changing vintage freehub bodies

[d_douglas]

Remember Shimano Uniglide? My buddy has a set of beautiful NOS XT hubs with a uniglide cassette body and I am trying to figure out a way to use them. Is is possible to simply buy a 7 or 8 spd HG cassette body and screw it on? Is it that simple?

Your expertise is appreciated!

Darren

[palincss]

Remember Shimano Uniglide? My buddy has a set of beautiful NOS XT hubs with a uniglide cassette body and I am trying to figure out a way to use them. Is is possible to simply buy a 7 or 8 spd HG cassette body and screw it on? Is it that simple?

Your expertise is appreciated!

Darren

My Spectrum used to have a back wheel with an Ultegra hub made for Uniglide. For a few years I used hyperglide cassetted by having the LBS dremel down the wide spline.

Here's what Sheldon says on the subject:


Uniglide cassettes are no longer available. If you have a hub that uses Uniglide cassettes, the best thing to do is to upgrade the hub by transplanting a Hyperglide body onto it. http://sheldonbrown.com/k7.html#transplant

Alternatively, you can fit Hyperglide sprockets onto a Uniglide body by grinding or filing off the one wide spline. This is not particularly difficult. You'll still need a threaded Uniglide sprocket for the top-gear position. Supplies of these are getting scanty.

[Brian Smith]

Remember Shimano Uniglide? My buddy has a set of beautiful NOS XT hubs with a uniglide cassette body and I am trying to figure out a way to use them. Is is possible to simply buy a 7 or 8 spd HG cassette body and screw it on? Is it that simple?

Your expertise is appreciated!

Darren

If you are not going to also increase the OverLocknutDistance of the hub (frame spacing that it fits into) then installing a freehub body to accommodate 8/9 speed cassettes will increase the amount of dish in the resulting wheel. That's not ideal. Using a 7 speed freehub body and paying careful attention to the locknut sizes and spacing washers, you can get a final dish measurement close to or less than the original spec of the hub. Unfortunately you still have to deal with the issue of finding/modifying drivetrain parts for the hub...but at least then you could do it with that hub. It's probably not worth all of that effort. If you spend money and effort on a new freehub just to end up with a weaker wheel around a heavier hub than currently available, then nothing has been gained.

Those hubs would be great swap meet offerings... I have boxes and boxes of stuff like that, and despite that I love it all, it's not really very practical for most people.