What's new at sheldonbrown.com
Our article about cassettes has been updated to include information on 11-speed systems. Interesting — all major brands of 11-speed casettes now have the same sprocket spacing. Most rear derailers and shifters are not compatible, though. We can tell you which ones are.
We do minor updates on an ongoing basis and often don’t announce them. Latest is to the cribsheet on cable-pull adapters.
Our Sturmey-Archer 4, 5 and 7-speed hub page has been updated with links to newly-available information on recent 5-speed hubs.
Major update of the 10-speed cassette page — covers new models and an additional brand.
New article about the Shimano Alfine 11-speed hub. Thanks to Bruce Dance for most of the text, also Aaron Goss!
New article about the SRAM Automatix two-speed hub. We have information on maintenance, choice among variant models, and how to adjust the speed at which it shifts automatically.
Bruce Ingle customizes a fatbike —
Fatbikes are intended for use on soft, muddy, sandy, snowy surfaces but they need customization to make them truly practical for such use — in particular, fenders, wide-range gearing including ultra-low gears, and a way to carry baggage. Our new article will help you to customize a fatbike, but also gives you a look into customizing bicycles, in general.
The article is taken from a running e-mail discussion in which Bruce contemplates choices, decides on a bicycle purchase, and describes the various steps of customization and how they worked out.
The Sheldon Brown gear calculator is updated and improved: more tire sizes are covered including fatbikes, 29ers, 29+ and monster bikes, and we now have a version in German, as well as French.
New page on SunTour Perfect, Pro-Compe and New Winner freewheels. These are no longer made, but there are a lot of them around and they offer many options including the ability to work with older frames that have smaller overlocknut distance than current frames. We have information on choosing, maintaining and customizing these freewheels.
New crank lengths have been added to the Gear Calculator and Internal Gear Calculator, so they can calculate gain ratios for children’s bicycles with cranks down to 100 mm (less than 4 inches).
