This has officially become a two-bike progress thread. The Raleigh is now awaiting a headlight and Nexus brake levers from AliExpress that'll undoubtedly take three weeks to arrive, so...Gazelle update.
I’ve been chatting directly with Gazelle in the meantime (chatting with the company...not the bike), who very kindly shipped me a Hesling Finura chaincase for the Whale. This is an OEM spec chaincase on the current EasyFlow pedal-assist e-bike.
Spoiler alert...this is what it looks like after it's already been mounted:
The guard is just short enough to fit the Whale, but will still need a very slight bit of trimming at the hub to clear the massive dustcap of the 25t cog.
The hardest part was getting it to fit at the BB. To explain what it took, I need to share a bit about the BB itself. This has a 38mm press-in cartridge bottom bracket (or “trapas,” in Dutch), which is supposedly a Thompson BB. These differ so much from cup-and-cone Thompsons that I’m surprised anyone even calls them that. The
only thing in common between the two is that the BB shell does not have threads. That's
IT.
At any rate, it is ridiculously easy to work on. Put a bolt on one side of the BB spindle to protect it…and give it a couple of whacks with a James Cagneyish sledge. The BB and one cup will pop out the other side. I know this probably gives some folks the willies about their bearings, but this is how the Dutch service them, and I don’t see bottom brackets falling out and littering their protected bike lanes and fietsstraats.
But back to the chaincase: It was probably made to fit a conventional BB. While the original BB hole on the case was just right to be sandwiched by the plastic press-fit BB cup, it put the case at least 4mm too far outboard. I believe it was never meant for sandwiching, and is supposed to fit an ISCG style adapter using the adjustable slots.
I decided to handle this by boring out the original hole to allow the case to fit further inboard.
Then, I had a washer laser cut out of ABS plastic to fit the ISCG adapter holes. The washer sits inboard the case – and I found I still needed to stack an additional 2mm of washers between the case and the washer to properly space the case to the left.
One of the bolts had to be removed entirely though, as it kept interfering with the chainstay regardless of positioning.
This led to my favorite part about this BB: The cartridge is designed not to bottom out against either press-fit cup, so if you want to adjust BB offset, it’s a matter of a couple of blows to the respective side of the spindle you want to adjust. It’s not rocket science, and when you’re trying to get a chain to thread through a chaincase, having this flexibility is exceptionally nice.
Case in point, the crank is sitting much farther out in this picture than it does now (granted, the third bolt was in place here, pressing the bottom of the case out, and the top of the case inward). Fixing it was a matter of a few hammer hits. That's it.
As for the rest of the case - getting nothing to rub on this combo is nothing short of a miracle, but I do still have to fabricate the rear mount. If anything, I shouldn’t be complaining that it runs as smooth as it does now. A bit of trimming should eliminate the last rubbing noises, and the rear mount should do wonders to lock everything down where it needs to be.
I'm tempted to find a case that would fit the Raleigh Sports, but since it has the later chainguard braze-on tabs, I'm stuck using Raleigh hockey sticks.
-Kurt