Originally Posted by
kickstart
[MENTION=345109]corrado33[/MENTION],
I suggest you forget about hub brakes. Rim brakes are just so much easier to deal with.
That depends a lot on ones environment, hub brakes have real advantages in most conditions other than clean and dry.
Yes, I agree completely: they do have real advantages, particularly with regard to braking. My hesitation is that they also have real disadvantages. I used drum brakes and Shimano "roller brakes" for several years and eventually gave up on them because of maintenance issues. Replacement parts were hard to find and difficult to install. Furthermore, disk brakes require a frame made for disk brakes; how many frames are made for disk brakes and IGH? I'm sure there are plenty of guys on this forum who are as comfortable working on a disk-equipped bike as I am on one with caliper brakes, and maybe corrado33 is one of them; in which case I trust he'll cheerfully ignore my suggestion.
My every day commuter is not that different from what he's looking for; shown here with a Shimano nexus 8 hub, dynamo lights front and back, fenders, rack. I recently changed the IGH to an old Sturmey Archer AW, again because it's easier to deal with (I can overhaul it myself); but my commute doesn't involve any real hills. My point is, old steel road bike frames are incredibly versatile and you can do almost anything with them. But one of the things you can't do, without serious frame work, is disk brakes.