What's new at sheldonbrown.com
As of 2018, fatbikes and disk brakes have led to several new axle-length standards. The problem of disk brakes’ pulling the hub out of the front dropouts has been addressed with thru axles, which insert into a fork with a hole rather than a slot at the end of each blade. Our chainline page and cribsheet as well as our frame spacing page and cribsheet are now updated to cover these developments.
Update to our gear calculator. It now supports custom 12-sprocket cassettes, and has a listing for the stock SRAM 12-sprocket cassette. Not that we really think that thin sprockets, with a flimsy chain, are a good idea!
John has posted a new article about the mechanism of the Sachs Elan/SRAM E12 12-speed internal-gear hub; the largest, heaviest, most complicated internal-gear hub ever marketed — flawed execution of a brilliant design concept. The unusual way this hub establishes its ratios carries an important lesson. In connection with that article, John has updated his article about the history of the Elan, his main page about Sachs/SRAM hubs and the internal-gear calculator.
