I repaired my bike's "Nabenschaltung"!

I now know they’re called hub gears, but that makes no sense to me.

A while back I forgot to fix the bar that makes my backpedal break work to the frame of my bike. That was… no fun, because when I tried breaking the next day it whacked into the bike frame and got stuck. I could not drive anymore at all because my back wheel would not spin at all anymore.

A few days later I found a fix that temporarily “solved” this problem using a hammer. My bike was driving again!

But it was driving weirder. I felt like my back wheel was wiggling much more along its axis and it often did not want to switch between gears properly. It just felt very fragile, but I was scared of trying to open the hub gear and what I might find in there. Or if I could ever put it back together.

But come this weekend, I have taken it apart entirely, I had a nice afternoon walk to my local hardware store, cleaned the parts, and will put it back together tomorrow.

What helped me was nlzs youtube channel. I found several videos detailing how to recenter the axis to fix the wiggling, how to take the hub gear apart, how to clean it, and how to put it back together. All in nice short videos that succinctly show how to do all this with clear images and tips for the trickier parts.

So good!

And to further help matters I even found technical drawings of the inner workings of my exact model!

…

[Update: And it even worked. My bike has been humming along nicely ever since. I had to fix a wobbly bike pedal, but nothing related to the hub gear.]