eastbay71

Sometimes I get really bored because I work by myself for 12 hours most days. In my 12 hour shift there is a good 3 hours of work to do. I had a bunch of old wheels including one set that had some Sante' hubs. They looked really nice but had a 6 speed uni-glide freehub. I was curious if I could attach a modern 8,9,10 speed hyper-glide freehub to the old sante' hub so I took a few of them apart. The modern freehub body bolts right up to the Sante' hub. But when I started putting stuff back together I couldn't get the spacing right. The flanges were always more than 130mm apart. The adjustable bearing race/threaded nuts in the different hubs were very different in size and I couldn't get the original Sante seat/nut thingy to work because of where the flats are on the race/nut thingy.

Am I on a fools errand? has anyone tried this before?

ThermionicScott 

I want to say that the hub shells were made slightly narrower when going from 7 to 8+ speed.

simmonsgc

Spacing issues aside...since I saw you mention uniglide to hyperglide, I watched this the other night since I have a uniglide bike on the workstand right now. Don't know if it will be helpful, but...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaBQHCU9TDw

CliffordK

Add some photos.
Can you use different cones? Locknuts?

I've moved around quite a few spacers and etc.

Don't forget that Shimano also makes a 7 speed Hyperglide freehub, and you can fit 8 sprockets onto it using a 9s cassette, and perhaps 9 using 10s.

So far nobody has commented on my wheels/shifters on my latest franken-build.

eastbay71

Thanks @simmonsgc! That was one of the videos I watched that got me thinking about the project. But I just re-watched the beginning and he addresses the issue I'm having. It would work with a 7 speed hyper-glide but not an 8,9,10 speed.

eastbay71

Good call on the 7 speed hyperglide hacks @CliffordK! I hadn't thought of them at all. I'll get some pics up when I can. I have parts from several ubs so maybe I can mix-match and delete parts to get to the 130mm spacing. If I get this to work I will have to use the wheels on a Shimergo just to get all the franken-bike haters riled up.

cs1

Sheldon Brown said you can swap them on in most cases. Check out their site to see. It's the shape of the uniglide hub that determines if it is a go.

rhm

definitely not a fool's errand!

Andy_K 

I put a 105 freehub on a Mountain LX hub that started out life with a 7-speed freehub, but that wheel had 130mm spacing to begin with so I guess it was relatively easy. I did have to redish the wheel. I had previously built 26-inch wheels for that same bike with Tiagra hubs (because of the 130mm spacing) and later respaced them to 135mm for use on a different bike. Again, it was pretty much just a matter of adding spacers and redishing the wheel.

I was playing around recently with the idea of trying to put an 11-speed freehub on an M785 Deore XT rear hub (one of two MTB hubs Shimano made with the right axle size) but after looking at the shell measurements I decided that it wasn't going to work (at least not with any combination of the spacers the hub came with). If you're successful in your project maybe I'll revisit that plan.

eastbay71

Thanks for the positive support on this project! It's greatly appreciated.

Let me give a little more background. I had a set of Matrix Titan wheels from an '85 Trek that were in good shape but had garbage hubs. I also had a garbage set of Campagnolo wheels that came with my Gazelle. All the eyelets on the Campy wheels were corroded from sitting but they had Sante' hubs that looked very vintage cool and were in good shape. Both sets of wheels were 36 spoke so all good so far. I tore down my Serotta to send of to CyclArt to have repainted and cold set to 130mm a couple weeks ago and I wanted to build a set of wheels for the fresh frame. I thought the pearlescent Sante' hubs and hard anodized titan rims would look sweet on the Serotta. (yeah yeah Matrix wheels came on Treks but they're both made in the USA, right?) I'm running 9 speed Dura Ace 7700 on that bike so it would make the hyperglide swap necessary to keep the groupset. I bought a cheap hub (HB-2200) on eBay to get the axle and freehub for the swap.

What I see as the next step to try would be ditching all the washers/ spacers and use the drive side Sante' cone and the el cheapo non drive side cone. I would also use the new jam nuts from the el cheapo hub. They are the same width as the older nuts.
Here are the parts from the Sante' hub.


Here are the internals from the HB-2200 hub.There were also a couple spacers that I can't findin there.


The hyperglide body is definitely wider than the uniglide body


Both freehub bodies have the same mounting interface.


Here is a better view of the two types of cones. The 2 on the left are from the sante' hub. The cone with the flats on the race side goes on the freehub side of the hub and the one with flats on the outside goes on the non drive side.

Andy_K 

Now that you mention it, I think that when I upgraded the Mountain LX hub that I mentioned earlier I did use the drive-side cone and spacers from the donor hub. I can't remember what I did with the NDS, but I would guess I had to remove a spacer.

eastbay71

Woo Hoo! Yep, deleting spacers and mixing the cones was the trick. Now I'll take it down to the co-op for tensioning and dishing.

CliffordK

Be careful with Shimano 10s to 11s.

The freehubs are different.

What I think Shimano chose to do is to put an oversized axle into the Dura Ace/Ultegra 11s.
Then when they trickled down the technology into 105 and lower hubs, they simply added a thicker wall to the hub mount.
Also note the 11s freehub appears to be mounted slightly deeper into the hub body.

105 hubs pictured.



As far as I know, Shimano does not make an old-style 11s freehub.

Other brands may or may not support the upgrade.

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Oh, looking at the M785, It may take the OS axle and 11s freehub. I didn't realize they put that type of freehub in the 8/9/10s.

Also note, the RS505 uses a standard 10mm axle, disc brakes, and is native 11s. There may be several in that group.

Andy_K 

That's interesting. That could open up some possibilities.

Right now I'm running an 11-speed cassette on my Deore XT hub by removing the 11T cog and putting an extra 2mm spacer behind it.