Boyd Cycling announces today the all-new Sixtus MTB hub, a next-generation gravity hub platform engineered for riders demanding instant engagement and low drag performance, all with massive durability. Sixtus Hubs will debut in new and refreshed wheel models throughout the balance of 2026, beginning with a refreshed Kanuga FF and Ridgeline Carbon Enduro wheelsets, available today.
At the core of the Sixtus is a near-instant 0.5-degree engagement system, delivering an incredible 612 points of engagement. Deviating from the old rule of ultra-high-engagement hubs feeling draggy or sluggish while coasting, the Sixtus was engineered to stay fast when you’re off the gas.
Like its predecessor, the Sixtus uses a 102-tooth driver ring paired with six pawls. The breakthrough comes from a new steel phasing ring surrounding the pawls. This ring staggers pawl engagement instead of forcing all six pawls to hit simultaneously. The result is engagement “now” without the excessive drag common among high-engagement hubs. The steel phasing ring also dramatically increases durability and load distribution, allowing the Sixtus to be fully eBike rated.
“The Sixtus Hub is built for Chaos. We made it for riders who smash into rock gardens, land sideways, pedal through compressions, and expect their equipment to respond instantly every single time,” said Boyd Johnson, Chief Innovation Officer and Founder at Boyd Cycling. “We wanted the fastest engagement possible, and simply refused to accept the drag and harshness that usually comes with it.”
The new Sixtus replaces the company’s Tripel hub, pushing engagement technology even further. The new design features wider pawls than the Tripel hub, increasing surface contact between the pawls and the driver ring for improved strength and longer-term durability under heavy torque loads.
For riders who prefer the feel of traditional simultaneous pawl engagement, Boyd Cycling also developed an optional lightweight aluminum freehub body without the steel phasing ring. This alternate freehub reduces weight by approximately 35 grams and allows all six pawls to engage simultaneously, creating the same aggressive 3-degree engagement feel found in the original Tripel hubs.
The Sixtus front hub brings versatility for gravity riders and racers featuring a 15x110 Boost front hub that converts to 20x110 DH spacing with only an end cap swap. Built exclusively around modern mountain bike standards, the Sixtus hubs are available in Boost spacing only and feature a 6-bolt rotor interface.
Sixtus MTB Hub Specs
- 102-tooth driver ring
- 6-pawl design
- 612 points of engagement
- 0.5-degree engagement
- Steel phased pawl ring
- eBike rated
- Wider pawls for increased contact surface
- Boost spacing only
- 6-bolt rotor interface
- Front hub weight: 178g
- Rear hub weight: 380g
- Optional lightweight freehub body saving 35g, changes from 0.5 to 3 degree engagement.
- 20mm thru axle compatibility
Look for the new Sixtus hubs to appear across several wheel platforms from Boyd Cycling over the balance of 2026.
About Boyd Cycling
Boyd Cycling has been craft building wheels near Greenville, SC focused on delivering better ride experiences through pragmatic ingenuity since 2009.
Are people in the gravity side of the sport really clamoring for high engagement hubs to pair with their o-chains?
How does the "breakthrough" described in the copy differ from what Industry Nine did with the Hydra?
Hey there,
While phased pawls are not a new innovation for bicycle hubs (our original hubs from when we started the company in 2009 had phased pawls), the Sixtus hubs do things a little differently.
The I9 Hydra (and Solix hubs) use a phasing that relies on the drive ring having an extra tooth which allows the flex from the axle to push the pawls to engage.
The Sixtus hubs have and equally divisible number of teeth in the drive ring to the number of pawls. Instead of relying on axle flex to engage all the pawls, the steel ring that holds the pawls allow them to engage individually. The highest stress area is where the steel pawls typically sit inside the aluminum freehub body. By making the steel pawls sit inside a steel ring, this greatly increases the durability with only adding 35 grams. It allows reduces the drag considerable while coasting as you only have on pawl at a time touching the drive ring (albeit very very quickly).
It is important to note that in SGS testing 190Nm was applied to the freehub body with over 100,000 cycles without damaging the hub or the internals.
So, while phasing or staggering of the pawls is definitely not a new concept, the way we have done it for added durability and a reduction of drag while coasting is definitely an advantage we are proud of.
Boyd is semi-local to me. I saw their wheels at a local shop a few weeks ago and they looked nice. Curious if anyone has run the carbon wheels? I'm really sensitive to carbon wheel harshness and am interested in how compliant they are.
I like to keep it as local as possible and I am plotting a new build, so this is timely.
There’s still plenty of folk who prefer a traditional drivetrain with very fine engagement. Especially among enduro riders. My riding group is pretty evenly split among o chain users, high engagement users, and people who could care less about their hub if it spins when you pedal and coasts when you don’t.
Just blissfully rolling along on indestructible, quiet, low engagement DT350 hubs over here. In the forest, people barely know I'm there instead of sounding like an inner city brake rotor on a Dodge Neon dragging pad off the wheel.
So, you're saying that it isn't just 1 pawl engaging with the drive ring at a time, only one pawl is making contact and the other 5 aren't? How does that work? How are the pawls kept down and out of the way
I'm also curious. Is there a diagram or cutaway model of how the pawls engage?
It seems like the Boyd design assumes that most 3-pawl hubs and 6-pawl hubs like the I9 (that feature two separate 3-pawl systems off sync from each other to double engagement) don't consistently engage all three pawls at once on the drive ring, either due to either axle flex, manufacturing tolerances resulted in less than perfect timing of the three pawls, or a combination of both. If you assume that your 3-pawl hub or 6-pawl hub only functions as a 1-pawl hub anyway, than you can take advantage of that knowledge to design a faster and stronger 1-pawl hub instead of spending all of your resources trying to chase down and fix manufacturing tolerances and axle flex.
So by staggering the timing of the pawls, a three-pawl hub and drive ring that would normally have had 102 points of engagement and 3.5 degree engagement (if all the pawls are designed to engage simultaneously) can become a 306 degree/1.1666 degree hub, and by doubling up the pawls to six and staggering those two 3-pawl systems you can get to 612 degrees and 0.5888 degrees of engagement, but by engineering all that extra steel in there at the right places it can still be stronger than the 102 point/3.5 degree hub?
Is that right?
Yes, this part is confusing. If all the pawls are individually sprung, then it seems like they'd all be in some phase of their flexion-extension (click) cycle. Only 1 pawl would be clicking at a time, but they would all be in contact, and clicking in rapid succession as there is no pusher or 2ndary mechanism to hold them back as there is on the E13 Sidekick or the old American Classic hubs.
Assuming that all the pawls are in some phase of the flexion-extension cycle at once, and we are just having a bit of a communication error, then it is also not obvious to me that this will reduce drag. You only have to overcome 1 of the pawls maximum compression at a time, but you have to do that every 0.5 degrees, so in comparison to the other version of this hub, with 6 pawls in synch, engaging every 3 degrees, you have the same number of pawl flexion-extension cycles over a 3 degree rotation. I could imagine the 0.5 degree hub might have a more even resistance, whereas the 3 degree one may have more of a build up of force and then release, but again, you're compressing the same total number of pawls for a given rotation so it seems like they'd equal out on balance.
Post a reply to: Boyd Cycling Provides Faster Engagement with All-new Sixtus Hub