Vintage Balloon Tire Bicycle Hubs

Video Transcript

"The hubs on a genuine balloon tire bicycle is going to be old chrome steel hubs. This hub is in really good shape, and they're very easy to rebuild. And this front hub on most balloon tire bikes, the front hub is going to have 36 holes, it spins nicely. And sometimes they'll have an oil port here you'll see, (I'll show you one on the back hub) sometimes they'll be a little nipple there that you can use for oiling the hub. Let's move to the rear hub here. If you can see the oil port on the center of the hub here, this is a good way to maintain the hubs, and a lot of modern bikes they don't have anything like that; as a matter of fact, most modern bikes today have oil-less hubs, maintenance free hubs. So this hub is a coaster break hub, you can see the back of the break arm back there, it's made by New Departure; they made hubs from the 1930's to the 1950's, there are different models, and based on the model of the New Departure hub, you can determine the age of your bicycle."