lisitsa

AIM - to get a road bike with a 3 or 5-speed internal hub, and no other gears.


This is the internal hub from my hybrid. It works fantastic. Does anyone know if bike shops offer any options for such a road bike. If not, would their be any way to take out the internal hub from my hybrid and put it on my road bike?

https://www.bikeforums.net/attachment...chmentid=18641
This is my bike

robertsdvd

I have a Sachs 3 speed on an old Puch road bike frame... though mine has horizontal dropouts... you'll need someway to tension the chain - if you don't have track ends or horizontal dropouts - wait it looks like you have a 3x7 - so its got a derailleur... so I guess it'll work. Only thing you need to worry about is spacing then and wear to mount the shifter.

meb

That's a wide hub, I believe it needs 130-135mm dropouts.
If the Puch is steel, you can spread the dropouts, if the Puch is aluminun it won't work.
The SRAM S-7 and Nexus-7 internal hubs would be about the same width as the 3X7, so they'd be out too.

lisitsa

Firstly, I would like to actually buy a road bike and get a new internal hub with NO 7-speed derailleur attached, so it would make the bike operate like a single-speed yet have the multi-speed advantage. I wouldn't mind trying to build the bike, but I wouldn't know if I had the right tools. Would bike shops be able to assemble the major sections together if you give them the parts (for a price of course, and would that be a big price). I would then attach all the parts which can be attached with an allen key and screw driver.
Thus:
1. Can I get internal hub with no external gears attached at any bike shop.
2. Can I attach this hub to a wheel, or does the hub have to stay with the wheel its on?
3. Would it be too hard to assemble a bike myself, cause then I would save a lot of money involved in gearing such as STIs and the dozen cogs needed in a multi-speed bike.

Thanks. Please answer all question as best you can?

robertsdvd

1. You can get that done at a bike shop

2. A hub can generally mate (mmm, mate) to most any size rim, it just needs to be built up that way

3. Its not terribly hard to assemble a bike - but can require some special tools... You could buy a frame (used or new) and buy the parts, things you might want the shop to do include: installing headset, bottom bracket (if you don't have the tools) and building up wheels.

Make sure you find a frame with track ends or horizontal dropouts otherwise you'll need to run a chain tensioner. For less expensive frames, check out surlybikes.com -- or check out the used bikes at a local shop or classifieds and tear it down.

MichaelW

Have you considered the gear controls. Sturmey Archer type levers can be positioned on the drops, but many hub gears systems are designed for flat bars and use a rotating barrel.
Can you fit these to a bar-end and ensure a good cable run?
Can you operate them from a conventional downtube or bar-end lever?

With hub gears, you can move the ratios up or down by your choice of chainring and rear cog size.

robertsdvd

For drop bars, you can mount them on a spacegrip, that's what I have done. some people have mounted them on the quill stem if you're running a 1" threaded. Some people have fashioned extension tubes to come out the bottom of the drops to run them like barend shifters.

For bullhorn bars.. you can do simliar, but i've fashioned out of a cut down piece of old handlebar, some screws and the mounting clamp for an aero lever that got fubar'ed in a crash an add-on bit that clamps out by the end of the horn and the shifter will be mounted to that - right at your fingertips as you ride.

Retro Grouch 

First the good news. Not only can it be done, but I don't think that it would be particularly hard.
Surley, for example, makes single speed frames with 132.5 and 135mm horizontal dropouts. They'll fit your internally geared hub. Assembly is pretty much done with allen wrenches except for the bottom bracket, headset and sizing the chain. I'd think that you could outsource those to your LBS for around $30.00.

The bad news is that this isn't a cheap way to acquire a new bike. You will probably have to have a custom rear wheel laced onto your internal hub. Figure $100.00 to $150.00 not counting the significant cost of the hub. Manufacturers are able to pay very low prices for all of the components that they buy. If you shop the regular retail sources for everything, I hate to think what that bike might cost you.

If you try to start with a conventional road bike, for example, you are going to run into two issues:
1. If that internally geared hub is, in fact, 135mm wide, you'll have to have a frame with 135mm dropouts. Most road bike frames have 130mm dropouts and aluminum frames, for example, can't be "adjusted" to the wider spread.
2. You need a way to take up the chain slack and to adjust as the chain wears. Most single bikes do this by using horizontal dropouts. Most derailleur bikes have vertical dropouts that don't allow you to shift the rear hub forward or rearward to take up the chain slack.

alanbikehouston

In the British bike mags, I see ads for new bikes with light frames and the Rohloff 14 speed internal hub. It appears that some/all of the frames used are designed especially for this hub. The rear wheel requires no dishing, and there is a perfectly straight chainline. This seems to be as close to bullet proof and maintainance free as a bike design can get.

I'd love to see a bike with tradition touring geometry, such as the Trek 520, set up with this hub. There might not be a "perfect" bike for every purpose, but a maintainance free touring bike could come pretty close.

ypsirider

what I would like to build is a 3-speed gearbox that would accept the crankset shaft mated to a 3 or 7 speed hub. Industrial gear drives reduce or increase ratio mostly at the input side. When I ride i stick to the middle sprockets in the rear and most shifting is done at the crankset. I don't know why i do this but it feels like a better shift to me

seely

https://www.vandesselsports.com/

Makers of internally-geared road-ish bikes.

lisitsa

How often would the chain slacken, because I don't want to be moving unscrewing and adjusting the rear wheel every second week, to make sure the chain is the right tension

robertsdvd

you need to adjust the chain tension just the once - and everytime you put the wheel back on after taking it off... burly also makes a internal gear commuter bike as I recall. The chain tension is just a matter of having the chain the right length and doing the minor adjustment of sliding the hub up the horizontal dropout (or forward in the track end) until the chain is under proper tension.

Brian

The Rohloff is about 10 times the price of the Shimano Nexus 7, but covers something like 85% of your normal gear range. If you can adapt the Nexus hub, and maybe add a chain tension device, you'd be halfway there. I've seen suicide shifters (like a car's stick shift) adapted to chopper bicycles, so I suppose there's a way to modify the shifter to do what you want.