The intricate world of hub design has been magnetised.

Stan’s has announced its latest mountain bike wheelset product, the M-pulse hub. And it promises to have less internal drag, and better durability, than a conventional spring-loaded pawl design.

Read more: best mountain bike wheels 

Pulling instead of pushing

At the core of this new M-pulse hub are powerful Neodynium magnets. Pedals have featured magnets, to solve the intermediary flat/clipless issue, but Stan’s believe magnets can also reduce the fragility of conventional freehub design.

How does it work? Pawl magnets are strategically orientated inside the hub, replacing traditional leaf springs – usually the weakest link in a hub’s internals.

These magnet enhanced pawls pull themselves into the external drive ring, instead of the push movement of a leaf-sprung pawl. The benefits of replacing those freehub springs with magnetic engagement? Less friction and the promise of superior reliability.

Stan’s is using a six pawl design for the M-pulse freehub, with no less than 216 points of engagement. The inertia between rotation and rear-wheel engagement is only 1.66-degrees.

American production and assembly

Without the friction of leaf springs on overrun, these M-pulse hubs should roll more freely on descents.

Production of these M-pulse magnetic hubs is entrusted to Project 321, a CNC fabricator based in Bend, Oregon. Final assembly and quality control happen at Stan’s New York facility.

So confident is Stan’s of its new M-pulse freehub, which will be a standard feature on all new Carbon CB7 and Podium SRD wheelsets. Driver and brake compatibility options include Shimano Micro Spline, HG, or SRAM XDR, with both 6-bolt and centerlock brake mounts available.

Gravity riders won’t have the option on these new magnetic hubs, with Stan’s continuing to build its Flow EX3 and S2 wheels with its E-sync hubs.