Not long ago, dweenk sent me this Sturmey XRF-8 v1 hub (36h) for cost of shipping, with the caveat that the shifter was broken and it wasn't tested.

I fixed the shifter, but after lacing it up for my Gazelle commuter project, it wouldn't grab 4th or 6th. So I took it apart, checked it for wear (found very little), flushed the grease, re-lubed it with ATF and marine grease on the bearings per Dan Burkhart's recommendations, and put it back together. Now, maybe 10% of the time, you may get 4th gear. The other 90% of the time you'll get 2nd (or maybe it's first?), and it'll drive you up the wall. Also, sometimes you might grab a gear (fifth or sixth, IIRC) and get two other wildly different ratios before the pawl(s) for the correct ratio finally lock into place. Full story is somewhere here in this thread: The Dockless Donor: The 1980 Raleigh Sports will live again

Whatever the case, I've decided this hub isn't for me. I've checked with dweenk and he gave me the thumbs up to pass it on again for the cost of shipping (a Medium Flat Rate box). You get hub and shifter and whatever problems are associated with them. That's it. Also, no cable anchor bolt; the threads stripped on the original.

The other thing is that you'll have to wait until I can find time to de-lace the wheel (thankfully, a Nexus 7 will work with the same spoke lengths - now to find one...) but if you can wait a week or three, I'm ready to take names for whoever wants to throw their hat into this ring...






-Kurt