Built it yesterday, testing over the next few days. More to come...


it's new home is this bike...

NICE! Glad to see you got rid of the rim brakes too. Please do update us on how well it works and how it compares to any geared bikes you may own. I've recently got a Nicolai Nucleon TFR with the rohloff G-boxx. It's nice not to have any chain slap or noise but the drive train friction is noticeable. It's not extreme but it's more than a well oiled chainset.

Death to Duuuurrrr-ailleurs. No, I'm not biased. Honest.

I snapped my der hanger a while a go in a 0mph crash. I haven't replaced it yet, so the bike has not gotten any ride time.

With that setup it looks like you can break that shifter housing thing at the hub, shimano geared hubs have the cable run inside the chain stays, and the shifting works with a ring rotating rather than the push rod setup that I see in the pictures above.


I know some 3 speed shimano hubs use the push rod too, but the 4, 7 and 8 geared ones, I think, use the ring shifting method.

Yes, nice. The Nicolai Nucleon TFR is very err... interesting too. And dammed expensive. I am a fan of the Rohloff as well, but thats a bit much for me. I will point out that the Rohloff has a reputation of having an extended break in period, maybe it will get easier over the next 1000 miles.

While even Nuvinci calls it a pushrod in their technical manual, it's actually more of a twist rod. That housing on the rear twists the rod clockwise and counterclockwise to alter the drive ratio inside the hub. I am kind of worried if I do crash the bike that housing will get scraped off easily, but I don't believe it'd be any trouble to get a new one out of Nuvinci. In the event a crash does happen, the hub should still be rideable home, if the housing gets damaged and even the pushrod itself.

I'll tell you this, getting that rear housing set up properly with the correct length of cable and winding it all up around pulleys while pulling some of it through holes and tightening down allen screws was a pain. I got it wrong the first time, had to redo it and still got it slightly wrong. Luckily the second time all I had to do was adjust the barrel adjusters on the handlebar controller to take up the rest of the slack.

unless of course you find an ex-demo bike on ebay REALLY REALLY cheap - I was wondering if I should stick some slicks on it and start commuting on it. I can't really see me hitting the 1600km mark any time soon otherwise. Should be interesting.....

derailleur guard - usually seen on cheap bikes but something similar may help?

I'm curious to see how 'slow' those tires are. My muirwoods 29er has an insane amount of tire clearance and these little skinnies are scary at times =)

After having had to replace two hangers in short succession recently, where can I get one of those? Dorky or not, looks like a useful thing to have on any bike, especially one that sees some off-road time.

sweeeet........

I've been riding those tires with the bike as a singlespeed for about 9 months. They are heavy at 900+ grams but I don't really notice it. I did notice when I added that heavy hub, though. The kevlar lining is most of that weight but because of the Kevlar I have not had one single flat outside of a roofing nail that went straight through the tire but held air for a few miles until I patched it. I chose the Big Apples because I am a clyde and wanted some cushy, fast rolling tires. I can literally hit curbs and jumps off curbs with them with no fear. They handle great and allow the bike to get leaned over pretty far. I will be more careful now as the Nuvinci requires a 2x pattern instead of a 3x, so my rear wheel may be slightly less strong now. Those are the 2.3 Big Apples. If you want a larger tire, but not that large or heavy, I believe the Big Apple is also available in a 2.0. Schwalbe Marathons would do the job as well.

Wow nice, thats actually the response I was hoping for. While the Continental TownRIDE tires (I don't see them listed on their site hmm) are very fast and light weight, they don't really fair to well when going through small patches of dirt/gravel/mud. Some of the erm, shortcuts I take sometimes involved any number of those things. I still probably only have about 100 miles on them so far if that, and I would feel fart too guilty if I were to replace them already.

Well, I ride down a gravel hill once I get to work, squeezing the brakes the whole way down. I wouldn't say that the Big Apples do well on gravel or mud, but they seem to do alright on any dry land, especially if it's paved or concrete

I'm 90% sure they're more stable than my current tires hehe

I have heard the idea of beach racing on Schwalbe Big Apples being thrown around


hmmm