So I was looking into gettting a dynamo hub for my commuting bicycle to power lights as I ride, before the dark winter sets in here in the Northwest. The cheapest price I can find the hub I'm looking for, Shimano DH-3N72 is $86 with free shipping. For fun I looked at German E-Bay for the same part. Cheapest price $42 EURO (or about $60 USD). Then I looked for pre-built dynamo wheels in Germany. Again prices were much cheaper than you could find in the US. Of course it does me no good because most places are quoting me $40 EURO shipping rates to the US. This is the first instance that I can remember of finding a product that is significantly cheaper in Europe than in the US. Any ideas why?

Your over-inflated currency has finally started coming down to earth?

I saw the same thing with some Shimano parts from the UK. I bought a new crank shipped for about $100 less than price I could find it in the US (~$260). The other items the site sells were comparable to US prices, just the Shimano parts were ridiculously lower.

Glad I'm not the only one noticing this. I suspect it has something to do with there generally being a better bike market in Europe than the US so more of it ends up there and then gets discounted eventually. Kind of the reverse of the car market.

That wouldn't surprise me in the least. According to their 2010 financial statements, about 40% of their sales comes from Europe, while their North American sales only account for about 13%. (That's across their entire product line, and not just cycling.)

cycling has picked up here (Pittsburgh), but even still compared to most of europe it's nothing, so i'm not shocked.

Out of curiosity (not criticizing, just wondering) why do you want to go the dynamo hub route instead of a simple battery-powered light such as this one?

This LED light is bright (1000 candlepower) and has good battery life (70 hours) on readily available AA rechargeable batteries. You don't have to deal with the hassle of building a new dynamo hub wheel, or with the extra rotating mass, or with the wires running all over your bike, and it is a small fraction of the cost of a dynamo setup. At the price you can easily afford to put two of them on your handlebars, one aimed close the other for distance.

I have a similar light on my road bike (can't see it very well in the picture) but I have been quite satisfied with it. Sadly, I have not been able to ride my road bike very much on the cobblestone streets here...

tanstaafl.

Looks like you need this .

No need.

tanstaafl.

Mainly I want a dynamo for a trouble-free commuting bike. I get tired of worrying about which batteries I charged or need to be charged. It makes more sense to be able to get on the bike, start pedaling and turn on the lights. Also I've been experimenting with home-built high-power LED lighting systems lately. I've been pretty amazed at how bright a 3-watt Luxeon Rebel LED can be, for instance. I hope to run two 3-watt LEDs off the typical 6-watt dynamos I've been shopping for. If I used batteries for a similar lighting setup I would be recharging batteries nightly.

One step up...
6.4HP Morini 2-stroke engine in a full suspension mountain bike

Hope you don't get any clothing caught in that motorized chain...

...or burn a thigh on that expansion chamber!

And I hope you're wearing asbestos trousers when your leg rubs against that exhaust pipe.

tanstaafl.

Why burn your leg? Keep it simple, and beat all your riding buddies up the big climbs.

http://www.bikebiz.com/news/read/former-pro-says-mechanised-doping-is-real

In all fairness a little realized hazard of fixed gear bikes is that if your clothes get caught in the chain going down a hill or you clip a pedal while in a tight turn really bad things can happen too. Oh and if you're working on the bike and put your finger in the cog you can lose a finger.

I clipped a pedal turning really sharply trying to avoid a car when I was a kid. The whole bike lifted up and spun around and I did an amazing face plant, blood was everywhere. Pretty nice scar from that whole episode. It was amazing, if my father (the medic) was on TDY, my mom (the non-medic who hates the sight of blood) could count on one of us busting ourselves up pretty good and a trip to the ER with her holding a blood-soaked towel over something.

I'd say that the biggest little-realized hazard is that you will blow you knees out and not be able to cycle past the age of 32. There are 2 things I don't envy the "younger generation" and that would be fixies and tattoos.

Oh, and Vice President Bachmann

Oh, and President Perry

Oh, and Climate Change

Oh, and Beyonce.