Hub Gears in Everyday Use
- Traditional hub gears are indexed at the shifter making operation dependent on correct cable tension (and lubrication thereof). In practice, gear-jumping and consequent internal damage are unusual except in high-mileage units. Modern hub gear-units incorporate the indexing in the unit itself and are therefore unaffected by shifting malfunctions caused in this way.
- The Sturmey Archer and Fichtel & Sachs 'Torpedo' systems defaulted to top gear at slack-cable, which could make the bicycle usable for long distance travel in flat terrain even if a fault developed in the change mechanism (rather like a derailleur system, which can be manually set to a high gear in case of a similar fault). Some modern hub gear systems (e.g. 7-speed Shimano) default to bottom gear and are thus more dependent on the cable-pull.
Read more about this topic: Hub Gear
Famous quotes containing the words hub, gears and/or everyday:
“We recognize caste in dogs because we rank ourselves by the familiar dog system, a ladderlike social arrangement wherein one individual outranks all others, the next outranks all but the first, and so on down the hierarchy. But the cat system is more like a wheel, with a high-ranking cat at the hub and the others arranged around the rim, all reluctantly acknowledging the superiority of the despot but not necessarily measuring themselves against one another.”
—Elizabeth Marshall Thomas. “Strong and Sensitive Cats,” Atlantic Monthly (July 1994)
“Your work is to keep cranking the flywheel that turns the gears that spin the belt in the engine of belief that keeps you and your desk in midair.”
—Annie Dillard (b. 1945)
“The organization controlling the material equipment of our everyday life is such that what in itself would enable us to construct it richly plunges us instead into a poverty of abundance, making alienation all the more intolerable as each convenience promises liberation and turns out to be only one more burden. We are condemned to slavery to the means of liberation.”
—Raoul Vaneigem (b. 1934)