I have one of Steve Howard’s early MUni’s with the elegantly scalloped forks. It also has a hub and axle of his making. The hub flanges are 304 stainless (or similar) and are not of particular interest. The axle, however, is made of 17-4PH stainless steel, a highly magnetic and hardenable alloy. I have Shimano 175mm cranks on this MUni and have done drops of 3 feet and maybe slightly larger but certainly less than 4 feet. I can assure you that I no longer am able to land like a cat so my 190 lbs. stresses these parts quite a bit.
The axle shows no signs of twisting or bending and the long, 175mm cranks can really apply alot of torque to it. Do others have one of Steve’s axles and are they able to make any comments about its performance? In particular, has anyone broken one?
I presently have the same alloy on the Blue Shift axle and am trying to get either the 17-4PH alloy or an oil quenched chrome-moly alloy on the production version of the geared hub. I would prefer the stainless. The stuff seems very strong from my SH MUni experience.
I don’t think it’s any big secret that I’ve been trying to get a production run done on a geared 29er with a serviceable hub. But what I’m trying to find out is if anyone has an SH MUni with a Steve Howard axle and hub like I do or if anyone has the stainless steel Steve Howard hub. I’d like to know the weight of the rider, length of the cranks, and height of the drops landed.
There aren’t too many of my axles out there - six to be exact and I have two of them. I weigh about 190 pounds and have landed just a few 2 foot drops with 170mm cranks.
While it is certainly no surprise to hear of what you intend, Mister Harper, you yourself must know that (short of Poznanter/Profile cranksets, perhaps) your little hub has to be the most drooled over components in unicycledom.
The very idea of these things being made available en masse to the (albeit perhaps thick-walleted) general public fills us all with an uncontrollable, shivery, hands-clenching stupor of expectation. And this, even moreso for those of us lucky enough to take you up on your “Uni.5 owner for a week” program, for which we are all collectively grateful to this day.