Centrelock vs 6 bolt?

bontie

Do any of those experience din these matters be able to voice an opinion of which of the above is preferable?
Road disc that is.

timothyw

Ultimately they both work, so I wouldn't make it a major factor in any purchase, however, six bolt rotors are a bit of a faff to remove and fit, whereas centrelock rotors should be much quicker and easier, so long as you have a cassette tool.

So given the choice between two otherwise similar hubs/wheels, I'd probably lean towards those with centrelock over 6 bolt.

You can buy adapters for centrelock hubs to fit 6 bolt rotors, but you can't adapt in the other direction.

veronese68

I think there is a greater choice of hubs in 6 bolt, centre lock may be a touch lighter if everything else is the same. I can't remember the last time I had to change a disc so time taken is a minor consideration.
I've got 6 bolt because that's what the Novatec hubs I ordered came with as did my original Avid brakes. If I were starting again I'd go 6 bolt for greater availability.

Man Of Lard

I have two wheelsets - one with 6-bolt, one with centrelock - there is a far wider choice of discs in the 6-bolt and the removal "faff" negated by that and the use of standard Torx driver rather than using a cassette tool. Also in 3 years of using discs on the MTB, I've had to replace one disc once (wore it to/beyond the limit), so even if the time taken to remove was doubled compared to centrelock (it wasn't) it's still a vanishingly small amount of time per week on average.

Far more interesting is the ease with which the brake pads are adjusted and/or replaced. If it's a chew on and you have to adjust them every 5 minutes, that will be a pain in the saddle department.

timothyw

Obviously you don't consider it a 'faff', but I've never used anything but 6-bolt, and having changed rotors a couple of times (I had a bike with 140mm rear caliper mount, moved to another which was spaced for 160mm rotors) it's obvious to me that unscrewing all those torx bits, then redoing them in the correct order and bringing them up to the correct torque is demonstrably a lot more fiddly and slow than to do the same with centrelock rotors where you just have to put on one lockring.

If you don't like the centrelock rotors that are available, or already have a 6 bolt rotor you want to use, you can, via cheap and easy to obtain adapters, so I reject the 'availability' argument as any centrelock hub can use any rotor, where 6 bolt hubs cannot use centrelock rotors.

Admittedly, for most people swapping rotors is a very rare occurrence, but if you are buying a road-disc bike then there seems a reasonable likelihood that it might be spaced for 140mm rotors, where most cross bikes are spaced for 160mm rotors - if you have a nice wheelset that you want to use on your road and cross bikes, then you've got a big faff if you want to change 6 bolt rotors over.

If that doesn't bother you, fine, but I personally and with hindsight feel that if I was getting my good disk wheelset built again, then I would have done so with centrelock hubs.

bontie

Cheers all, useful replies.