cudak888 

I put one in my cart at Bike24 along with a Hebie 695 steering stabilizer spring - I foresee this bike sitting on it's butt when up on the stand - and had a bit of a shock when I saw the shipping @ 20 Euros. The whole order without shipping is €21.

Wish these guys had coupons...or at least more I could pile onto my order. Drives me nuts that proper city bicycle bits are a complete novelty in the States.

-Kurt

JaccoW

You could probably get a lot of spare parts for the bike at Hollandbikeshop.com including the B+M Secula but then the light itself is more expensive. Shipping will include tracking and insurance though and you could try contacting both shops to see if they can offer cheaper shipping options.

noglider 

What will you do for the front wheel and front braking? Someone brought me some parts to build wheels for him, including a SA drum brake front hub. I LOST IT in my apartment and had to buy him a new one. Then later I found it. So it's new-in-package. Let me know if you're interested.

cudak888 

I have a matching Rigida rim for the front. As for the hub, @JaccoW properly scared me off from a drum brake on this thing. I'm going to make a Tektro 800A fit, whether the fender likes it or not.

Current plan is to put a generator hub in the front. It had a 1946 Dynohub in there before, and now is an opportunity to convert to 6V DC and add a taillight.

There's a fellow on eBay with a gazillion Sturmey HDS-12s that were donated to him (they must have come from Spin bicycles), and they're the cheapest option - but they're also painted silver. Putting a black hub in this to match the rear just sounds relatively sensible, but aesthetically idiotic; at that point, I'd go for the complete Trendy Characterless Black™ look, which isn't me. Personally, I'd rather put a polished hub in here, and if I can find someone near Richmond Hills, I might just see if I can get my hands on another ofo from Steve's Certified Auto Repair. Their generator hubs are really nice; same as the Limes.

-Kurt

cudak888 

Went to the LBS today and I'm considering buying a Gazelle city bicycle (nothing C&V; it honestly looks like a share bike) that they have for the hub alone. It's $75, but for $150, they'll throw in the bits that I removed off this frame - Campag NR RD, SR FD, Shimano 600 Arabesque crank and brake calipers, SR seatpost, and possibly the Shimano stem and bars (shop owner doesn't want to part with Cinellis if he can help it).

Seems fair enough - not a bargain, but fair. And I get a spare Italian JIS BB for my Leo the Bottecchia project.



-Kurt

cudak888 

Well, I went ahead and did it - donor bike and uber-cool parts have been acquired. Had I remembered all the bits that I removed from the Romani, I would have never batted an eye at the price.

First off, the not-relevant-to-this-build-but-I-got-it-in-the-bargain-so-here-they-are bits. I forgot that the crank is an early Dura-Ace FC-7110 unit, not 600 Arabesque. I'm not objecting one bit! The brakes are 6200-series 600EX/Arabesque though. Meh, at least for my tastes, but there are tons of other goodies (and the obligatory NR RD) in here to keep me happy.



Now, the fairly interesting donor bike - a 26" Gazelle Whale. I'm not sure that's an ideal name for a bicycle (save for a cargo bike), but for a Dutch market well versed in the practical benefits of two-wheeled transportation, I wouldn't be surprised if the weight corollary is largely ignored.






Frankly, I must admit that I'm a bit smitten with the little thing. It looks halfway to a dockless bike, and my return to bike collecting is heavily influenced by IGH hubs, so it ticks two of the boxes that get my heart rate up (in a good way).

It also has a fair amount of practical little touches on it that make me smile. The headset is capped with a hammerhead-shaped cable keeper (and the bottom of the frame has a nice bespoke cable guide), there's a disc-shaped cap that seals off the bottom bracket, the stem is nice and short, and there are bosses for a rear wheel lock under the chainstays:



Finally, a V-brake cable run that keeps the noodle away from one's shins:





This is also a genuine Dutch-market Gazelle sold from a shop in Leidschendam:



And the one thing that really surprised me: Woods valve tubes. You don't see these here in the States everyday, despite being a pretty sensible design.



Anyway, I think I'm losing the point, which is - of course - the Nexus Inter-L (HB-NX22) hub that this bike is donating to the '80 Sports:




I'm going to size up the Raleigh for it's spokes tonight and begin the swap soon. I do want to tune up the Gazelle just to find out how it rides though.

-Kurt

pastorbobnlnh 

Kurt, somehow, "Gazelle" and "Whale" just don't fit together. Maybe "Rhino" would be a better name?

I'm supposing you are not tempted to mount the Gazelle's rear light (and rack) on the 1980 Sports?

noglider 

That Whale is really nice, despite the name. I see a dynamo hub and taillight but no headlight? Are you putting both those hubs on the Sports?

cudak888 

That isn't the half of it. The seattube decal has a series name on it..."Sporty Girls." I guess that's the @RobbieTunes part of the branding.

I considered mounting the rack; it even has the Pletscher-style bolt pattern on it. This bike has 26" ISO 559 wheels though, just like a share bike. The deck is stacked against the possibility that the rack would fit the Raleigh.

This Gazelle has been kicking around at the LBS for about a year. It had a headlight at one time. For them, junking the headlight was easier, but I think they only got halfway through tinkering with it - the hub and brakes are not adjusted. Rear light is a battery operated unit.

The unfortunate part is that I've since learned this is the 2.4 watt model of Inter L hub, designed to run a front headlight only. The 3W units run both front and rear. I might have bought a bike for nothing.

The rear hub stays on the Gazelle, especially since I went through the trouble of getting the Sports the SRAM G9. The Whale has a bog-standard Nexus 3 speed on it - in general, I dislike these to begin with - and its worse as it is a coaster 3-speed. Yech.

Incidentally, Gazelle made the Whale with separate top and downtubes too, along with a similar 24" model which are much more deserving of the name - they're ugly and look like department store bikes, even though they aren't:



The kids' versions tend to have super funky colors.




-Kurt

JaccoW

That 2.4W hub might not be much of a problem. Keep in mind that the main reason why LED lights got brighter and brighter is because they got more efficient.

You can probably easily run a regular front and rear LED setup and still get plenty of light. The main difference is that it takes a slightly higher speed to gain maximum output.

There are 1.5W hubs and the matching headlights nowadays. The main advantage is lower drag.

bwilli88 

Do you have a link for these?

cudak888 

I'll give it some thought. Not sure I'm sold on the idea, but I'll probably delace the 2.4w anyway.

Sure: https://www.ebay.com/itm/VINTAGE-BIC...72.m2749.l2649

-Kurt

Cute Boy Horse

Gazelle love their 2.4W dynohubs and battery powered tail lights, for some reason. It's a terrible design decision because dutch people are extremely non technical and don't know to change batteries. You can tell the age of a bike in Holland by the number of red keychain lights are dangling from the rack, same way you can age a tree trunk by the rings.

What makes it particularly galling is that before the invention of LED bike lights, bikes here were fully dynamo lit, but they had a very similar problem. When the bulbs burnt out, dutch people would get so far as to take the lenses off and unscrew the bulb, but no further. So most bikes older than 2000 or so are riding around with dangling led keychains, and the rusting out hollow shells of chrome headlights and big holes in the mudguard where the red lens use to be.

If they'd have kept both lights dynamo powered as well as LED the problem would have vanished!

Another very common design fault to gazelle bikes is chaincases which have a hole in the top for the seatstay to pass through. They collect rainwater through this hole and don't drain out, rusting the chain incredibly fast. I think you're lucky to get one that doesn't have this "feature"...

JaccoW

To be fair, most of those fender mounted rear lights don't survive being parked in public parking spaces that well. The plastic used to be fairly brittle. Nowadays they tend to make them out of stronger materials.
Other than that, yeah Gazelle tends to make some weird design choices. Still a shame they never continued their with a fully enclosed magnesium chaincase with an internal derailleur system.

cudak888 

That's equal parts fantastic and unnecessary, and I can see where the unnecessary side won out: It can't be much lighter than a hub gear, you can't shift it when stopped, and it takes a special Lefty-style single dropout hub (which, in all fairness, probably makes tire changes really easy). Interesting how the wheel lock has to be relocated to the front due to the phantom seatstay.

It reminds me of some of the ideas kicked around on the forums occasionally: Really neat from an engineering perspective, but with no real practical benefit over the current preference.

-Kurt

noglider 

Kurt, @JaccoW is right. You won't find any deficiency with a 2.4w hub. People use them with two lights.

cudak888 

I don't doubt it...but are there any comparisons out there so I can visualize what I'm losing?

-Kurt

noglider 

Check out the electronics and lighting section of bikeforums. I remember in particular one person trying it and finding it to work perfectly normally with no noticeable deficiency.

JaccoW

Come to think of it, my current daily bike (a Gazelle) has a Shimano dynamo front but came with a rear battery light originally.
Nowadays I run a B+M Cyo T Premium front with a B+M Secula Plus rear on it.
Chances are I already use a 2.4W hub. People still comment the light throws a hell of a lot of light. I'll check later this week for you if you want.

I'm probably building a front wheel using an SA XL-FDD 90mm drum hub in the next 2 months or so. The 2.4W version is a lot cheaper and available than the 3W version but the drop in 3W innards are not that expensive. So if you are curious...

cudak888 

I recently experienced a Novara-brand bike (US, via REI), and that thing had the same setup - 2.4W dynamo front, battery rear; just like the Gazelle. I gather the idea is that the rear always needs to be constant, even when stopped.

I just realized that I could kludge up a test on the Park stand comparing the power output of the Lime's Chinese 3W hub over the Gazelle's 2.4W, especially as my laser-cut Lime wheel nut wrench arrived today. I'd run the Lime's wheel on the Gazelle, but it's an 110mm hub and won't fit, so the Park stand ought to serve as a good static testbed. It'll also save me from having to pull the wiring out of the Lime temporarily.

-Kurt

noglider 

These ratings are just ratings, not actual outputs. The hub puts out more than the rated output above a certain speed. And the lights probably go to full brightness before reaching the rated required power. That's why using a 2.4w hub won't be noticeably different.

Dynamo-powered lights have standlights (circuits with capacitors) to keep them lit after the dynamo stops producing if that's what you mean by constant. Or are you referring to the unblinkiness? I think that comes from the German law that says bike lights are not allowed to blink, even though blinking seems to be a good idea and not terribly distracting to drivers. But I happen to like the lights, so I live with the unblinkiness.

cudak888 

Fair enough, but I can't wrap my head around why the manufacturers offer two different outputs in the first place - unless there's picayune legislation out there somewhere that requires one wattage rating or another imposed on manufacturers (for compliance that is never enforced in the first place).

The only dynamo powered lights I've seen as of recent are capacitorless. I've yet to see something of that description in a current dynamo light, but here in the US, we don't get anything intelligent and sensible like that. But I like what I'm hearing (and I'm also all ears for any headlights that I can cannibalize for the Sturmey front headlight.

-Kurt

noglider 

I don't know why they have these ratings. A lot of the designs are motivated by German law, and I don't know if the laws are enforced. For example, one of the silly regulations governs maximum output from the lights. Fortunately, this has motivated the light makers to make very good use of small amounts of light energy, leading to the highly engineered optics. I have received compliments on how focused my B&M lights are, yet they don't really produce a lot of lumens.

JaccoW

Check out European brands. Busch + Muller, Axa and Herrmans to name a few. Most, if not all of them use them.
The word to look for is "standlight" or "steadylight".

I don't think it's a regulation thing as I have bought models without a standlight (Axa) in the past and they continue to be sold in some places for really cheap bikes. Think €5 dynamo lights.

Cute Boy Horse

I'm glad about this law. It takes more effort to track a flashing light in the dark than a steady one, because it's vanishing and reappearing somewhere else later on, you can't watch it move. You lose information that can be important. Did the bike swerve? Is he starting a turn? You don't know until later.

But for me the all time big reason I don't like them is I need my light to see the road I'm riding down. Can't see where I'm going so well if the light turns itself on and off all the time.

It's not maximum output of the lights, it's a regulation of nominal voltage and amperage, and also for a very good reason, it protects customers by making sure that supplied parts work with the industry standards. (Two, 6V 0.5A and 12V 0.5A)

This is very important because something being 6V is not enough. Put a 6V lamp that expects more watts than a standard dynamo can provide, it doesn't resist enough to consume the power that the dynamo makes, and acts like a short circuit. This burns out the customer's dynamo windings. I've seen this first hand from a have-a-go hero who decided that he could pedal enough to power a 60W bulb! I've also come across non-compliant tyre dynamos struggling to make 1W of power at 6V. As you can imagine, the light was very dim.

Always very important that for things that are expected to match a technical standard, there is legal enforcement. Else you get fly by night operations, ripping people off. This is especially serious considering lights are safety equipment for road traffic. Nobody wants to see their lights blow out on a rainy night and then get hit by a truck or something.