Remembering my old 3-speed got me thinking…

[hozn]

I may have missed this, but are you not able to put a derailleur in your SS frame? Or is this 120mm spacing? If either of those are true then I can see the appeal of 3sp.

Hope your knees heal!

Edit: no this is a disc-brake so must be 135mm? If you can run a RD just do 1×10 and call it a day?

[DismalScientist]

Belt drive. I’d just build up a new wheel with the biggest IGH you foresee that you want for maximum flexibility.

I find my knee issues to be more weather-related than cycling. They ache when I start riding, but the oain goes away when I don’t think about them. Just like they hurt when I stand up. This doesn’t mean I’m going to stop standing.

A couple of Bloody Marys before going to work can’t hurt as well.

[wheelswings]

Erg, sorry about your knees, dkel. Lingering injuries are dispiriting.
A few reactions:
–Are you totally convinced of the wisdom of your PT guidance? Long ago when I was badly hurt for over a year, it took eight different doctors before I found one who could fix me. She had me pain-free in a week and racing again in a month.
–You say you’re stretching religiously, as in “every day.” Are you sure this is what your injury needs? A number of conditions are aggravated by stretching. They improve only with specific strength building exercises that get at the imbalances and fortify the muscles around the knee. I don’t know the specifics of your situation, obviously.
–One of my favorite books on sports injuries is Listen to Your Pain: The Active Person’s Guide to Understanding, Identifying, and Treating Pain and Injury, by Ben E. Benjamin.
http://www.amazon.com/Listen-Your-Pain-Understanding-Identifying/dp/0143111957
–One of the innumerable advantages of riding on your pedals (standing) is it’s really gentle on your knees. Worth a try?
Hang in there. w&w

[Vicegrip]

@dkel 128669 wrote:

Hence the 3-speed idea. Otherwise I have a brand new bike gathering dust.

If you have the option it might be worth it to see if the knees heal up riding a fully geared bike for a while. Resume with the SS/fixie when the legs are 100% and see if they stay that way. Access to pedaling dynamics that are fine tuned to the best range of cadence and power is no small thing. In Fla perhaps not but around here it almost always some degree of up or down.

[dkel]

Here’s an update on an old thread…

I have been working with Jan at Bikenetic to figure out an IGH wheel for my belt-drive fixie. I’ve figured out that I can use a Sturmey 5-speed hub with my existing drivetrain components (same “chain”ring [beltring?] and same length belt), add a rear disc brake and a bar-end shifter, and if the chain line is the same (which is not unlikely) maybe even be able to slap the FG wheel right back in there at a moment’s notice. Still working out the final details of gearing (24- or 26-tooth cog?), but I expect that this will convert the bike into something I can finally use, even while my knees continue to recover (slowly but surely!). I’ll update again when things start to come together.

[dkel]

Another update…
Well, apparently Sturmey’s 5-speed hub doesn’t play nice with Gates Carbon Drive. I don’t think I’ll get the gearing range I’m looking for in a 3-speed, so I’m considering a Shimano Alfine 8. Pros: massive gearing range and reasonable steps between gears. Cons: not as simple as a 5-speed and will likely make the bike function an awful lot like my non-belt-drive bike. Still, I’m going for workable right now, and it will be great to have two usable bikes again—and a belt drive IGH bike will be fabulous in bad weather.

As always, Jan has been super helpful, encouraging, and knowledgeable.

[hozn]

Alfine 11 Di2 [hydro]?

[dkel]

@hozn 144925 wrote:

Alfine 11 Di2 [hydro]?

Yeah, I saw that and thought it would be overkill, considering I was already slightly disappointed at having to move up from 5- to 8-speed. :p

[dkel]

My Wolverine rebuild is now done!

[ATTACH=CONFIG]12714[/ATTACH]

The conversion from fixed to IGH required a lot of new parts…the only common components in the drivetrain are the bottom bracket and crank arms. The rear hub is an Alfine 8-speed controlled by a Jtek bar-end shifter. I also added a rear Spyre brake, since the FG build didn’t have one. It’s a pretty sweet ride, and super quiet and smooth. I have mud flaps for it, but I’m in no hurry to add them as the belt drive doesn’t care about road grime. The bottom bracket shell is already pretty dirty, though, so I’ll add the flaps someday when I have forgotten that it took me four hours to get the fenders right. Also, if anyone knows of nice, cheap, chrome bottle cages, I’d like to know about it!

If I ever feel my knees are back to 100% again, I’ll swap out the rear wheel, belt, and ring, and see how it goes fixed. (I’ll have to restrain the shift cable somehow.)

[TwoWheelsDC]

@dkel 148737 wrote:

My Wolverine rebuild is now done!

If I ever feel my knees are back to 100% again, I’ll just buy a new fixed gear

Fixed that for you (pun unavoidable).

[dkel]

@TwoWheelsDC 148738 wrote:

Fixed that for you (pun unavoidable).

I’m already looking into what new frameset I might put a complete set of FG components onto, since I have another fixie that I built up that ended up being too small for me. That would be a road/track frameset instead of a beefy frameset like the Wolverine. Don’t tell Rockford.

[dkel]

Time to resurrect this old thread: I built up a 3-speed wheel yesterday, and put it on a SS frameset with a seatpost shifter. We’ll see if it makes for a decent commuter next week!
[ATTACH=CONFIG]18113[/ATTACH]
[ATTACH=CONFIG]18114[/ATTACH]
[ATTACH=CONFIG]18115[/ATTACH]
This is the second wheel I’ve built. It only took about half as long as the first one, so I must be doing something right.

[ShawnoftheDread]

Why the seatpost mount? For feeling like an outlaw biker with suicide shift?

[dkel]

@ShawnoftheDread 179398 wrote:

Why the seatpost mount? For feeling like an outlaw biker with suicide shift?

Without any cable bosses on the frame, it seemed a fun way to handle it without too much fuss (and using only the supplied parts). Besides, as long as I’m building a 3-speed road bike, I might as well go full quirky.

[hozn]

This is awesome!

[Author]

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