Started with PT hubs over 10 years ago. Currently have 4 wheels with an SL+, a G3, and a couple GS’s (which I bought when they went on clearance for $299, basically the same price as a quality rear hub). The early hubs were heavy, but the G3 and GS don’t add much weight.
I’ve had the bearings replaced in the SL+ once, had a battery holder replaced, and no other issues in over 80k miles. I wouldn’t hesitate to get another PT hub, particularly if I was trying to go cheap/used.
All that said, I’d go crank based if I started over today. Crank-based meters have gotten much better and more reasonably priced. I’ve got a crank-based meter on my MTB. When I buy a road or gravel bike with disc brakes, I’ll go crank based.
Any I still can’t kill mine (seeing my post from 2.5 years ago)… I still have a road race bike and TT bike with rim brakes and I’ll rock the GS hubs until they die. Shout out to Zipp 404 firescrest wheels also that both these powertap hubs are laced into. 10’s of thousands of miles in all conditions. I put new spokes on one rear when they were making some noise, but haven’t even trued them other than that. They have been used for gravel racing/riding, a little single track, and just about every other abuse you can put a road wheel through. Tough rims and tough powertap hubs (and DT swiss 240’s up front).
Mine are still kicking strong but they are in the States when I visit. I’m now shopping for a power meter here as I’m starting to get back into cycling more seriously again.
I may just buy one on ebay and get it serviced.
Love those things. Man I wish they still sold normally.
My GF uses a G3 hub paired to her Garmin. Recently she had it sent in to Sram for bearing replacement and calibration. I don’t remember the price but it was reasonable.
Saris and then SRAM killed the market potential for PT hubs by not developing a disc brake version in time…the original disc brake hubs were QR IIRC and worked on very few bikes. By the time they developed a 12x142 hub, too many users had switched to crank or pedal based PM’s.
The irony is that developing a proper disc brake hub would have eliminated the biggest complaint about PT hubs…having to buy multiple hubs for multiple wheelsets. Once disc brake wheels became the standard, far fewer people stopped switching between race and training wheels and just started riding their carbon wheels 24/7.
Between my wife and I we have 2x G3 Hubs and 1x “Pro+” Hub still seemingly working fine, they have definitely been the easiest to work with. We both use Kickr trainers so the wheels mostly collect dust (do most of our training inside) until it gets warm and we put some longer outdoor rides in.
Our bikes are mostly older with Rim brakes and we never invested in PT race wheels, which made their future for us a little limited (we do have some disc covers for suitable races). Still, we ended up putting a mix of Quarq, Power2Max and Assioma pedals on our bikes to “solve” the race vs training coverage problem.
That’s possibly another factor to the PT hub became extinct. The proliferation of wheel-off trainers made PT hubs useless for indoor training in most circumstances. While many of the smart trainers have powermeters built in, they are not typically as accurate as a crank or hub based unit. I run smart rollers for my indoor training and zwifting, so the powertap hub lives on…
Yes, I’ve had a Powertap G3 on my Trek Emonda for the last 8 years and put over 30k miles on it. It’s laced to a set of Reynolds Attack carbon wheels, and they’ve been bombproof. I did have the hub serviced about 4 years ago through their service dept. which provided the upgraded cap for ANT+ and Bluetooth (a nice upgrade), in addition to servicing the mechanicals. This past year it finally gave up the ghost, but my LBS had a NOS on the shelf, so I did replace the hub with a new one. Aside from one issue when I was replacing the battery and jammed the cap on too quickly, crushing the connector tab (completely my fault, and was able to be replaced), it has been a very good, reliable product.
I have a C1 on a bike I don’t ride much anymore. Still works as of the last time it was ridden. So sad that SRAM totally dropped all parts for them, like chain rings, but they didn’t buy Powertap for the C1. I was hoping my dual Stages would last a long time, but the Shimano recall fixed that. There are still a few riders around here that use the Powertap hubs.
Man. I remember ~15 years ago when I’d see them on group rides and I ride alongside a rider and ask how much power we were putting out. I borrowed a bike with one once just to see what I was riding at. I kinda wanted one but I never did get one.
I’ve still got 3 sets of rim brake wheels with PT hubs hanging in there. 2 sets are zipp 404’s, so still decent wheels for my road and TT bikes that don’t have crank-based power. The road bike is used constantly indoors on the rollers and that wheelset has well over 50k miles on it. The only issue I’ve had was the electronics in the caps going bad on a couple of them, but I was able to track down a couple ANT+/Bluetooth replacement caps last year.
And I’ve got 3 quarq’s on my gravel, XC, and trail bikes and they have been solid also (one of them is about 8 years old). Had one issue with a loose battery spring that was an easy fix, but they have been trouble free other than that. This stuff just works.