Mechanical day - ending with country music at the bottom

It's been another sweltering polluted bit of nastiness weatherwise - typhoons running up the coast to Taiwan and Japan, scooping everything filthy and hot off the top of Southern China and bringing it down to us.  So when you can't delight in the outdoors, perhaps time to indulge in a dismantling of the stuff that transports you there when you can.

So I decided to dismantle and service my beach-bike (which I have been loving riding) - and why would I fool around with something working?  Can't be helped.

What's unusual about it is that it has a hub mounted eight speed gearbox,  rather than a derailleur, and a belt drive.  I bought it second hand - been looking for one for a number of years - and it's four years old, seems to have been very well cared for.  The big thing about gearbox hub bikes (called IHG bikes) are that they don't require regular maintenance - but a bit car-like, they do require servicing (and I'm not sure what this one's service history is like.  I went down to the Hang Hau bike shop and asked the guy there if he could service it, he said no way, never seen one of those before, let alone worked on one. So onto the web it was, and then into the tools - and off on a bike-geek adventure.  I had lots of help of course.  Ev kocked the dismantled bike over.  Holly pawed the bits that I'd lined up on the table.  Aiden watched it all.  I think (hope like hell) that I got it all right, certainly got it all apart, cleaned and inspected it, greased it up, and then back together.  There was one alarming loud clunk sound while testing it (but this has not repeated ... and all seems to be fine :-/

So this is what it looks like - something along the lines of those before-your-time 3 speed things, just a modern and sophisticated one, with eight speeds.  You have to get through all those layers (note the belt drive - not a chain sprocket.  All those coloured dots want to be lined up in various ways when you are re-assembling it all).

Inside the hub, when you've broken into it through all the layers - and one especially anti-christ snap-ring - looks like this (not my pic this one).

Also not my picture (clearly) but that all dissembled looks like this (and I am left wondering which one of these pieces breaking represents the loud clunk?)  I did not take the thing apart to this extent (again, obviously, or I would be swearing like a devil instead of typing this).

Learned quite a bit too about all this.  Grease for example, is complicated stuff.  I've got the wrong grease in the thing, it turns out - no worries though, time to change that to marine grease, with aluminium thickener - want to know why?  Check this out if you are determined to get into the abstraction of lubrication and weather-sealing: http://www.bobistheoilguy.com/functions-of-grease/ (and believe me, Bob is the guy).

Turns out the absolute rolls-royce of gear hubs is this one, the Rohloff Speedhub - it is a beautiful piece of German engineering at its best, apparently lasts longer than the pyramids, has very near to the same energy efficiency as a direct chain drive derailleur system - and has 14 gears (going to find an old one in some garage one day). Pretty cool.

Watched the second iteration of True Detective - loved it, but not with the ferocity I felt for the first.  Sound-track is divine too.  Do you like country music?  Didn't think so, can't imagine who would.  But check out this - just give it one try: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwVX4cG6F9s (she's the soundtrack, though not this song).  This is the soundtrack - an astounding wonderfulness for me https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjg43nzSYck