Cycling UK Forum

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last time i looked at the motorcycle press i think i saw some locks with their own movement sensors and a 9volt battery to power the alarm.. can't remember anything else though..

breakwellmz wrote:Call me cynical,but i feel the most likely reason for someone not seeing the full potential in their purchase of a Rohloff hub will be theft.

There must be a fair number of people that have come back to their(Still) securely locked bikes to find a hole where their £800(?) hub was taken,with nothing more than a pair of wire cutters.

Are Rohloff hubs serialised?

Yeah... Rohloff hubs are serialised and the details of the owners are held by rolhoff for product guarantee purposes.. the hubs also feature a hollow axle, which means that the usual methods of wheel security can be used..like pit locks, as well as the other various home brewed methods of wheel security.. but the hub is no use without the shifter, or frame mount on the rear brake for the control wires (depending on the model) and for the hub to work the thief would have to take them as well.. and then theres the market.. if the customer was ignorant of the rohloff hub then they wouldn't want it because they wouldn't know how to fit it, and if the customer wasn't ignorant, then they would realise that something was amiss... especially if the serial numbers were removed from the hub. Thats before we consider having a braking disc mounted to the hub ~ not as a brake but to act as a secondary cable mount..

Then there's the whole urban disguise thing.. how easy is it to hide a hub with a full length rear mudguard, rack, and a pair of cheap saggy throw over panniers?

But that's not to say you shouldn't be naive about the situation... i use a hub geared non-rolhoff bike for general cycling, and because sometimes the bike is parked for a longer period than it is ridden.. but if i ask, i've a friend who'll probably kindly lend me his rohloff fitted back wheel for a hilly tour, for the length of that tour*. It may sound strange, but its really easy to swap hubs between bicycles as long as you don't thread the gear wire through any frame mounts, or are prepared to replace the control wires. Makes me sort of wonder if there isn't a market for rolhoff gear rental... whereby you purchase a bike fitted with a standard communting hub gear, like an afline 8.. but if you want to take it touring you just hire a back wheel with a rolhoff hub for the duration of the tour, from the same shop...

(* or just walk more hills.. as per advice from the doctors)

martin blain wrote:
However this weekend I cycled a particularly hilly sportive (6200 feet climbing in 65 miles) using a Rohloff hub and I seemed to be loosing out to the majority of other cyclists with their derailleur gears.

Yes, but what you missed were the cyclists with derailleur gears who got off and walked the steeper hills and wondered if your performance was down to your hub.

Valbrona wrote:Never buy a touring bike with a Rohloff because get problems in a far off place and you will be screwed ... unless you are wanting to spend all that money for a two-day jaunt to the Lake District.

My friend was kind enough to lend me his rohloff hub for several long tours, as well as many short ones ~ must have clocked up over 11,000 thousand miles on it and the only problem occured, was when i failed to replace the gear cables at the correct mileage, and one snapped. Any piece of equipment can fail ~ a point not lost on a cyclist i met during a tour, whose chain had snapped on his brand new bicycle... and another whose free hub failed to engage.. i did return the hub as soon as it became apparent that i was leaving the bicycle parked up for longer than i was riding it, and got something else completely different from the rohloff..

Both Mark Beaumont http://markbeaumontonline.com/ and Sean Conway http://www.seanconway.com/ used rolhoff hubs in their record breaking attempts to cycle around the world without problem. Cass Gilbert's only comment on using the rohloff hub on extended long tours was the problem he had when replacing the wheel rims and the inability to find spokes short enough for the replacement rim.

Although it should be said that Vin Cox http://www.greatbikeride.com/ used a shimano 8 speed in his successful around the world record attempt and Mr Chris Bell, he of egg ring fame, also uses a shimano 8 speed for touring (although with a double chain ring) http://www.highpath.net/highpath/tourin ... index.html proving that you may not need an overly expensive hub for touring. Or, indeed s&s couplings.. although the dahon frame in the link above is not steel, it does fold, and does so on a modest budget... and across the pond it would seem as if another bicycle builder http://www.englishcycles.com/cat/custombikes/ has created a system where a fullsized bicycle may be disassembled into two pieces without any s&s couplings what so ever... the chain stays terminate in two massive steel hoops that are clamped over the bottom bracket, while the seat stays are joined in a wishbone which neatly slots into a shorter tube brazed to the rear of the seat tube.

..As Mike Burrows points out ~ what is thing with a 'custom built frame' when with the right stem, handlebars and seat post, an off the peg frame will fit just as well? .. the bicycle company Surly http://surlybikes.com/bikes/ have an amazing range of frames, which are currently used by Cass Gilbert http://www.whileoutriding.com/and this chap http://gypsybytrade.wordpress.com/ in long distance off road cycling..and i still have my old steel thorn frame from about 2004 ~ which considering that i fell from it, cycling down cheddar gorge road at some speed... and is still straight, without any dents..is probably pretty good going.. not sure how many carbon frames you can do that to. And one great thing about the thorn frames are every so often, you can find one up for sale on this forum.. and although it is frame for hub gears, any hub gears (with a OLN OF 135mm) will fit ~ thus with a bit of fiddling, you can go from a 8 speed hub 'around town bike' to a 14 speed hub 'around the world tourer', all with a change of back wheel, cables and changer (although you do have to be clever about the cable runs and not run them through any frame mount)

One good thing about having a custom built frame is the ability to have the front wheel drop outs with the same OLN as the rear wheel drop outs, allowing you to run a front wheel fitted with a rear hub and just one sprocket, so if your hub gear does pack up, you can swap the wheels around and still move forward... although it does mean the end of fitting a complete front wheel straight from the bicycle shop into the forks, should you need a replacement..

Mick F wrote:
What is wrong with having more gears?

Absolutely nothing, if that's your thing. However if it isn't your thing, then perhaps there is something wrong with bicycle part makers trying to sell you more gears. Especially when there are benefits in having perhaps less sprockets at the rear wheel. Ladies and Gentleman, i give you a bicycle with a dishless 6 speed rear wheel...

http://gypsybytrade.wordpress.com/2013/ ... scrambler/

Wonderful, all the benefits of a derailleur gear set up with a super strong rear wheel...

Brucey wrote:Some years ago (over 30 if I'm honest...) I built a utility bike from an old 'Raleigh Sports' model (like a Superbe, but with cable operated brakes). It was still 'all steel' with chaincase and had the North Road bars in the inverted position. I used it as transport for some years, and would frequently ride a ~58mile round trip in an evening after work just to have a pint of beer with some chums. This would bring my daily mileage up to about 75miles. The energy of youth....

After five years or so the Black Beast (as I named it) met a tragic end whilst I was at university; a heavy frontal collision had the front wheel kissing the bottom bracket and the head tube broke in half. It did however make a fleeting appearance on TV before its untimely death... The Black Beast II was a training bike, thus Black Beast III was pressed into service; lighter, faster, better....

I used this bike as 'town transport' for many years, until the front hub (having exceeded its design life by some margin) eventually failed. Whilst I was sorting out another wheel for it, I had to use another bike. When I was fitting the replacement wheel to BBIII a week or two later, I realised that BBIII was in dire need of a rebuild, respray, well..... re-everything more or less. 25 years had taken its toll. So I slung it in the shed where it has lain gathering dust for about three years until today, when I pulled it out to take these pre-refurb pictures.

BBIIIv2.jpg

BBIII2v2.jpg

The spec is a 1950's Raleigh-built Rudge frame, with semi-sloping fork crown, stainless steel rims, 26 x 1-3/8" tyres, stainless steel spokes (32front, 40 rear of course), GB alloy stem, SR alloy handlebars, rat trap pedals, steel cottered crankset with BB lubricator, indestructible plastic saddle, steel side-pull brakes with Weinmann light alloy levers, 'ding-dong' aluminium bell, dynohub lighting, aluminium mudguards, and a five-speed rear hub/dynohub, based on an 'FG' four speed gear. 34lb on my luggage scales.

When it gets reborn, plan A is to polish the mudguards, fit stainless steel stays to them, clean and refurb everything else, gloss black paintwork, more period lamps, and use either GB/Altenbuger 'synchron' or Weinmann Centre-pull brakes.

Plan B is to ditch the lights, build new wheels with SA alloy hub brakes front and rear (which I have) perhaps with an S2C rear hub. I'd then use the other bits to make a more faithful replacement for BBI.

Decisions descisions..... So anyway, when I built these monstrositi---er, 'lovely bikes' years ago was I so far behind the times that I was actually ahead of them?

Each year there's countless calendars produced with photos of dogs or cats or caravans or gardens or bloomin' Matthew Rice pictures on... for 2014 i'd like a calendar that features a photograph of one of Brucey's bikes for every month... i reckon Brucey must have at least built twelve bikes during his cycling career. Each one photo could have a little potted history.. it would be great. The ctc could use it for a fund raiser

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robc02 wrote:I have been using a KMC Z510S chain on my hub geared winter bike. I fitted it in November and it is now ready to scrap - it has "stretched" by more than one rivet's width over 12 inches. I reckon the bike has done around 1500 - 2000 miles in that time

Does it matter? i mean, i might be missing something but i thought one of the positives about using an internal hub gear was the fact that providing the chain was still transferring the power then you didn't have to care.. after all it doesn't affect the shift gear shifiting quality... i'll probably only change my chains once all the teeth have worn from my chainring

i use three chains that i swap every 400 miles. At the end of 400 miles the chain ring and sprocket get a wipe down, and the chain ring comes off and gets advanced forward one hole. The old chain goes into a solvent bath, and a new chain is drawn from its plastic bag, fitted up and any excess oil wiped off... after a couple of days i take the old chain from the solvent bath, give it a quick brush down in clean water, allow it to dry for a couple of days, hang it up by one end, and drip it with oil.. after a couple more days, i then take it down & store it in a plastic bag, with a bit more oil in the bottom, all ready for the next change...
Haven't tried a chain case yet.. but i would recommend a decent long mudflap pop riveted to the front mudguard. Stops more crud being flung onto the chain, than one would expect.. i made mine from a tomato feed bottle...lovely....just got to sort out some sort of additional cover for the back mudguard now, at the chain side..

another high mileage 3 speed hub bike: http://www.sandsmachine.com/a_syc_r1.htm

(anyone know if you can get a 3 speed hub for a 135mm spaced rear drop out ?)

Brucey wrote:@ Mick; same comment, each to his own and all. I'm no Tommy Godwin, but I've ridden tens of thousands of miles on what you and others might find 'unacceptable' transmissions and some years I've put in x10 the miles on the 'poor' transmissions vs. the 'ideally geared' transmissions, but the latter has cost me x10 the effort and cost to keep running.... so there is a trade off, just like with puncture proof tyres, weight vs cost vs durability in other components, etc..... not everyone makes the same choices.

There may well be better choices for some situations than others, but there is very rarely one 'right' choice.

I used to ride winter training rides on an IGH. Think Paris-Roubaix (net, or more) every week. I'm not sure if any of my clubmates ever did likewise, (although, oddly, a few of them would choose to ride fixed at times in the depths of winter). I never felt even slightly disadvantaged by my choice. Most of them destroyed one chain and freewheel every winter, sometimes two. Maybe a mech, too. Heavily dished rear wheels would succumb to the winter onslaught also. Last year's race bike (with heavier tyres and mudguards bodged on somehow) might serve as a winter training bike for a year or two before everything was destroyed.

My training bike with IGH used a chain each year and sometimes a sprocket too, but otherwise just brake blocks and tyres mostly. And I spent hardly any time looking after it. I thought that a pretty good trade for slightly bigger gear gaps than a derailleur transmission; for most purposes I still do, in fact... just like Tommy Godwin, I expect....

As I mentioned upthread, gazillion-gear systems were certainly possible years ago. I find it hard to believe that Tommy Godwin (and thousands upon thousands of other riders) would have disadvantaged themselves by not having more gears if it were genuinely useful; by contrast I find it very easy to believe that they understood that it in fact made stuff-all difference to their speed or distance in the long run, and was, if anything, just more junk to wear out or go wrong the rest of the time.

If having more gears came with no penalty, then yeah, maybe having more would be a good idea. However my experience is that 'penalty free' is very rarely the case. It is my contention that many cyclists today are riding and touring on bikes that, although they might work beautifully when new, are pathetically lacking in real durability in a number of key respects. By degrees, having more gears etc has fostered acceptance of (say) transmissions that last no longer than a set of lightweight tyres, or else consume vast amounts of time and money in tedious maintenance chores.

Well, phooey, I say. If you are not out to break speed records you are probably better off with something more durable than the latest racing-gossamer-cogs, even if it does mean your gears are slightly further apart....

cheers

h'mm... after reading this, i wonder if my old physics teacher was right: speed = distance/time travelled....

right up until you take bicycle maintenance chores into account in which case:

speed = (distance/time travelled + time spent performing chores/mileage covered since last chore, expressed as minutes).......

almost there.. except that i've not factored in replacement parts in which case we now have;

speed = distance/time travalled + time spent performing chores/mileage covered since last chore, expressed as minutes, + time spent earning money for replacement parts (which would be arrived at by using the foruma: your working hourly rate/cost of replacement part)/mileage since last replacement part..

...i feel a spreadsheet coming on...

..which means that whilst i'm probably slower riding on my marathon plus tires, i am actually faster than my old tyres if i had to add to my travel time the time it also took me to earn the money for replacement inner tubes, because the old tyres used to puncture more..

..i think

Not sure about the ideal that MTB should just work with MTB stuff and Road Stuff should just work with other Road Stuff... i mean at the end of the day aren't we talking about a couple of mechanisms that just poke and prod the drive chain from one size chain ring to a different size chain ring, or one size sprocket to another size sprocket? i sure don't see any difference...? What we have is a suitation where we can't mix certain group sets with other group sets, because of indexing problems, which to my mind is easily overcome by going back to the 1980's and using friction shifters.. which may not appeal to everyone, right up to the point where you remind them that you don't have to be so spot on with cable tension, (less time in the garage, more time riding) and the fact that you get a better feel for the bike your riding too...

Heres the thing.. at what point do we say enough is enough, when someone designs another system so that MTB pedals only work with MTB crank sets and Road pedals only work with Road crank sets... who loses out here. Well, the small cycle shop who just can't afford to carry that much diverse stock, the tourist who has bought into one of these systems, but has fallen off his bike on tour, bent a pedal and now can't find a replacement.. or the other tourist who wishes to ride with walking shoes, but is now unable to find a road crank set that will take flat MTB pedals, or the die hards that will cling to the old system until the only new pedals which work with the old system are of marked quality..

Gentleman it is time that we start to use the ctc as a reminder to cycle component companies that they may design a product or a range, but that if it fails to work with anything else, then we will not be purchasing it..

Blimey!! fifteen quid for a stainless steel chain ring! That's less than half the price of a surly stainless steel chain ring and they're round ( http://www.sjscycles.co.uk/surly-110-pc ... prod20828/ ). Sadly, i bought one for my bike before i saw this thread. Admittedly i'd have to ask if it was possible to produce a completely round chain ring as i use a hub gear without a chain tensioner, especially as the other attractive feature of the chain ring shown here was the number of crank spider bolt holes ~ which means with a completely 'round chain ring you can advance the chain ring everytime you clean the chain, thus neatly avoiding 'the teeth at 90 degrees of the crank wearing out first problem'. And you can advance that chain ring lots of times, too. Something that i can only do ten times with the surly chain ring (5 bolt holes, but i can turn the chain ring over). It also makes the current 'bought of the peg' chain ring trouser protector discs (that fit on the outside of a single chain ring transmission set up) look rather expensive, too.

Is it me or is there a gap in the market here? As a service to cyclists the CTC could offer the excel spreadsheet/ CAD Design package on their website, allowing cyclists to design their own chain rings or chain ring trouser guard; with any degree of elipticalness or non-elipticalness, as well as teeth shortening to aid any gear changes. Once the chainring has been designed and all measurements supplied, the cyclist can then down load or print off that data and send it to the engineering firm of their choice, who will then cut the chainring or guard. If the CTC wanted to, it could actually reach an argeement with an engineering firm, so that once the chain ring had been designed, the cyclist could pay for it over the website and then the engineering firm could lazer cut it.

No more hunting for your perfect chain ring. Just click onto the CTC website and get one made up to your specs. If anyone wants to give me a quote for two chain ring protectors with 'cycle tramp' etched into them (for theft prevention purposes) please let me know

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tatanab wrote:Grease ports in hubs and bottom brackets so you can carry around half a pound of grease all the time instead of doing a little maintenance. No thanks.

When i worked as a groundsman, we used to jet wash the ride on mowers, and then go around the grease ports/nipples pumping in fresh grease. Once you had found out were all they all were, each machine could be relubed within quarter of an hour. Would my company have bought machines knowing that i would have to strip down every bearing, clean, wash and inspect the surfaces and then refit the bearing to perfect tension before reusing the mowers? No, because it would have cost too much time. All and any of my free time is important to me, as it is to you. So the fact that bicycle compoment manufacturers expect me to spend my time striping down a component to re-lube it, instead of me actually cycling, or gardening, or reading, or whatever else, just so i can get my monies worth from the use of it, is a little galling.

tatnab wrote:Compatability of derailleurs etc - it is not good business sense for Campagnolo to be compatible with Shimano - except by accident Would you expect Fiat parts to be compatible with Honda?

Nope, because they're cars. And cars are designed to do lots of mileage without requiring spare parts. And if they do go wrong, cars are backed by big companies, which can get parts to garages with 48 hours. Would a m6 bolt made by honda fit an m6 nut made by fiat? Yes. Because its an agreed standard.

What i'm taking about is bike shops, and bikes. And lots of bikes share the same pitch chain. And lots of cycle shops can't afford to stock the complete range of shimano spares and the complete range of campagnolo spares, but probably can order a replacement part and have it delivered by next wednesday. Which is no good to me, if i'm on tour, and by next wednesday have to be some three hundred miles west. i agree with you, it isn't good business sense for campagnolo to be compatiable with shimano. But i don't work for either of them! i'm a customer, and i'm actually paying these guys their wages, as are you. And from my point of view it actually may make perfect sense ask for a part of the transmission from one to work with another part made by the other. Why not have a campagnolo chainset and a shimano rear cluster if that's what works, or from the point of view of a bike that's broken in mid-tour, that's what it takes to get me moving again?

A car is a complex machine, a bicycle isn't. Any company that seeks to make a bicycle more complex, in order to keep its share of the customers, does no good what-so-ever to the cause of cycling in the long term.