I have some ancient wheels with Bulb hubs, which are 20mm front and 135mm QR rear. It'd be nice to have 15mm front and 142x12 rear. Anyone know if Hope ever made converters for these hubs, or am I going to have to fire up the lathe and get bodging?
Cheers,
Afaik it's a lathe job. 🙁
If you do make some I'd be interested in an extra set! I don't want to bin perfectly good hubs! (Mine are currently set as qr front and rear)
That's a good guide -thanks. Looks straightforward for the front. I expect the rear will be more challenging!
Cheers,
Rear will be a whole new axle at least but my first thought is about bearings. Off the top of my head, without checking, I think some if not all of them are 12mm bore so with the bearings running directly on the axle, it might need beefing up a bit.
I've got a properly old Bulb at home (5 bolt spider mounting for the disc so from~1999?).
When it first came to me it was in the back of a (2nd hand) Yeti DH9, which originally had some sort of whacky 20x150mm bolt through arrangement with a special hub and a little floating brake arm mounted on the axle.
IIRC a previous owner had a new stepped 12mm axle turned and used bit's from the 135x12 bulb axle kit plus some spacers to get it to work. When I flogged the frame on, the buyer didn't want the back wheel so I kept it and converted it to 135mm QR, which did require some different bearing I think (Not sure if I still have the 12mm axle or caps).
So there was a 135x12mm kit for the bulb originally, if you could track one down that should be adaptable to suit a 142mm frame.
Rear will be a whole new axle at least but my first thought is about bearings. Off the top of my head, without checking, I think some if not all of them are 12mm bore so with the bearings running directly on the axle, it might need beefing up a bit.
Only one bearing will need swapping, and after that all the bearings will have ID 15mm. The new axle will then have a 1.5mm wall.
(Not sure if I still have the 12mm axle or caps).
If you did happen to find the axle I'd be very interested in buying it! Making new end caps will be easy, but drilling a new axle to correct tolerance would probably be a bit beyond my ability.
That's my little guide linked to up there. The front was easy, did it in a lunchtime. Never tried a rear, looks a lot more work, good luck!
I had a quick look in the spares box last night I found end caps but no axle.... I'll have another look later.
