For a while now we have been looking for an excuse to put a Nuvinci universally geared hub onto a bike.  The Nuvinci hub has a 360% gear range which is quite a bit.  The easy gear is pretty easy and the biggest gear will have yo pedaling squares unless you are moving pretty quick. The beauty of the hub lies in the gearing - or should I say lack thereof.  There are no spaces between gears, that is what makes it a universal system.  So with the Nuvinci hub you will not ever find yourself in a gear that is either a little bit to hard or a little bit to easy.  A subtle twist of the shifter will take to  exactly the place you want to be.

As for the bike that we decided to put it on we chose one of our favorite bikes in the store the KONA HumuHumu.  The Humu is a great cruiser. It is comfortable, has room for fenders and pedals efficiently enough that it is a great town commuter. The only thing that we thought might make it a bit better would be to expand it gear range. Sure a top flight headset, bottom bracket, crank arms, leather saddle would be additions that anyone would covet but we wanted to keep the bike affordable and keep to its utilitarian nature.

The beauty of this hubs is the relatively invisible cable routing. The hub actually uses two different cable to actuate the shifting but you would never guess by looking at the bike.

One change we made to the cockpit was the addition of the Mark Matson designed KONA Handplant handlebar. The bars are super comfortable and some the best we have found for a commuter bike. Also notice how the cable flow in nice clean lines.  They are very unobtrusive.

One change that perhaps would make for a nice upgrade to future HumuHumu frames would be the addtion of disc tabs on the frame and fork.  OK, so maybe that is overkill for a bike like this but if you get this bike moving at the highest end of its gear range you are going to want some good stopping power. Anyway we like the idea so just in case a HumuHumu with disc tabs finds its way into the shop we are prepared.  Our Nuvinci hub is set for six bolt rotors.

Here is Chad with his project.  Winters are long here in Missoula so if we give him enough time and let him stew over this bike we just might see that headset, bottom bracket, crankset, seatpost and saddle upgrade happen. Stay tuned...