Wednesday, July 7, 2010

Schlumpf Wheel

Today I picked up my new geared wheel from Freewheelers bike shop! Roger, the owner, runs the shop alone and has been in the bike business forever. I used to shop at his store over 20 years ago when it was on Culver Rd! He did a fantastic job building my wheel. I gave him 229mm double butted spokes to use, but he found that 227mm would have been ideal. I couldn't find that length in butted spokes. Hopefully the wheel will hold up fine though.
I put the wheel in my uni tonight and rode a bit in the neighborhood. At first I couldn't even get it going in high gear. It just felt crazy weird. But after about three tries I started to get the hang of it.
I'll have to post a video of how it works. But basically I can now ride as normal, or shift to higher speed. It's 1.5 faster. So for every 1 crank rotation the wheel rotates 1.5 times. I haven't tried to shift on the fly yet.

2 comments: