Do you fancy upgrading your road bike by using the new SRAM 12-speed groupsets, and particularly if you want to run their superlight AXS cassette? To run the AXS cassette, you’ll need an XDR freehub body.
What is XDR?
XDR stands for XD Road, and it is based off SRAM’S highly successful XD driver for mountain bikes. The simple idea behind XD and XDR drivers was to allow SRAM to bring you a wider gear range by allowing you to run a smaller cog than can currently be fitted on standard freehub bodies.
The biggest problem for fitting a 10t cog on the HG style freehub bodies we use is that the freehub body is bigger than the size of a 10t cog, which does make it pretty hard to fit a 10t cog on them. There were the warnings about if you went 11 speed you’d need to get your wheel re-dished, this was because the 11 speed was slightly longer.
These are the issues that an XDR driver tries to alleviate. An XDR driver will allow you to fit a 12-speed cassette on a freehub that is just as wide as an 11-speed cassette. That means you’ll just need to pop one in, fit your cassette, and not need to worry about having your wheel re-dished. It is also worth noting that because the XDR driver is based around the 11 speed HG freehub it is 1.8mm longer than the XD driver.
An XDR cassette will screw on to the driver, and the low 10t cog will fit just past the driver body. By working in this manner you still get long lasting bearings, as they haven’t been shrunk to allow the cog to fit, and you still have the same length of driver body as an HG freehub.
What wheels does your XDR driver fit?
We have designed our XDR driver to fit most of the wheels in our Fast and Light, and Aero series of wheels. The XDR driver we have designed will fit Novatec and our own brand hubs, if your not sure what you have bought, please send us an email.
The Novatec codes that our driver fits are road bike hubs AS511SB/FS522SB, road disc hubs D411SB/D412SB, D791SB/D792SB, fat bike hubs D201SB/S202SB.
You’ll also find that DT Swiss make their own XDR driver for their 240S and 350S hubsets. So, you won’t be left out if you bought one of those wheelsets. Again, if you need any help or want to know more, please email us, and we’ll do our best to help you.
As you can see it is pretty easy to change your wheels around to get onboard with the new SRAM AXS groupsets and it definitely costs you a bit less than you are thinking it does to convert your wheels. SRAM has made a short video that shows you how easy it is to change your freehub body to an XDR driver body. It will literally take you minutes.
Is it now time for you to go 12 speed road bike?
