Query results: September, 2020

I own a city bicy­cle with a very nice 3‑speed Shi­mano Nexus 3 wheel hub. It is the SG-3C41 mod­el, which has an inte­grat­ed coast­er “backpedal” brake. (The SG-3R40 and SG-3D55 mod­els don’t have that.)

I real­ly dis­like coast­er brakes, which throw me off bal­ance when maneu­ver­ing at low speeds, make start­ing from a stand­ing posi­tion dif­fi­cult, and gen­er­al­ly dimin­ish my feel­ing of free­dom of move­ment when riding.

For­tu­nate­ly, it is pos­si­ble to deac­ti­vate the brake. It is an easy mod­i­fi­ca­tion, and it is com­plete­ly reversible. 

First, down­load the Inter 3 ser­vice man­u­al from the Shi­mano web­site. It is a very clear and com­plete doc­u­ment which shows you around the device, and also has a com­plete parts list.

Remove the wheel from the bicy­cle, and extract the hub from the wheel. It is safe to do so; the main roller bear­ings have their own cas­ings, so no bear­ing ball is at risk of falling off. There are two met­al brake pads inside the hub, held togeth­er by a sprung ring. They can be removed by hand.

After remov­ing the pads, you need to tight­en down the cen­trifu­gal­ly-expand­ing shaft unit around which the pads sat. The unit must be held togeth­er, to pre­vent it from expand­ing. A small piece of met­al wire will do the job, as shown in the pho­to below.

If you do not tight­en the expand­ing unit, the hub will work most­ly fine; how­ev­er, you will notice a small lag when engag­ing after free-wheel­ing. The lag also pops up when ped­al­ing con­tin­u­ous­ly at low-pow­er, cruis­ing speeds, and is ever so slight­ly annoy­ing. Tight­en­ing the expand­ing unit makes that dis­ap­pear entirely.

When reassem­bling the hub, you will need to tight­en two lock­ing nuts on the main shaft. The inner nut is only 3 mm thick, and is turned with a 22 mm key. Just like for any bicy­cle wheel hub, the two nuts must be tight­ened against one anoth­er at just the right posi­tion. Too close to the wheel, and the hub will not rotate nice­ly around the shaft; too far from the wheel, and the hub will move about slight­ly, even­tu­al­ly destroy­ing the roller bear­ings (I learned this the hard way so you don’t have to). There­fore, I high­ly rec­om­mend you use a flat 22-mm key to hold the inner nut, and then tight­en the nuts atten­tive­ly. Flat keys are very inex­pen­sive on Ebay.

Once every­thing is reassem­bled, the hub will work as before, except the rid­er can backpedal freely. There is no notice­able difference. 

The Inter 3 hub is a real­ly fine piece of engi­neer­ing. I must grant that it is not par­tic­u­lar­ly qui­et (the low­er gears are always free­wheel­ing rel­a­tive to the upper ones, so it it is only com­plete­ly silent in first gear). How­ev­er, the gears are staged just right for urban rid­ing, the ser­vice man­u­al is stel­lar, and, most impor­tant­ly, the gear switch­ing is flaw­less. Gears switch instant­ly, with­out ped­al move­ment, in a swift and sat­is­fy­ing turn of the wrist. I’ll nev­er go back.

The begin­nings of this mahogany desk from my dad’s house are not known for sure. The wood is very like­ly from Cuba, which is in itself a sad sto­ry, as this entire­ly renew­able resource was com­plete­ly wiped off from the region through cat­a­stroph­ic mis­man­age­ment. In any case, the desk arrived in the hands of a Sovi­et diplo­mat in the island.

The diplo­mat must have trav­eled around the world, and the desk land­ed in the Embassy of the USSR in Brus­sels, Bel­gium. The Embassy then donat­ed it to the Com­mu­nist Youth in Brus­sels. The orga­ni­za­tion shared its office with the Mai­son de Jeunes “1917” in the city, where my father worked in the six­ties and sev­en­ties. Pre­dictably, the occu­pants, a large group of young, loud, opin­ion­at­ed peo­ple with a knack for throw­ing par­ties and host­ing taste­ful live music, failed to take care of it prop­er­ly, and it fell into disrepair.

At some point, my father was asked to car­ry out elec­tric­i­ty cabling work in the Com­mu­nist Youth’s offices, where he spot­ted the desk. It was scratched, parts were miss­ing, and the leather cov­er was torn. An arrange­ment was made, my dad did the work for free and walked off with the desk.

At that time, my father was gath­er­ing old and inter­est­ing fur­ni­ture found in var­i­ous places, and learn­ing to restore them. Togeth­er with his part­ner at the time, he worked on the desk and they restored it com­plete­ly. He couldn’t find new draw­er han­dles to replace the miss­ing ones, so he had some forged based on the exist­ing ones at Sif­fleur in the city.

I was born in 1983. Short­ly after, he drove down to the French Riv­iera, found a job, and my moth­er and I joined him there, start­ing a new life. He brought all of his cher­ished fur­ni­ture with him, and so I have always known this desk, as well as half a dozen oth­er pieces of fur­ni­ture with sim­i­lar­ly inter­est­ing sto­ries. My dad always said that a good piece of wood­en fur­ni­ture was nicer to look at than a painting.

Last May, my dad lost all hope of recov­er­ing from of a long-term med­ical con­di­tion. At the time, the covid19 pan­dem­ic had just hit Europe, and my uni­ver­si­ty had just switched to online teach­ing, so I was able to work remote­ly. Some air­lines were oper­at­ing again, so I flew down south. I brought with me a half-decent lap­top, a web­cam, a micro­phone, and a Wacom tablet, all snapped off Ebay in the weeks prior. 

And so I arrived at the desk. Over the course of the fol­low­ing weeks, I was able to spend time with my dad in his last bat­tle, at home, all while work­ing: pro­duc­ing lec­ture videos, week­ly quizzes, indi­vid­u­al­ized peer-grad­ed home­work assign­ments, inter­ac­tive Zoom ses­sions, and most­ly-com­plete lec­ture notes for my course in flu­id dynam­ics. I had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to con­tem­plate and appre­ci­ate the many bless­ings which allowed me to be there. The sup­port of my super­vi­sor and col­leagues. The love of close rel­a­tives. The patience of stu­dents. The resilience of many tech­no­log­i­cal sys­tems upon which I depend­ed. And a blur­ry but strong inher­it­ed feel­ing for how to take life deci­sions and own­ing up to them. The desk was not par­tic­u­lar­ly com­fort­able, and I nev­er had time to fix the chair. But it was so fit­ting that I was able to work on this beau­ti­ful, sol­id, mas­sive-wood piece of my father’s life.

My father passed away in June. I flew back to Ger­many. I miss him. I don’t know what is going to hap­pen to the desk.