Sram GXP or HOPE ?

[jinxy72]

My road bike is currently fitted with a sram gxp bb and would like to upgrade to ceramic bearings .... Now in the uk the ceramic sram gxp bb is £145 ish !! HOPE do one (alternative) for £95 ish which is also servicable so i could change the ceramic bearings later ( bout £25 for replacements ) .

should i stick with the sram gxp and pay the extra 50% .. or go for the hope ?

i know hope bb's are supposed to be very good but never had one myself

[JonB]

Hope kit (with the exception of some of their older brakes) is the mutt's nuts and superior to most stuff.

If I could afford one of their BBs I'd be running it because they work for ages, are fully serviceable and have decent seals. As I've already said, the only issues I have with Hope kit has been a few old brakes that occasionally misbehaved, but the new Tech M4s, V2, etc. are superb (and scarily powerful).

The other thing that should swing it is Hope customer service (which is second to none!). every now and again a hope hub splits (they sell so many of them, they're one of the most common hubs on UK mtbs so the 1 in 1000000 that fail become more obvious), and a phone call to Hope has most of the time resulted in them saying "it should never have done that, that's a manufacturing defect, send us your wheel and we'll install a new hub," even for 2nd hand wheels that later failed. Buy it, you'll be in safe hands!.

[jinxy72]

thanks m8 . i know their stuff has always been good mtb wise ( and their frames have been bike pron ) .... the cost and serviceability of the bb is throwing me towards them ... good thing about the boardman is it has a threaded sram bb instead of push fit so will be easy replacement