloody hell it feels nice. slap that on to one of the new Santa Cruz Alu reserve rims with a lifetime guarantee and your set. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
javimic Posted March 3, 2023 Report Share Posted March 3, 2023 Hi guys, the new hub looks good and would be great if it could solve the long term reliability issues that amateurs riders have reported. What Mark says makes sense to me, one did not understand, for example, why for years it was recommended to put a double spring to avoid skips, and we did not see a new version of the spring as we see now. However, the Pro4 hub in combination with the warranty response seems to be good value for money considering my case where the Pro4 installed on my Fourplay failed and the company sent me another one for free. This last hub is still running, double spring and serviced every 6 months (replace pawls and springs with fresh light grease). Although it still skips once or twice per ride. The previous hub lasted 1 year and a half, this one is 1 year and 2 months old. 😬 🤞 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark W Posted March 6, 2023 Report Share Posted March 6, 2023 On 3/3/2023 at 6:24 PM, javimic said: (replace pawls and springs with fresh light grease) You can get away with just using a light oil in the Pro 4, I personally tend to avoid grease on any hub/freewheel just because it's 'stickier' than I really want anything to be in that kind of area! On the Pro 5 note, looks like people are going to have to get creative if they want to run the double spring setup on there with the new spring design/assembly... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
onzatpro09 Posted March 6, 2023 Report Share Posted March 6, 2023 I'm interested to see how people get on with the Pro 5 SS. There's a huge emphasis on it having less resistance, partly achieved by running weaker springs and as said above, the possibility of double springing seems to have been taken away... Tempted to pick one up and see how it is. If it's not great, I could always throw it on the DJ 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
javimic Posted July 9, 2023 Report Share Posted July 9, 2023 On 3/3/2023 at 3:24 PM, javimic said: The previous hub lasted 1 year and a half, this one is 1 year and 2 months old. 😬 🤞 RIP the last Pro4 too. I'm going to try the Pro 5. In the meantime I have a Trialtech 108 e.p. on my second set of wheels and it runs fine. 🫶🏻 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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