Originally Posted by
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In the process of working on my Schwinn 564, I managed to locate a 7-speed Hyperglide hub body that would directly replace the OEM one on the SportLX hub. The 13-26 7-speed Uniglide cassette is still in pretty decent shape, but I thought changing it would be much better in the long run. I was able to find an inexpensive 12-28 7-speed hyperglide cassette.
But all this left me to wonder.... is a working Uniglide hub and cassette desirable at all among the C&V folks, or is it one of those things just best avoided when possible, as I have chosen to do?
Uniglide twist tooth sprockets worked well, especially on smaller sized freewheels and cassettes. In fact Uniglide freewheels are still in demand. One advantage is when the teeth wear they can be taken off, reversed and you have new teeth again.
When Shimano introduced Hyperglide, the ramped/stepped sprockets made shifting from the middle to the larger sprockets a lot smoother and easier, especially 26T and up. I don't know if you will notice much difference in shifting between a Uniglide and Hyperglide on the 3 or 4 smaller cogs.
Inexpensive Shimano cassettes which include the "obsolete" 7 and 8 speed versions are usually made in China and the quality is not as good as the originals made in Japan and later in Singapore.
The cheaper cassettes are pretty clunky vs the better quality ones:
As far as the 12-28T cassette, 11T and 12T sprockets were designed for use with smaller sized chain rings like 48T...
For many years 52T or 53T large chain rings were standard on many bikes. Combined with a 14T small sprocket gave a 100" or 102" high gear.
A 48T x 12T combo gives 108" while a 52T x 12T is 117" and 53T x 12T is 119". That a lot of gear to push for an average rider.
Hyperglide cassettes and freehubs have one wide spline, I've mounted Hyperglide cassettes on Uniglide freehubs but they require the wide spline to be narrowed to fit. Dremel tool time!. I used Uniglide screw on small sprockets in the outside position.
My first venture in cassette mods back in 2007: a 7 speed Hyperglide cassette on a 6 speed Uniglide freehub - 13-28T with a screw on 13T Uniglide sprocket. I think that I sanded the spacers down to 8 speed width.
The difference between older DuraAce freehubs and standard Shimano freehubs is that the DA freehubs had a smaller diameter locking thread for use with an 11T outside sprocket.
As far as Uniglide chains are concerned, I cant speak for the later versions but the first one that came out in 1975 lasted forever and shifting wise were the best thing since sliced bread compared to other chains from that era. I have one that I took off of my bike back about 1976. It had 3000+ miles on it. Living in the dusty southwest plus running a bike shop, I changed my chains at that mileage.
I pulled it out and measured it when I bought a Park CC-3 chain tool about 12+ years ago. It's still good!
verktyg
