Chaincase, Dutch bike and chain life.

[Gearoidmuar]

Yesterday we were on a walk through the idyllic village of Cacela Velha in the eastern Alrgarve and there was a Dutchman with his wife, having coffee. They had Gazelle Dutch bikes with complete chaincases and hub gears. I told him that I was a cyclist and he began to extol the praises of these bikes. He told me that his wife's bike which was 15 years old was on its original chain. We caculated the mileage and it was about 90000 km.
Is this possible?

[squeaker]

Is this possible?

Why not? If you take a component (chain) designed to last for a while despite really nasty conditions (exposed to the weather & road debris) then encase it and provide a suitable lubricant (and a low peak load - female rider). Engine camshaft drive chains run many more load cycles (albeit under even better lubrication regimes).
Nice story, btw

[Smut Pedaller]

I honestly wouldn't be surprised. I took a pic of my chain (inside a Raleigh Superbe chaincase) after 6000km which gets ridden every day through rain, snow and sunshine. No gunk buildup on the sprockets. I wiped it and oiled the chain once prior to that, which probably wasn't even necessary.
http://smutpedaller.blogspot.co.uk/2013 ... drums.html

[Mick F]

90,000Km in 15years is 3,750miles per year BTW. That's going some on a bike like that.

Just wanted to put the metric figures into perspective.

http://www.gazellebicycles.co.uk/
I wouldn't want to ride one round here!

gazelle-toer-populair-8-speed.jpg (19.54 KiB) Viewed 2065 times

[Brucey]

that is a lot of riding; it is about 10 or 11 miles day, every day.

But well designed and well-protected parts can have very long lives.

Some hubs and hub gears will last the life of the bike -or even the rider- if given a little care. I have a 56 year old dynohub that I've put over 40000 miles on, and a five speed hub gear with similar mileage. The hub has had new ball bearings in the ball-ring, but that was needed because of corrosion through neglect, not wear. Both hubs were well-used before I got hold of them.

My Pashley is 15 years old and does five miles or more most days. Its mileage is unknown, but it has gone through (i.e. worn until bald) several sets of tyres. The chain (inside an imperfect chaincase) is the original.

IIRC the classic Gazelle models typically used Sturmey Archer front hub brakes and (usually) a 3-speed with hub brake at the rear. Nothing much to wear out on those, not in their classic incarnations.

I had a Gazelle of ~1999 vintage, and it was fitted it with an NIG version of the three-speed gear/hub brake. SA had (for reasons only they knew) decided to make a substantially weaker sun pinion fixing. The bike failed because the sun pinion broke. I was pleased to see that the new axle/sun pinion was of revised design.

Such snafus aside, I would say that moderately well cared for Gazelle ought to last a lifetime.

cheers

[Smut Pedaller]

It's not really that much if you ride to work every day. I've ridden 6000km in the past year on my Superbe alone, so 6000km/252 working days each year = 23km return trip for 5 days every week on average. So if I kept this up for 15 years that'd make 90 000km. Certainly they aren't made for alpine climbing but, high mileage and low maintenance are what these bikes do best.

Also the other thing is that it's not unusual for Dutch kids to be riding 20-30km return trips to school on a daily basis.

[Mick F]

It's not really that much if you ride to work every day. .................. Certainly they aren't made for alpine climbing but, high mileage and low maintenance are what these bikes do best.

Also the other thing is that it's not unusual for Dutch kids to be riding 20-30km return trips to school on a daily basis.

That's my point.

People who cycle in Flatlandia may achieve high mileages by riding 12miles a day, so the bikes they use won't be under any stress at all. Therefore their chains (in chaincases) will last almost indefinitely. So what?

Bikes like that are great. I love them and have no complaints about them, but it's back to the old adage .......... Horses for Courses.

ie You cannot compare a bike like that with other bikes and other terrains and uses that are not like that.

[Brucey]

I don't think you can necessarily make assumptions about how much stress the chain is under!

cheers

[Mick F]

No, not necessarily.
True.

My point is that if you commute at (say) 10mph along a completely flat road in a nice high gear and a nice low cadence, a protected chain will last indefinitely.

[Brucey]

With an IGH the stress the chain is under is (for any given setup) only dependant on the power output and cadence preference of the rider, and nothing else. If the speed (or the gradient) is high or low, the rider changes the gear so that the chain sees pretty much the same loading.

If you were to say, 'ah, but these commuters on their sit-up and beg bikes don't look to be breaking sweat' you might be right a lot of the time. But then again who knows? If you try to accelerate a heavy bike from a standstill (a regular occurrence for many commutes) then you will realise that it is quite hard work!

If you assume that you don't ever have to try hard on the flat in the Netherlands, you would be wrong, dead wrong. The wind comes off the sea most days and there are no hedges. The Dutch have a little saying which (I think, apologies to any speakers of the language) goes;

'de wind waait op iedereen'

anyway it translates to 'the wind blows on everyone'. If you are pedalling into a 30 knot breeze, you can't do what you can choose to do on a hill. On a hill, with enough gears, you can change down until you are not trying any harder than you were on the flat. Into a 30knot breeze, it doesn't matter how slowly you go, you are still pushing through the air at 30 knots! On a racing bike this is hard work, but on a sit up and beg bike you need thighs of brass....

Round where I live there are a few roads without hedges that see the full brunt of headwinds. On these roads you can ride just as hard for an hour or two into the wind as you might on an alpine climb. If the wind is strong enough, on similar gear ratios, too.

I used to live in Hampshire and I very rarely had to ride in the wind; lots of hedges and sunken lanes meant I could easily avoid it if I wanted to. Had I been forced to ride in the wind more often, I might have been a better racing cyclist.

cheers

[Mick F]

Again, true.

I remember as a yoof if Lancashire, we lived not far from Parbold.
http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=parbold ... m&t=m&z=13

There's a railway station there, and the station master lived in the village and he rode his dark green bike to work every day - back home for lunch - back again after lunch - and home again at his knocking off time. I'm going back to the mid 60's here.

My mates and me would take the mickey out of him for the way he rode his dark green bike. It was a huge machine with a chaincase, a big tube down the seat tube full of batteries, a steering lock at the bottom of the headset, rod brakes, a pump under the top tube, big wide handlebars, steel mudguards, chunky tyres, sprung saddle, 3sp hub gears with a lever on the top tube .................. you know the bike!

He would pedal very slowly .......... VERY slowly ........... a mile each way, completely flat with hardly any traffic and no junctions. He would ride at just above walking pace.

I bet he never changed his chain.

[robc02]

It was a huge machine with a chaincase, a big tube down the seat tube full of batteries, a steering lock at the bottom of the headset, rod brakes, a pump under the top tube, big wide handlebars, steel mudguards, chunky tyres, sprung saddle, 3sp hub gears with a lever on the top tube .............

You're making some of us go all starry eyed now, Mick .

Those of us who ride bikes with chaincases , and probably a fair few who don't, are well aware of their hugely beneficial effect on chain life. If only folk weren't so fashion conscious someone would have designed and made one that allowed easy removal of the back wheel and prevented unshipping of the chain from the chainwheel during wheel removal (and/or made it easy to put the chain back on). As it is, so many "serious" cyclists regard them with derision that they are relegated to heavy duty utility bikes that, hopefully, rarely need wheel removal. I would love to have a well designed, lightweight, chaincase on my current winter bike - see http://forum.ctc.org.uk/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=72479 for reason why!

[Smut Pedaller]

It's really not that difficult to remove the back wheel, just one or two more steps really. The chaincase means I just have to unscrew the rear cover which is one screw, the rest is the same with any Sturmey IGH which isn't difficult.

[Brucey]

I've owned a couple of Raleighs, Rudges, that kind of thing, and the chaincases on those are slightly awkward. But only slightly awkward. The chain can be fitted to the sprocket and the wheel slid backwards; not too tricky.

My Pashley is a significant PITA if I'm honest. It has rear facing dropouts, and many, many brackets, washers and other extraneous rubbish on the axle to contend with.

One would have thought that fifty years of progress would have made life easier. Not so far, it seems....

The Paper bicycle has one of the few original takes on the idea of chaincase that I can see.

cheers

[Gearoidmuar]

Her mileage or kilometerage came from doing the shopping, going to the hairdresser and all that kind of thing, every day.
I hadn't ridden such a sit up and beg bike since I was a young lad, until I hired one for a couple of days for the Rotterdam Marathon which my daughter was running. I loved it. It had chunky tyres with a very nice suspension feel and three gears. The really upright position is ideal for town riding.
However, as Mick F.says, horses for courses. Where I cycle (minor roads around Cork) is far too hilly for one of these. I'd have to stick to main roads and that's as much fun as watching Ricky Jervais being himself, or anyone else for that matter.