Originally Posted by wild animals
legot73, have you taken the rear wheel off before? if you haven't, give yourself plenty of time to figure it out! the first time i took off the rear wheel, it took hours. i didn't want to do it wrong, and i didn't have anyone to show me what i was and wasn't supposed to remove, so i was scared of breaking or messing up something important. i spent most of the time looking up nexus-8 hubs on the internet, trying to find a how-to (i didn't find one). i finally asked for help on the mechanics forum
anyway, i had a flat tire a day or two ago, and i got the tire off in record time! it took a couple minutes to get it back on again, but still it was way, WAY better than before.
my bike has a roller brake, so there's a brake arm that's attached to the chainstay. it's attached with a bolt and a nut. it's really annoying to get that off of there, because you have to get a wrench to the back side of the brake arm and then hold that still while you turn the head of the bolt with a screwdriver or another wrench. someone suggested replacing the nut with a wingnut, so i did. it cost a dollar or so and it is a million-billion times better.
my problem with my hub is that i can't get it adjusted correctly, so maybe 50 times a day it jumps out of the gear i'm in, and my feet are flung forward crazily. i adjust it frequently but it doesn't seem to make any difference. i don't have a workstand so i can't run it through the gears while the pedals are moving, and i think it would help if i could. when i fixed the flat, i adjusted the hub with the bike upside down so i could move the pedals; i hope that helped, but i haven't tested it out yet to be sure.
i'd like it if the gearing range were wider but if i think about people with single-speed bikes then i realize maybe i am just being too particular
I haven't taken the rear wheel off yet, but I do have some time scheduled this weekend to practice. I saw the bolt for releasing the brake, but wasn't so sure about the gear adjustment afterwords. I definitely plan to practice before using it as a commuter, and be able to do it in the dark. Thanks for the wingnut advice, sounds like a good idea to me.
I have the pdf from Shimano that explodes the hub and defines the parts, and a pdf (from Sheldon Brown, I think) that covers the adjustment. I can forward it to you if you like. I'll search for your mech post to take advantage of the advice you got.
I think I need to adjust my gear cable anyway, which I've read about but won't get it till I do it. It tends to slip between 4 and 5, but I haven't lost gears at all. I also notice that 4 is noisy and I feel a lot of drag, while 5 feels like a lot less drag and no noise. I tend to avoid 4 and favor 5 in its place just because of that. From what I've found, lack of cable adjustment is one of the very few ways you can hurt these hubs.