I'm probably going to buy a new rear hub for my little black recumbent bike. My nice Hope XC is making noises it shouldn't, and at seven years old it's much too early to be having problems but it's already well out of warranty. And even better, Hope has run out of XC shells (notwithstanding the entire CAD-CAM ethos in the company...) and so can't help me at all.
It has to be 135mm, 36 holes, and to take a 9spd Shimano cassette. My bike doesn't have disc brakes. Cartridge bearings would be preferable to cones. A steel freehub rotor would be preferable to aluminium. So far, I've identified the old standard of Shimano Deore XT, which frankly is styled like a dog's dinner compared with earlier models, and Hope's own Pro 3 model which is three times the price of XT.
Vintage Shimano XTR had super duper bearings and huge quantities of lovely shininess, and later XTR was dull grey but had the Parallax shell design for greater axle strength. Sun Ringle doesn't seem to do 36h, and I don't know if Shimano Ultegra 6800 can take a 9spd cassette as it's designed for 11.
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