Originally Posted by
invisiblehand
Did it always skip in 8th?
No. At least a couple times I've had a chance to let the ol' lincoln unwind and, spinning hard in 8th, had no problems. That's about 35 mph. But like you said:
Originally Posted by
invisiblehand
... 8th might be finicky but I almost never get to the gear when riding the Mini. ...
The question of course is whether the gear is "finicky" or "faulty." At present I have all the gears working very nicely, and problems only arise in 8th.
My sense is that, depending on how the thing is (mal)adjusted, different gears skip; as Jur said, any gear can skip if adjustment isn't perfect. My sense of it, however, is that when the hub is badly adjusted, more than one gear becomes unreliable.
Also, frankly, I'm so happy to have 1 - 7 "dialed in" that I hesitate to mess with it; I only use 8th on a good downhill and my normal commute doesn't go anywhere near a good downhill.
Originally Posted by
invisiblehand
I am planning on cutting down the amount of cable/housing to see whether it helps the shifting. But I need to put more miles on the bike with the reversed handlebar before cutting things down.
I found the shorter cable to be less likely to move around and get caught on things when folding/unfolding, and so more likely to return to correct adjustment when unfolding; but the difference was pretty slight if not entirely negligible.
The Sturmey blog indicated the new "robust" eight speed would hit the market as soon as existing stocks of the older model sold out. But if all of you, like me, are waiting to buy the new model...they'll never sell the old ones!
tcs
Yeah. Not an encouraging business model. It's like refusing to sell today's bread until yesterday's is gone. If they know the older ones are unreliable, they shouldn't sell them at all.