On the hub question, 8/9/10 speed cassettes all fit the same hubs. With the amount of 9 & 10 speed stuff around, those hubs will be useful for a long time.
As to the number of cogs, based on your experience with 10 speed you may want to stick to 8 or 9. 6/7/8 all take the same chain, and 9 isn't too much skinnier. While 7 & 8 are hard to find on the shelf at bike shops, there's lots on the internet. 7 is still used by OEMs in underdeveloped countries so will be with us forever. With a simple spacer 7 can be used on some 8/9/10 hub bodies. Enough stuff was produced with 9 speed that there will be a decent supply for a long time. The Atlantis being a touring, commuting & general purpose bike I'd suggest a wide range cassette & triple, but my bias here is what I've got on my Atlantis. As I get older, my chainrings get smaller. Several years ago I settled on 24/34/44 in front. I use the 12-34 8 speed Sunrace cassette that Steve mentions. My shifters are some vintage Suntour thumbies with the ratchet mechanism (think 80s MTB) but I'm waiting for the new Silver2 shifters that Rivendell is working on. Rivendell uses the 12-36 9 speed on a lot of builds. Regarding hubs, my Atlantis came with XTR cassette hub in 2003. 16 years later it's still going strong. Service consists of greasing the bearings & pumping fresh Phil's oil into the hub ever couple of years. I lost track of mileage at 70,000. Since you're building an Atlantis, I have to comment on brakes. Long story short, I've found V-brakes work wonderfully and are easy to install. I have used a couple of cantilevers but IME the Vs are much more user friendly, both installation & function. They are out of the way of bags. Mine are a generic Shimano (no other ID) & cost around $30 each a while back. Have fun with the build, & post pics when complete. dougP On Friday, February 22, 2019 at 5:08:52 PM UTC-8, Lefebeaver wrote: > > I bought myself an Atlantis frame last fall and am building it up slowly > over winter. I've been riding a Novara gravel bike for the past 3 years, my > first exposure to a 21st century bike with discs, 10-spd index shifting, > yada yada. Except I'm not real impressed with any of it - the harsh ride, > the disc brakes or the 10-spd cassette. I can make rim brakes stop much > better than these discs, and the index shifting has been very finicky - it > even seems temperature dependent (!) - the whole system seems very delicate > compared to the bombproof 7-speed Deore thumbies on my venerable > Stumpjumper. I've also broken 2 chains in 2 years. I'm a big guy and I've > always broken stuff on bikes, but this is ridiculous. So my philosophy on > these things is happily in line with Grant's - keep it simple and robust, > and don't shave weight at the cost of reliability. With regard to gears, he > has said "seven is heaven, eight is great, nine is fine, but ten is too > many". I'd be perfectly happy to go with a 7 or 8 speed, friction or > friction-capable gear system with a heavy-duty chain and solid shifting, > but I'm hearing that it's getting harder and harder to get a quality 7- or > 8-speed cassette and I worry they may go extinct too soon. Since I'm having > a set of sturdy wheels built for this bike and I'm told the hub choice > depends on cassette choice, I need to decide soon on what hubs to use. So I > guess my question is twofold - how locked into a cassette size will I be > with a given choice of hub; and are high quality 8-spd cassettes likely to > remain available for the next, say, 10-15 years? > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
