I’ve been running a Cinema Tungsten rear wheel for a while now. I did a review on it back in December after about a month and a half of running it. In the review I mentioned that I would recommend you pick up a hub guard for the wheel since I was seeing quite a bit of wear from grinding. After a few weeks I took my own advice and picked up a Shadow Conspiracy guard. When I went to install the guard, I ran into a bit of a dilemma with the guard not fitting on the wheel right. I figured by now there’s plenty of people running a Cinema Wheel, and it’s a pretty common style of hub, so I decided I’d give a little tutorial on what you should do to fix the hub guard issue. Take a look…
When you get a hub guard for your wheel, you’re typically supposed to take off part of the two piece lock nut, slide the guard on, and pop the wheel back on. The Cinema wheel has a one piece lock nut that ends up causing the guard to sit too far out, which eliminates the wheel from being able to be slid onto the drop outs. The only option was to remove the lock nut and find something that would fill the spot. The first time around I ended up just sliding a few spacers in between the bearing and the guard, but it was pretty ineffective and left the hub with a bit of wobble when the wheel would move the slightest bit.
The above photo you can see how far the guard sits out with the normal lock nut on the wheel. Even if I were able to some how stretch the rear end of the frame to slide this on, it would cause more damage than good.
Obviously, doing it the right way would require a lock nut. This is a very inexpensive piece that you can find at most bike shops, or if you give your favorite mail order a ring, they will get you squared away. I called up Flip at Albe’s and let him know my situation. He thought I was crazy, but then checked out one of their wheels in stock and saw what I was talking about. I made a quick order on a smaller lock nut and it was in the mail that day.
Above you can see both lock nuts. The one is about half the size as the original, and has a lip to make sure it’s hitting the hubs bearing right and not compressing anything it shouldn’t be. I threaded the smaller lock nut on to the wheel, slid the guard on and it fit just right….
There’s about a centimeter or two of space between the guard and spokes. You don’t want this rubbing on the spokes obviously. Ryan Howard (4 peg grind machine that rides for DUB) mentioned that a guard can bend in a bit after beating on it for a bit, so just make sure your guard isn’t rubbing on your spokes and you will be good to go. If it’s still tight on space, once that lock nut is on, you can slide a washer or two on there and give it a little more space, then the guard.
The wheel installed. This is a pretty basic and obvious fix, but definitely recommended if you are a grinder. The cost of a hub guard and a lock nut will be a lot less than a new hub after a lot of grinding. I hope this helps anyone having issues with their Cinema wheel, or any other wheel that might have the same style lock nut and want to get a guard on their bike.
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