Hey fellow unicyclists. I have heart-wrenching news. My only uni sort of broke and as a frequent rider, this makes my heart sad.
I’ve pretty confidently diagnosed the problem, but don’t know how to fix it or if it’s fixable: my axle is bent on one side.
Well, I say “axle,” but I don’t really know if there is a different word for the outermost side of the axle, the part that the crank attaches to. That part is bent. I know it’s the axle and not the crank itself because I took the crank off and attached a different one and it was still bent the same way. I attached pictures so you can see what I mean.
This would be fine if I were playing sports on it and constantly getting on and off (I know several unicycle football players who use unicycles with bent axles), but I use mine for commuting, where I stay on for a while. And after about 10 minutes, the slightly askew position hurts my back really badly.
Is this something I can fix?? Bike shops don’t seem to know much about unicycles. If I can’t fix it, would I be able to order parts for it to replace it and get a new one that way? Or would it be cheaper to buy a new unicycle? If I did want to go the route of replacing broken parts, it possible to get JUST a new axle installed or would I have to buy a new wheel altogether?
Thanks dudes and girls, I appreciate it.
There’s not a good way to fix your current hub. You will either need to rebuild your wheel with a new one or get a new wheel/uni.
You can put a new hub in. Unicycle wheels aren’t generally sold as a separate piece so you’ll probably have to go with just getting a new hub
What uni do you have? I can’t quite tell from the pics, my best guess is a torker lx. I’m going to assume it’s something with square taper cranks, not ISIS. If it is ISIS, you’re in luck, you can purchase ISIS hubs from UDC (unicycle.com) but they are 65$.
Unfortunately, if it is a torker lx you are probably going to have to buy a new uni. I don’t know of any source for a torker lx hub. You might be able to get a hub off of the trading post on this site if you got lucky. There is a slight possibility that you could get a UDC hub that will work but I believe the bearing spacing is slightly different making it iffy that one would work.
If it’s not a torker that you’ve got and it is square taper then there’s a good chance that you can get a hub from UDC that will work. Look here, they have 36 hole and 48 hole available.
Hopefully you can rebuild it using your old spokes because if you have to buy new spokes it’ll be expensive enough that you will probably be better off scrapping your uni.
Good Luck!
More or less on the same subject, would a UDC cotterless hub likely be stronger than the hub that came on my cheapo Avenir?
The Avenir has the kind of axle where a bolt sticks out of the end, and you use a nut to attach the cranks. You could probably make a case that the Avenir might be tougher, all things being equal, since it’s not hollowed out to make a bolt hole. But I doubt all things are equal.
I managed to bend the axle enough that the cranks aren’t quite aligned; I don’t do anything aggressive on it but I do lots of correction hops almost by reflex, and I’ll go up and down a curb once in a while. If that sort of thing would be too much for a UDC cotterless hub, maybe I’ll rebuild it with ISIS instead. But, lots of $$$$ to go that way, relatively speaking.
(and for now I’ll swap wheel and cranks around so that the cranks are bent the other way, and see how long it takes for them to line up again!)
Whoops, that won’t work, they’d still be bent the same way. Maybe I’ll swap my legs around and work on right-foot-forward skills instead!
The UDC hub will be stronger than the Avenir hub. They are really quite good hubs.
The hollow from the bolt hole does not affect strength very much and allows more threads to engage making it much less likely to strip than a nut on a shaft. All the ISIS hubs are hollow in the same way.
Thank! Just ordered one, we’ll see if it lasts. It’s my learning and practice uni, for stuff like learning to idle and ride backwards, and I thought it would be easy to baby it enough that hub strength wouldn’t be an issue. But it’s been a struggle…