Singlespeed & Fixed Gear - can i use a bmx hub for a single gear conversion?

hello-

sorry to ask what very well may be a ridiculous question, but i'm going to do it anyway i guess. i've got a bmx bike that i haven't ridden in many a year and i was just wondering if i could take the freewheel hub off of it to use on a road bike single gear conversion. . .

thanks.

Depends,
how many holes is it drilled for,
if its the common 48 for free style Bmx, you'll never find a 700c or 27" rim with 48 holes,
you might be able to find a 24 and drill 24 more holes, but this could possibly weaken the rim.
the only other main factor is spacing.
Is the hub to wide for your road frame?
most older road bikes (10 speeds) are 120mm between rear dropouts.
or perhaps your road bike is wider than the BMX frame, you may need spacers to center the hub.
its not really stated in your question, but perhaps you meant just removing the freewheel, not the whole hub.
if so, all you need is the correct freewheel remover for both the freewheel on your BMX and the freewheel on the road wheel, if your lucky and your hub(s) aren't weird sizes, they should swap right out,
put some loctite on the hub, tighten it down with a chain whip (or put the freewheel in a padded vise and turn the wheel to tighten it down)
hope this helps,
eliot

A few corrections: older road spacing are 126mm, newer ones are 130. Track frames are 120mm. You can find 48 hole rims for tandems, but it's probably not worth the trouble. For the cost of cutting out your BMX hub and relacing to a new tandem rim, you can probably just buy a NOS built-up rear wheel with freewheel threads. It's hard to give the things away these days. Finally, don't use locktite if you're just swapping the freewheel onto a freewheel threaded hub. There's no reason to unless you want to make it really hard to get off in the future. It's a freewheel, so it's not going to unthread on you. Also, you don't really need to bother with the whip or the vice. Thread it down hard by hand or even with the freewheel tool. Setup the bike and go out and torque it down with hard starts or hill climbing.

just one more thing to add. BMX spacing is 110mm.

Wait, couldn't you just get a 24 and use half the holes in the hub?

If you want for your bike to be a dedicated single speed, there are ways to convert whatever hub you have. If it's a freewheel hub, just screw a single speed freewheel on it. If it's a cassette hub, just use a bunch of spacers and one cog in the back. Easy as--you guessed it--pie.

It's a BMX hub, by it's very nature a single speed. The problem is lacing a 48 hole hub to a 24h rim means that you have half the hub holes empty. Not only is it unattractive, it also doubles the load on the particular flange sections that actually have spokes in them. Most likely it's just not worth it since you can get a freewheel threaded hub for dirt cheap these days.

Depends,
how many holes is it drilled for,
if its the common 48 for free style Bmx, you'll never find a 700c or 27" rim with 48 holes,

wrong. there are plenty of 48hole touring/tandem rims out there. check these out: http://www.bikecult.com/works/parts/pinecone48.html

A few corrections: older road spacing are 126mm, newer ones are 130.

a minor correction correction: there are older road bikes with 120mm spacing, but the majority are indeed 126 and 130.

wrong. there are plenty of 48hole touring/tandem rims out there. check these out: http://www.bikecult.com/works/parts/pinecone48.html

wow, that wheel looks superbaddass!

The question is, if you used super skinny spokes on a 48 hole wheel, would it be lighter then if you used thicker ones? cause I was thinking that something like 15/16 gauge, or 16/17 (if they made that type of thing) would look really cool.

i stand corrected about the 48 rims,
never crossed my mind about the tandems

do we know if they were talking about the hub, or the freewheel only?

are there 36 hole road rims because 36 spoke is the other common bmx hub.

sorry to not be clear about hub vs. freewheel. from what i've read in the thread, it seems like the hub might be a bit of an ordeal, i think i'll probably just use the freewheel.

white industries makes the ultimate freewheel, fyi.

36 hole road rims are very common.
36 hole BMX hubs are very common.