RAR VECTOR Hubs

The VECTOR hub represents a major evolution for RAR.

Designed around everything that made the famous FIRST hub a success ease of maintenance, high performance and exemplary durability , it features a fully optimized geometry.

This new architecture takes wheel behavior to a whole new dimension.

WEIGHTS

The RAR VECTOR hub ranks among the lightest hubs on the market.

The significant increase in lateral stiffness has no impact on weight:

the VECTOR road disc hub pair weighs only 320 g (front: 100 g – rear: 220 g),while incorporating oversized bearings for exceptional durability and smoothness.

GEOMETRY

The position of the spokes relative to the rim is essential to a wheel’s stiffness and road holding.

The new RAR VECTOR hub optimises this geometry by opening the bracing angles to their maximum.

This trigonometric solution improves lateral stiffness by 7 % while preserving excellent vertical compliance, synonymous with greater comfort on the road.

MECHANICS

Inherited from the FIRST hub, the VECTOR retains a proven internal mechanism recognised for its robustness. Its sound is customisable: silent operation or a more powerful click, with a difference of 10 dB depending on the selected spring. Unlike the race to increase the number of teeth, which often compromises reliability, RAR has retained 36 teeth on the VECTOR for an optimal engagement angle of 10°. A perfect balance that reduces freewheel friction while ensuring instantaneous and efficient engagement under pedalling load. As the true heart of the drivetrain, the steel drive mechanism delivers the strength and durability required for intensive use.

BEARINGS & AXLE

An essential point: the bearing.

Wheel performance is also, and to a large extent, determined by the quality and size of its bearings.

In the pursuit of maximum efficiency and durability, the hub must be fitted with bearings sized in proportion to the real loads, or even slightly oversized to guarantee absolute long-term reliability.

On the RAR VECTOR, we have chosen to fit the entire range with large-section bearings: ISO 61902 / 6902 (15 mm internal bore, 28 mm external diameter, 7 mm thickness).

The advantages are threefold:

Better rolling: the 5/32″ (≈ 4 mm) balls offer the largest contact surface and the best smoothness between the two races. They significantly reduce the coefficient of friction compared with smaller bearings.

Superior resistance: their dynamic load capacity is considerably higher than that of 61802 or 61803 bearings (fitted with only 3/32″ balls), often chosen by competitors to save a few grams at the expense of longevity.

Greater robustness: thanks to the larger size of the rolling elements, these bearings are far more tolerant of impacts, micro-deformations and any impurities.

An axle designed to fully exploit these bearings

To get the best from these high-end components, the axle must be flawless. Ours features shoulders perfectly aligned with the bearing races, eliminating any parasitic lateral stress that would reduce their service life.

Clamping forces are taken up by spacers that distribute loads evenly across the entire axle. The hub-shell bearings and freehub bearings mutually relieve each other, optimising stress distribution.

Finally, the RAR VECTOR uses a nested or screwed end-cap system on the axle. A design with no possible adjustment… and above all no risk of coming out of adjustment. Once fitted, the bearing remains perfectly aligned, no matter what happens.