Ive been singlespeeding for around 9 years. The first SS I built was a nightmare. one of those slotted drop, quick release wheel, troublemakers that fought every single brake effort by slipping and sliding around. No comparison to my current Pivot LES SS. But the point is Ive been on a fair bit of SS kit over the years, tried a cog or two, run a ring once or twice. I dont get overly excited or impressed about new SS kit because the principle of functionality is what matters.

That is, until I saw this:

Tucked in a corner of WolfTooth Components website their new SS offerings were beckoning. I mean, just look at that thing! The Drop-Stop chain rings I ran last year proved super bomber, light, stiff, and added a lot of bling to my Pivot. Most importantly they quietly do their job day in and day out. I have run aluminum cogs for race day for the past few years and always had to fight to get them on and off the freehub, and always felt like they prematurely wore my chain in addition to prematurely wearing themselves! Ive finished rides or races to find a broken tooth, or huge grooves on the back of the teeth from wear. Not ideal but I sacrificed for lightweight, color matching, and to support a local business. That is until I found the too good to be true Wolftooth cogs!

I ordered several straight away and promptly sat behind the front door next to pippy watching for the mailman for the next 4 days. In true understated WolfTooth fashion the cogs were awesome to hold. Perfect machining, flawless laser etched logos and clearly very well thought out. I ordered two aluminum cogs (18t @ 16grams and a 19t @ 18grams) which retail for 39.95 and one Stainless Steel cog which really impressed me. The SS Cog I received weighed in at 39 grams on my scale for a 20t and retail cost is only 59.95. Now I know what you are saying. 60$ for a cog?!! Yes. All day and all night. You can go out and buy an al cog for 50-60$ and get a few months use and possible performance hiccups, or you can spend 60$ and have the cog the rest of your life. Truly. Stainless Steel cogs are where its at for durability and the fact that wolftooth’s ss cog weighs only 40 grams also puts it lighter than most Al cogs!!! There’s a reason I used three exclamation points there.

Goodness gracious

So I know what to do now right? Slap one on and put it through some paces. I dropped the stainless 20t cog on, matched up with a 34t drop stop WolfTooth DM chianring and a KMC X-10 chain with about .20 wear and raced the True Grit Epic. Howd’ it do? Perfect. It performed flawlesly. ZERO wear indicated on the cog and no matter how hard I jumped on the gear, or how much low speed torque I put on it, it just did its job! Zero complaints out of it. It slid on my Chris King freehub body like a dream and fit with their al spacers for a tight fit without adding any small spacers. Best case scenario. Expect to see more Quadsworth/Wolftooth collaborations in the near future!

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