Are there any cycle shops in Edinburgh that specialise in hub gears? I'm thinking of easing-off riding fixed and fitting a hub seems like a good solution.
CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Questions/Support/Help
Hub Gear Fitting
(8 posts)- Started 11 years ago by BestofTimes
- Latest reply from kaputnik
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Posted 11 years ago #
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I'd say Bikeworks as that's where I take mine, but don't have wide experience with others,since I'm happy with their service.
Biketrax may also have good level of knowledge, given their Brompton trade?
Posted 11 years ago # -
Skip the two speed that you kick and go for sturmey archer three speed. Should fit between the stays of your fixie. Definitely the way forward, of course someone will probably invent some kind of dérailleur system at some point
Posted 11 years ago # -
My advice is to go to Bike Works and ask what Hannah's doing. She works there and is putting a hub gear into her fixie too, so copying her is a pretty sound bet.
Posted 11 years ago # -
This thread is as good as any to unveil my plans for Winter. You may all have seen Dave's White Fright or Uberuce's Wintersaurus, so I give you my take; "The Flying Sloth".
It's an old(ish) road / touring frame that Chdot sold me about 2 years ago that I had stripped and sprayed and had as a singlespeed and then never found a proper use for. When I realised it had clearance for up to 32mm tyres, I tried it with some Cyclocross knobblies for a bit of off-the-road fun. This was enjoyable but being stuck with 1 gear and caliper brakes was a big limitation.
So eventually I decided that with the magic addition of a hub gear and drum brakes, it might be something I could use in the winter for snow and ice days and then in spring and autumn for muddy tracks.
So what I've ended up with are Sturmey Archer drum brakes front and rear, the rear being the XRD3 which has 3-speed hub shifting. The rims are A319 as I have on my touring bike. Fairly heavy but oh-so-strong and oh-so-Mavic. The hubs weigh a lot and the frame is no lightweight, so a bit more metalwork didn't concern me.
Anatomic Cinelli bars (£9.99) and some Tektro levers (£9.99) off of Planet X had to be bought new, as was my standard issue Jagwire cabling kit (Yellow, 1x) and some Fizik bar tape (Yellow, 1x). Along with the hubs, rims and bar-end shifter these were the only parts I didn't already have lying around.
I've put last year's Schwalbe Winter 30mm studded tyres on it, and there is JUST clearance for some hacked-apart, trimmed, filed down and re-assembled Chromoplastic mudguards under it (old ones from a previous bike).
It will probably all gum up with snow but should keep the slush out. I did have to buy a pop riveter for this (£14.99) but that's cheaper than using SKS Raceblades and I've got more guard coverage and less rattle as a result. P.S. that's not a hairline crack, it's just where the Stanley knife slipped and scored the plastic outer. Some other bodges were neccessary.
Jagwire don't really have drum brakes in mind when they cut their cable or housing lengths, the usual one for a front caliper or cantilever is too short for a drum. So you have to use a rear cable for both front and rear brakes. The housing would have been an issue if I hadn't put some cross-tops on that provided a convenient brake in the housing and allowed me to use old bits under the bar tape.
There are two "enhancements" at the rear end - I think they improve it, so I hesitate to call them bodges. Firstly, instead of the big silly reaction arm and running a length of gear cable housing the length of the bike, I've made as if using the derailleur. However, being an old bike it has a cable holder rather than a stop, so I've used a length of cable outer with sealed caps to act as a smooth cable guide. Works a treat and in my colours too. Secondly, I've spun the reaction arm for the brake around (do this with the tension off the locknut, otherwise it loosens the cone a bit). It's meant to clamp to the chainstay rather than the seatstay, however the former would require a huge length of cable and an ugly, cable-tied existence. Not for me, so I've made use of the cable routing along the top-tube for the cantilever brake, with bare wire in between a length of housing cabletied to the stay. Again, it works. Some forums I consulted were worried a seatstay wouldn't be up to the braking forces, but there's a marginal thickness difference in these old tubes. Plus, I'm not a heavy user of back brakes.So anyway, I'll get the Brooks and the Carradice on it and when the snow and ice comes we're ready to rock with the addition of a few more lights. The oversized reflectors I thought were a pertinent addition for legal dark riding, being salvaged from the novelty ones they put on new bikes to make them ugly.
In the spring, the mudguards come off, the knobblies go on and we're ready to go exploring.
Posted 11 years ago # -
P.S. meant to say - Graeme at Hart's Cyclery built the wheels. All other labour my own!
Posted 11 years ago # -
I'm pretty interested to know how you get on with the rear hub. The three speed on my hinged wonder is a bit dodgy, it drops into "neutral" sometimes when you're down-shifting to attack a hill. However, I gather this is because it's long in the teeth.
Ironically, I just gave up on hub gears and went back to fixed!
Posted 11 years ago # -
I had to tighten up a bit of excessive play in the hub, but that was caused by my shifting the reaction arm for the brake around without loosening the locknut, it therefore dragged the cone nut aruond with it. Apart from that, initial imrpession of shifting is that it's pretty clean, once you get over the need to slow the pedalling a little when changing to engage the next gear.
Posted 11 years ago #
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