R6 Rear Hub
Aggy Rides the New Wheels
Worldwide shipping
We ship anywhere in the world with competitive rates from UPS and FedEx. Alternatively you can pickup right here at Chromag HQ.
Warranty
All of our components are backed by our 2 year warranty.
After that, we still have your back with our crash replacement program.
key features
What makes the R6 "tick".
The R6 is designed around a larger diameter ratchet ring interfacing with 6 pawls.
This has the added benefit of providing space for larger bearings, which increases time between service intervals and reduces stress on pawl pockets.
The R6 has 96 POE which provide increased engagement for consistent response in technical climbing while maintaining large pawls and ratchet ring teeth for long term durability.
The 48t ratchet ring interacts with 6 pawls in 2 sets of 3 resulting in 96 points of engagement.
The alloy axle enhances overall stiffness while keeping weight to a minimum. Its refined tolerances, along with the updated hub body design, prevent over-preloading and reduce bearing fretting through more precise bore tolerances.
Compared to the steel R4 axle, it's 71% stiffer, ensuring improved alignment and increased flexural rigidity.
One of the design goals was to minimise friction, refining our axle tolerances and designing a single lip freehub seal helped us achieve or friction goals while maintaining the reliability our hubs are known for.
The single lip freehub seal, lighter pawl springs and refined pawl angle all help to reduce drag.
A huge part of all Chromag products is being able to service them at home. Press on end caps make disassembly tool free, making it easier to clean and regrease the freehub drive system.
The R6 free hub seal is retained by a tapered bore keeping it in place securely, preventing contamination, but keeping drag to a minimum.
We have a wide variety of spare parts and bearings available for the R6 so you can fully service your own equipment at home.
The exploded diagrams are also pretty helpful if you got distracted while pulling everything apart.
Hub FAQ's
We have made several big improvemments while developing the R6. Most notably the POE goes from 36 to 96, which you will instantly notice when ratcheting up nasty climbs.
We have also done a lot of work on the bearing tolerances and sealing to create an incredibly free spinning hub.
A freehub clean and re-grease should be done approximately every 500km or 6 months. We have designed the R6 to be very easy to work on and you can perform this service tool-free. Obviously if you like to ride underwater through sand, you might need to do this more often.
For main bearings, these should be replaced when required, not at specified time intervals (sort of like how we couldn't tell you how often to change your tyres). The bearings should spin smoothly by hand and not make any grumbling noise or have side to side play. You can spin your wheel and hold onto your fork leg or seat stay (watch your fingers!) to try and feel any unwanted grumbles.
We will have bearings available to buy as well as some simple tools to make your life a whole lot easier.
Because the bike industry likes to invent new standards by the hour, there are different freehubs to choose from depending on which cassette you run.
HG is typically for older drivetrains and SRAM NX.
XD is for newer SRAM.
Microspline is for newer Shimano.
The R6 is compatible with HG, XD & Microspline, so if you do decide to change your drivetrain, all you need to do is switch out your freehub.
Having fewer points of engagement leads to more backlash in the system, this is apparent predominantly in climbing gears and technical situations. That being said, from our experience you very quickly become accustomed to the hub you are running and it rarely crosses your mind when riding after the first ride of a new component.
The more points of engagement, the smaller the area of contact between pawls and ratchet ring, along with the fewer pawls engaging at the same time. This is in order to fit more into the same space, often leading to reliability issues especially as parts start to wear.
With the R6 we have tried to strike the happy middle ground of having enough points of engagement to feel sharp but also leave room for long term reliability.
Of course there is also the topic of pedal kick back and suspension interaction, which could be a full article in itself.
To keep things simple, a higher engagement hub has the potential to give more feedback due to less backlash before it engages. In general, we think there are a myriad of more important things to worry about in how a bike rides.
Yup! Just select the XD freehub option, and you're good to go.
You can find the hub critical dimensions here, combining this with your rims ERD and using a spoke length calculator (we recommend Pro Wheel Builder) will give you the lengths you need.
We encourage users to service their own
equipment. All of our products are designed and built for the long game and
to be maintained easily.
Bearing kits are available on our website along with a hub stand and bearing drift tool for the R6 hub. While not essential these tools make the job of replacing bearings simpler and more fool proof.
If you haven’t done anything like this before please read our service guide and maybe
watch a video or two on hub bearing replacements to get a flavour.
Please check your frame manufactures spec for this, typically it is 10-15Nm.
Overtightening this can cause issues (damage to axle, mushrooming of end caps etc) if there is play when the axle is at the
correct torque you have another issue that tightening it more won’t solve. This
could be multiple different things, worn hub or pivot bearings (if a full suspension frame) would be a great first thing to check.
Yes, a large portion of our testing was on full power e-bikes. As the loads are far higher we recommend more frequent
inspection and cleaning and re-greasing of drive components.
