08/14 Drove into Guatemala City this morning and hit up the bicycle shops for a new hub. As expected no one had Phil Wood hubs in stock and the mechanic at the biggest shop didn’t know very much about them. I decided to just go with a Shimano hub. I’m of the opinion now that Phil Wood hubs are a great choice only if you are carrying a medium/light load, you are touring exclusively in developed countries and you are OK with waiting up to a week for a replacement if they fail.
I had the $350 Phil Wood Touring hub (a Shimano is about $50). It’s supposed to have a life expectancy of 12-15k miles under heavy load. This is the 3rd time the rear hub failed and needed to be replaced. Failure #1 was at the 1400 mile mark, #2 was at 5000 miles and #3 at 7600 miles. Each time it failed I had to sit around for a week waiting on a replacement. Shimano parts are fairly common all over the world so if I have a problem there’s a good chance I can be back on the road in a day. It could take weeks to get a part sent to a country like Guatemala, if it shows up at all. The other option is to take a bus to an airport and fly to a country that has mechanics familiar with Phil Wood.
The only issue is that I should get a 36 hole hub and they only had a 32. Since its the weekend they won’t be able to get the 36 until Monday afternoon so Tuesday morning I’ll head back to the city and pick it up.
On a very happy note my bike sandal is fixed! Tony’s brother and mom took it over to someone in town and they stitched it back up. It looks stronger than the factory job. They are also happy to let me stay here for a couple more days which is awesome.
I’m getting kind of crunched for time as far as being in Costa Rica by September 19th. My 90 day stamp still gives me a little over a month but at the rate things are breaking I might need to get an extension.
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