fender1

Hi,
I know Sheldon Brown loves th 8spd nexus hub in a road bike frame and I know Harris sells the Bianchi San hos8. I was wondering if there are any other users out there? I have the nexus red band 8 speed hub in a mountain style frame and was thinking of convereting a '73 Schwinn World Voyaguer to accept the hub. I have all of the parts I need. My question is more as to what people 's experiences have been using this hub in a road frame. Please let me know! Also please let us not discuss the differences/what is better hub or derailerrs I have both and like both, enough said!

sauerwald

I don't have one of these, but looked into using the Nexus 8 in my Bianchi San Remo touring frame. The issue that I came up against is that the Nexus 8 seems to only work with their own nexus 8 shifter, which is not very adaptable to a road bike frame with drop bars. I use, and wanted to continue to use a bar end shifter but this was not going to be possible with the Nexus 8.

mikeyp.1

I have the nexus premium in a Motobecane track bike from BD.I really love it-but I am kind of forced to ride it because I ride the beach bike trail,and the sand killed my ultegra bike-if I was fastidious about cleaning them,my bikes might last for a while under these tough conditions-but I'm lazy-but a freind who rides half as far on the trail on a mtn bike says he needs a new chain and maybe a sprocket or two every 5,000 miles.When I first built the bike it weighed 24 1/2 lbs judicious theiving of parts from my other bikes brought it down to 24 a cheap N carbon fork,and new stem have it down to just over 23.Its great!- parts came from sheldon brown-including adapter for drop bars.Shimano is coming out with a new version called Alfine-it has a forged casing,needle bearings for reduced friction,and is lighter-I hope to get one and build a LeMond track bike and come out 20lbs or so.the system works well it is handy to change from,say 7th to 3rd while stopped waiting for a light!

-=(8)=-

I would love to do that !!!
Even with a 4 speed NEXUS...
Any issues, like spacing, chain line or anything like that during your build ???

mikeyp.1

Steel track bikes are easy cause they have the right dropouts. the spacing on most is 120-close enough to bend a little for 131.I guess you can use a chain tensioner and use a road bike frame-but track bikes are kind of old school-people have commented abt. that really old motobecane I ride-not knowing that it is 2005-and I kind of like the "Breaking Away" look-maybe I should get a wool jersey?

MacG

I built a bike for my mother with a red band Nexus 8 speed. She is thrilled with it so far. The fram I used is an old Schwinn World Sport that came from a scrap steel dumpster (and is in great shape, considering).

I am planning on taking the measurements to see how tricky it would be to adapt a Dura Ace bar-end shifter to control the Nexus hub. The only thing I see potentially being a problem is that the gear indexes in the hub are probably not of uniform size. The indexes on the bar-end shifter I have are uniformly sized, so it might be a tricky process to get the system adjusted.

If it only takes a ratio adjustment (meaning that the indexes are all uniform, but the shifter shifts too far or too short compared to the hub), then the shifter could be made to work by manufacturing some type of pulley system like a travel agent to adapt the cable pull to the correct ratio.

Once I get around to doing this, I will definitely be posting about my results since I know that a lot of people are excited about the nexus hubs but are put off by the lack of shifters for road bars (including drops, bullhorns, moustache, time trial, etc.) including myself. If I get this to work, I would probably install an inline 8-speed gear indicator to be able to tell what gear the shifter is set to without having to guess or count clicks.

For the time being, I would recommend doing a little custom work to build a stub onto your stem to hold the shifter or something. One of those T-shaped accessory mounts might be just the ticket as long as you don't mind reaching towards the stem to shift.

Sheldon Brown

The HubBub bar end adaptor works great for this. The shifter is in the same location as a bar-end shifter, but it is a more natural motion to use the twist grip in this location.

I've never much liked the lever-type bar-end shfiters because it uses the fingers in an unnatural way, applying pressure on the sides of the fingers. I really like the twist-grip on my Raleigh Interntaional (in fact I commuted on it today) despit my initial resistance to the idea of twist grips. Part of it is the nice light action of the Shimano shifter...like buttah!

Sheldon "Nexusate" Brown

dobber

Not a road frame, but set up like a roadster.

mikeyp.1

Right,the HuBub is what I'm using-at the risk of being called a shill for Harris Cyclery,I've got to say that all of their nexus products,HuBub,wheels,ect work great and are reasonably priced.But I would like a longer adapter than the HuBub so that the shifter could be rotated 180 degrees and so be just outboard of where the brake levers attach to the bar,instead of at the end of the bar.this is the stock location on my bianchi milano and I think some other stock nexus bikes.

carlton

Cool bike Dobber. What type shifter did you use?

carlton

Mr. Brown do you think shimano will ever release a brifter for the nexus or the upcoming alfine? Ultegra ergonomics would be nice.

Thanks, Carlton

Bottomfeeder

Yes the HubBub looks like it works great, although it's a bit spendy in my opinion. But even before the Hubbub I made my own bar-end twist shifter mount by grafting a section of MTB bar into the end of my road bars. All it take is a modicum of ingenuity and you can save a bunch. And you could probably come up with a like solution for mounting the twist shifter at a ninety degree angle.

With that said; in my opinion the problem with internally geared hubs on performance oriented bikes is the weight. And not that they weigh too much necessarily... of course nearly 3lbs is a chunck, eh? But the better and lighter the frame, the more the rearward weight bias becomes noticable. I built my Crosscheck with a Sram 7 speed and it definitely felt like it was packing some pounds out back. This was only exasperated when I threw a bag on the rear rack. However, I recently put that same wheel on my wife's old comfort bike, which has a heavier genuine gas pipe frame, and it feels fine. In other words, if the bike's already a tank... well what's a few more pounds?

Don't get me wrong. I still dig the internally geared hub concept and I'd like to try the new Shimano or Sturmey Archer 8 speed. But If I had the funds I'd be putting it on the back end of Kogswell's new Porteur. That way I could just put a big basket on the front and throw my bag in there and offset the weight in the rear... maybe strike the right balance.

DanO

sauerwald

I guess to each their own - FWIW, I find that I use the bar-end (which is only for the rder - fder is a downtube and hardly ever gets touched) by shifting up with the palm of my had pressing the lever down, and when shifting down, I nudge the lever up with the back of my thumb - rarely use my fingers at all in shifting. The ultegra bar-end is very smooth, and has positive clicks which make the shifting very easy. I have one bike which has a twisty shift and have never liked it (but the bike is a folder and is just not as nice of a ride as any of my other bikes, the so the twist shift may just be guilty by association).

Also - at the risk of sounding like another shill for Harris cyclery - the front wheel on the San Remo was built by Sheldon on a Nexus generator hub, and has held up very well with 30 miles of daily use.

mikeyp.1

From what I read in screwy computer translations of german articles,Alfine will be available with rapidfire for fans of this system.I never had experience with twist shifters before my Nexus bikes except for the 59 dollar bikes I bought my grandkids,where it didn't work well.But the nexus shifter works so well,I can't imagine using anything else.If this is the place to play ASK SHELDON BROWN,I would like to ask for some large wingnuts for the back axle,so I wouldn't have to carry a 15 mm wrench-I think that they had these 100 years ago,before QR were invented.

Dahon.Steve

The only hub gear I like was the Sturmey Archer AW-3. The version on my Dahon Piccolo (sold) was much ligher than my Shimano Nexus 7 hub. In fact, the bike was low geared but not low enough. Hills that gave me trouble with the AW-3 also gave me trouble with the Nexus 7.

But since this was a town bike, the three speed is really all you need. There was no direct drive on the Nexus therefore, no efficient gear.

Steve.

MacG

Not having a low enough gear is not the hub's fault. A hub gear can have as many or as few gears as you want. All these are are ratios. Multipliers. The overall gearing is just as much a product of what gear ratio is used for the chain drive as it is what ratios the gearhub has built into it. If your three speed does not have low enough gears, get a bigger cog or a smaller chainring for it. It's that simple. The side effect is that you will lower the other two gears as well, so you need to make sure you don't change the ratio so much that your high gear is no longer high enough. If you can't get an acceptable spread of gear ratios from a three speed for day-to-day riding, you are either too picky or have way too many hills. In either case, a 7 or 8 speed hub might be just the ticket.

The Nexus 8 speed has direct drive in 5th gear. I have a hard time believing that the 7 speed did not have a direct drive, since it would be one of the easiest things to build into the hub and would allow having "one more gear" than would otherwise be possible. I'm pretty sure that the Nexus 7 speed has a direct drive 4th gear.

EDIT: I take it back. Apparently the Nexus 7 speed does not have a direct drive gear. That is indeed pretty screwy.

I-Like-To-Bike

Not as screwy as the cyclists with a psychic dynamometer who think that they can detect the "loss in efficiency" from lack of direct drive in any practical application of an internal hub on a commuter bike.

dobber

Twist Shift with one of Sheldons HubBubs. Combined with a pair of On-One Midge bars for a real nice setup.

The thing is a tank, that's for sure. I'll probably add a rear rack in the near future.

dobber

This Psychic Dynamometer, is it wireless?

I-Like-To-Bike

Not only is it wireless, it is infallible, costs nothing and weighs less than angel's breath.

Derailed

I use one occasionally in my otherwise fixed-gear Surly Cross-Check and like it very much. I use the HubBub adaptor and don't have any complaints. In fact, I like having the shifter there because it makes it a piece of cake to switch back and forth between gears and no gears. I put this setup together to use my Cross-Check for a tour back in May and wrote up a few thoughts HERE.

DanO220

Oh boy, here we go again. I think anyone who rides up even a moderate hill on a Sram 7 speed in 2nd, let alone 1st gear, and can deny the obvioius grinding and crunching that's going on back there has just plain drunk too much of the ol' internally geared coolaid.

I like the 7 speed hub on my wife's bike for cruising down to the store and back. But that wheel is on my wife's bike because I decided that climbing on a lighter, more efficient single speed was far better than climbing on a heavier hub that I couldn't stand to ride in anything lower than 3rd gear anyhow.

Sorry, but in the case of the Sram 7 speed at least, the mechanical friction in the lower gears is just a fact of life. And I for one would consider the ability to comfortably climb a hill to be within the defenition of any practical application on a commuter bike. And besides, wasn't the OP talking about using one of these hubs on a 'road bike'? I would think the performance expectations there are far above those of the practical commuter - at least they were for me when I spec'd one on my original Crosscheck build.
DanO

apw55

Yes, and he was very specific about wanting feedback from people who have actually used a Nexus red band 8, not a Sram or Sturmey-Archer

I’m only chiming in because I share his interest in the Nexus 8 and am also not interested in another long-winded debate about the inefficiencies resulting from the friction and weight of internal hubs in general.

Regards,
Alan

DanO220

You're right Alan. Although I've tried an internally geared hub on a road type bike (the Crosscheck is actually billed as a cyclocross frame, but makes a great all-arounder.) it wasn't Shimano's new 8 speed. So I'll cease and desist, except for my original thoughts concerning the weight differences between these hubs and a nice, light weight road frame. That will be true no matter how well the new hub works.

But I'd like to hear from someone who's ridden the premium Shimano as well.

DanO

mikeyp.1

I have 3 bikes with the nexus: my 1942 Schwinn replica has the 7,my Bianchi Milano has the 8 and my track bike has the premium 8-There is a big jump in Quality for the premium-Shimano says that it is finished to ultegra standards-the others feel more like sora-noisier with more drag.If Alfine has a similar jump in Quality then I really think it will make a fine road bike and I won't ride anything else even if the Dura-Ace 7800 bike that lives in my walk in closet trys to seduce me.