Is there any way to repair the axle short of replacing the entire hub?
I spoke with TUF, he custom builds the hubs but does have a spare. The spokes on these things are interesting. Rather than typical individual spokes each “wire” actually makes up two spokes. Look carefully at the flange photo, the spoke goes from the wheel, through the hub hole and then back to the wheel. It would be cheaper to buy a basic Coker than ship this thing to TUF and pay for parts and labor.
But, 40"ers are a novelty and it would be nice to have it back. I was wondering if the flanges could be reinforced while the old axle cut out then weld in a new axle without dis-addembling the entire wheel. Even better if we could end up with a cotterless axle rather than cottered.
Harper? Any advice from your axle experiences with the Uni.5?
Brier is in the Seattle area, have car will travel.
Having that big, floppy 40" wheel attached to the hub makes it impractical to mount it for any kind of precision machining or welding. The wheel would have to be taken apart to do anything to the hub. At that point it may be cheaper to buy the spare. Machining the tapers on the axle is not particularly difficult but with the hub flanges welded on it becomes less rigid to mount in a square collet fixture (one which can be easily rotated in precise 90 degree increments) so the spare, if it has a flat cut for cottered cranks in the axle, would probably be best to keep that way.
If the guy (it’s Tommy at the unicycle factory, isn’t it?) custom builds the hubs, can he make one for you that accepts cotterless cranks? There are people on this forum who weld and build hubs that would know better than I. Steve Howard, George Barnes, and Scott Bridgman have all made hubs with axles that accept cotterless cranks.
The 40" TUF big wheel is rideable again! I have named it BIG BLUE.
I ordered Tommy’s extra hub and new bearings. The replacement hub arrived at 8:00 PM last Wednesday, UPS must have been behind that day. I dropped it off at The Bikesmith over lunch on Thursday and it was ready by quitting time yesterday.
Val at Bikesmith was able to get all the spoke nipples to spin without having to remove the hard “wheel chair” tire. The swap went through without a hitch. John will be very happy to hear he used loctite to secure the bearing to the axle. The new cranks were securely installed with a cotter press.
As soon as I got home I spun on the new pedals and took her for a ride. I tried a couple free mounts but got impatient so did a mailbox assisted side mount and launched off first try. The first thing I noticed is the amount of wobble/twist you get with that hard tire. The thing pivots on a very small contact patch and was quit squirly at first. This also makes for quite effortless turning though.
On a brief 1/2 mile round trip I found the old seat foam was not quite as cushy as I thought it would be. Road shock comes right up through the seat, you feel every little bump. I then did an air seat conversion to the old Schwinn style seat with vinyl cover. The second trip out took four tries before I could successfully launch, go figure. After a couple adjustements to the air seat I found the bumps much less noticealble.
I’ve posted new pics of the hub exchange and air seat conversion. Unfortunatly I had to be at work during the swap so I do not have photos of the disassembly and reassembly:
He’s a character. It’s a great bike shop of old and odd things. I’ve had him braze on a seatpost extension for me and do other unicycle work.
<http://www.unicyclist.com/gallery/bigwheelhubtransplant/aaj>
The picture gives you an idea of the odd nature of his little shop. What the picture doesn’t show is the singlespeed and fixed gear bikes hanging from the ceiling.
