So I've eBay'd, trawled online shops and done a lot of research over the past few weeks. Now I have a bunch of parts that will complete my drum brake wheelset for my Raleigh and I'm excited, can't wait to build up my all weather commuter. Here's what I have so far:
Rigida AS26 alloy rims in 26 x 1-3/8 ISO 590 size - New
I bought these on eBay and they were advertised as generic rim, turned out they were Rigida rims; quite plain twin hollow, non-eyeletted type rims but they were £20 for the pair. They appear to be raw aluminium so I'll give polishing them a crack.
Sturmey Archer XL-FDD 90mm drum brake & 3.0w dynamo front hub - New
This didn't come with any cables, only the reaction arm clip, the wheelnuts and the wiring terminal cap, I had to do a second order for the cable assembly. The unit itself is massive and very impressive with a nice polished finish, it feels like this will give me nice strong braking.
Sturmey Archer X-RD3 70mm & 3 speed rear hub - Used from eBay
This was pretty cheap at £25 and it was laced up to a MTB 26" rim. Seems to freewheel fine, however the drum is a bit rusty but works fine however; probably just needs a bit of a scrub. I could see the LHS bearings once the brake plate was off and they looked good, but I'll pop open the hub to have a quick once over anyway. The bearings differ from the XL-FDD in that the bearings are normal cup and cone, the setup is exactly like traditional Sturmey hubs, the old Sturmey cone spanner even fits on the RHS cone.
Tektro FL-750 flat bar levers - new
These are a bit of an old school style lever, much like old MAFAC touring levers. They seem to take road style cables but seem to work ok with flat bar style cables, I'll have to see when they're hooked up.
Here is the 70mm brake drum of the X-RD3 compared to the 90mm of the XL-FDD front hub; the 90mm version is noticeably bigger. I've tried the 70mm version before and it's quite good but I want to be able to have enough power to do stoppies. The hub shell is also considerably larger, I'll have to do a ride report once I get them running.
I wasn't sure I'd get all these parts in the mail so soon, I'm just waiting for the front brake cable assembly and the spokes then I should be pretty much good to go. Hopefully the rest of the parts will arrive this week and I can get cracking this weekend, don't be surprised if the next post is me building wheels and setting them up on Christmas day, fingers crossed that I won't have any show stopping problems as there will be absolutely nothing open this weekend.
Looks good
ReplyDelete