My 20,000 km experiment with an internal gear hub on a cargo bike has come to an end. And I’m going
My 20,000 km experiment with an internal gear hub on a cargo bike has come to an end. And I’m going with something I understand better, a simple derailleur system. When I got my Surly Big Dummy frame in 2011, I decided that I would build it up with an internal gear hub. It would be perfect for the application of an everyday commuter and do it all bike. The logic went that an internal gear hub would be a set it and forget it component and would last forever. I didn’t have the budget for a Rohloff Speed Hub, so I got the next best thing, a Shimano Alfine 11. I got my rig set up pretty quickly, but the gear hub spent most of its lifetime being adjusted by a flummoxed rider. If the gear hub wasn’t adjusted just so, it would slip and gnash gears if too much pedaling torque was applied, or the shifting pattern would transform from a 1 to 11 linear progression to a what felt like a 1-1-3-4-5-4-5-8-9-10-1. I never really understood.A few weeks ago it decided to go to 11 and never go back. Not having a usable cargo bike after 7 years of near daily use, I realized how dependent I actually was on this bike. Transporting kids, to errands and commuting to work, this bike allowed me to do everything that people use cars for.So I fired up the internet shopping list and made myself a new wheel and transmission for this bike. I ended up making a wheel with a Stan’s Flow mountain bike rim on a trusty Shimano XT hub laced up with 32 DT Swiss Alpine III spokes. I usually just get Shimano, but their 10 or 11 speed shadow+ derailleurs are not compatible with the Surly Big Dummy, so I ended up getting a SRAM GX 10 speed and mated it with a 11-36 ten speed cassette that I had left over from other projects.Not only do I now have a reliable shifting drivetrain, I have saved more than a kilo in weight. The old wheel was near 4 kilograms while the new one with derailleur doesn’t even get to three kg. I’m not going to become a weight-weenie with my cargo-bike, because it will take more than a kilo to make this thing spritely, but I’ll take what I can!With the large 2.35inch wide Schwalbe Big Apples, I just barely avoid chain rub issues on the last gear. We will see how this goes in the long run. If there is too much chain/tire rubbing I’ll have to get a more narrow tire, which would present another opportunity to lose some weight on the bike, since the rims are tubeless ready and the tires are pretty heavy as it is.Hopefully I’m set for a another season of hauling stuff without a car, and now with less annoyance. -- source link