Nexus 8 Hub
 

I'm REALLY enthused about the Nexus 8 internal geared hub, and I'm pushing to have a wheel built up from Harris. However, it'll be going on a cheapo MTB frame I scored off EBay for a penny (commuter), with a rear spacing of 135 mm, and according to the Harris site the hub only comes with 130 mm spacing.

Do I just use spacers to make it fit? Is that going to cause a major chainline issue? Any other issues I'm overlooking?

http://www.sheldonbrown.com/harris/shimano-nexus.html

it must be steel for that price, so you should be able to fit the hub just fine w/o any spacers.. chainline might take a little work.

Yeah it's steel. I read about cold spacing on Sheldon's site, but I understood it only to be to increase spacing. Will it work to decrease the spacing as well?

Yep. I ran a 126mm hub in my 135mm mountain bike for about a month before I replaced it with the right size wheel/hub (it was a frankenbike setup so I could just have something to ride to work- 27" wheel on a mountain bike, obviously no rear brake, it was a fixed gear). It was a little bit tough to mount the wheel originally but it didn't cause any problems. I'd use a 130mm hub in a 135mm frame without hesitation. You don't even HAVE to cold set it, you can just let it flex to take up the difference. The advantage of cold setting is that its easier to install/remove the rear wheel but other than that it doesn't really matter.

GO FOR IT :)

Thanks for the reply. Great info.

Did you have any chainline issues with your setup?

I'm also thinking about using this bike for a short lightly-loaded tour on the Katy Trail this April; would you foresee any particularly bad circumstances without cold setting?

Well I didn't have any chainline issues because as noted I was running fixed gear. The chainline on my 27" wheel hub was 42mm so I used the middle chainring on my front mtb triple. Same chainline, so it was perfectly straight. Really as long as the stays are centered, whether cold set to a certain width or not, chainline won't change. Like I said you won't have *any* problems. The only reason I personally see to cold set a frame to a certain width is to make it easier to install/remove a wheel. I was just reading up on Surly's website and many of their frames (like the popular Cross Check) have 132.5mm spacing so that they (with the slightest bit of bending) will accept both 130mm and 135mm hubs. Chainline isn't even a consideration.

Sheldon covers decreasing spacing, too.

I hope you don't have vertical dropouts.

If chainline turns out to be a problem, you can solve it with an inexpensive cartridge bottom bracket.

Using one of these on a 135 frame is a non-problem, just add a couple of spacer washers. Chainline is somewhat adjustable on these anyway.

The only thing that could make it difficult to do this is if your frame has vertical dropouts.

Sheldon "Commuted On My Nexus 8 Raleigh International Today" Brown
http://sheldonbrown.com/raleigh-international

Thanks everyone for the great replies. I have horizontal dropouts, so it looks like there's a new wheel in the very near future! :D

I don't think you will have chain line problems.
Here comes a little tip from me in Sweden. When I build like this I always use the excellent and cheap Nexus chain. I found it tolerant against bad chain lines.

/Martin

http://www.cykelforum.se