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Are center lock rotors less likely to rub or resonate while riding than 6-bolt rotors?

Bicycles Asked by greenoldman on February 24, 2021

I use 6-bolts hub with 203mm rotor and despite it is well aligned and rub free sometimes when riding (even on flat surface) there is vibrations coming (I guess) from crankset and/or road enough to make rotor resonate a bit. This leads to rubbing against pad in audible manner.

This of course is not welcome, I don’t even care so much about wear of the pads/rotor, but the delicate noise coming from rotor.

So I wonder — is centerlock resonance free? Or maybe not 100% resonate free, but more stable in this regard than 6-bolts?

3 Answers

Intermittent rub that corresponds to load received by the frame or fork doesn't have anything to do with how stiff the rotor or its connection to the hub is. It's the fork or frame being flexed, not the rotor.

Usually the issue is caused by the air gap between the rotor and pads being too little, such that flex that would otherwise go unnoticed is causing rub. Causes can include rotor truth, poor caliper centering, piston stickiness issues, crooked wheel installation, poor parallelism of pad surfaces in the caliper, and/or poor brake mount surface alignment. Sometimes one sees a situation where none of those problems exist but rub is occurring anyway from the rider simply overloading the bike, but that's not very common.

Center lock versus 6-bolt is not a factor. On QR disc bikes, the stiffness of the hub axle can be a factor, however. In particular, going to a thru-bolt hub is one way that rub under load can be mitigated in those cases where it's happening when all of the other potential causes have been pursued. Thru-bolts add stiffness to QR forks and frames.

Correct answer by Nathan Knutson on February 24, 2021

Your use of the word 'tremble' is somewhat disconcerting. Do you mean the rotor is loose and vibrating in response to road irregularities? If so, stop whatever you are doing and immediately check the rotor mounting bolts and make sure they are tightened to the proper torque specification.

I have a suspicion that you actually mean that the rotors seem to go out of true while riding and causes slight rub on the brake pads, which can be heard as a soft 'ching-ching-ching' as the wheel rotates.

What probably is happening is that the rotor is in fact warping slightly, or your brake pistons are sticking slightly which causes one pad to contact the rotor.

I've ridden both SRAM Force 6 bolt and Shimano Ultegra Ice-Tec centerlock and they both need periodic re-alignment.

Answered by Argenti Apparatus on February 24, 2021

You might find that the Floating Rotor on an alloy spider solves this problem. They are made for both 6 bolt and centrelock. Hope and Shimano both manufacture the better rotors in this design, though not cheap. Hope Floating Rotor

Answered by JoeK on February 24, 2021

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