Supadrive

The Supadrive system is our most reliable and fastest engaging drive system to date, which has won numerous World Championships in various disciplines. Find out why it comes as standard on our premium wheels in every discipline.

Wedge Pawl

The Supadrive uses a wedge pawl mechanism, featuring 3 pawls with 12 micro teeth on each pawl. The harder the system is engaged, the harder the pawls bite into the drive ring ensuring a strong engagement, especially under high torque loads such as those dished out by wide range cassettes and e-bikes.

As the pawls of the Supadrive system utilise 12 micro teeth per wedge the surface area is hugely increased compared to a conventional single tip pawl. This means that the pressure is spread over a greater surface area leading to more durability of the pawls and hub body. Conventional pawls need a much larger contact patch than the micro teeth used on the wedge pawls, as the force is effectively loaded through 1 tooth per pawl rather than 12 teeth. Therefore, the number of engagement points in our wedge pawl system can be much higher…

120 Points of Engagment

120 points of engagement is significant because it means that there is a maximum of 3 degrees of rotation between the rider engaging in the pedal stroke and the freehub body engaging. That’s almost instantaneous and you’d be challenged to notice it.

Fast engagement is critical in mountain biking, where last-second pedal strokes are the difference between staying upright and crashing. We developed the Supadrive with exactly that in mind.

Realising how well this worked for mountain bikers, we carried this design over successfully to our BMX hubs, Road hubs and Gravel hubs. For BMXers, this means that there is no compromise on the gate start. For Roadies, there’s no delay when sprinting out of corners and towards the line. For Gravel, pedalling becomes smoother because your freehub is engaged more when riding over the rough stuff.

Cr-Mo Body

One of the recent changes to our Supadrive hubs has been the switch to steel freehub bodies on many of Halo hubs and wheels.

Many riders will have experienced “Cassette bite” in splined alloy freehub bodies that can be somewhat annoying. Alloy is lighter and softer than steel, and therefore more prone to deformation under high loads, and this is where most cassette bite problems occur. The use of wider ranging cassettes (dinner-plates) along with e-bike motors (that are combined with human power) has increased significantly, exasperating the issue.

We have overcome the “cassette bite” issue by introducing a highly developed Cro Mo steel freehubs with integrated drivers on some of our Supadrive hubs.

Aside from the “cassette bite” issue, the one piece forged and CNC machined construction of the Halo Cr-Mo freehub body with its integrated driver also allows a little more working space for the bearings, resulting in a stronger and more durable freehub overall.

The advantages of the highly developed Halo Supadrive Cr-Mo freehub option are most relevant where the additional torque and stresses of off-road use are found. We therefore opt to use the Cr-Mo freehubs on MTB and Gravel focused hubs and wheels, and continue to specify the slightly lighter Alloy freehub body options for road wheels where the strength and weight balance compromise is different.

Alloy and Cro-Mo Freehubs can normally be interchanged across relevant hubs to suit rider preferences.

The typical weight difference is circa 24g between our Alloy and Cr-Mo freehub types which is less than most teaspoons weigh.