Originally Posted by
brittmo
Thanks, everyone.
PatTheSlat -- do you know if the bell cranks like the one you listed are compatible with any old Shimano hub? I know there are lots of older Shimano internal gear hubs out there and I want to be sure I have the right fit.
Should work with any non-Nexus hub. Shimano did at one point use a solid core cable to control their 3 speed hubs, which used a different bell crank, cable, and shifter (would be labeled "PPS"), but it doesn't look like yours is that type. Even with those though, the hub was identical, just the shifter, bell crank, and cable were different.
And actually it should be relatively easy to check out the hub before the bell crank is installed. Pull that bolt contraption off of there and you should see a little rod sticking out of the axle. The bell crank pushes on this rod to control what gear the hub is in. You can just push on it with your finger to make sure the hub shifts into all 3 gears before putting any money into it. 1st gear should be all the way in, 3rd gear all the way out, 2nd somewhere in the middle.