Originally Posted by
themanmachine
Long story short, I am obsessed with three speeds. I am far too young to have enjoyed their original wave of popularity, but after converting one of my bikes using an old three speed hub, I am sold. I don't understand why more people don't use three speed hubs for their clean aesthetic, durability, ease of use, and mechanical elegance.
Since I have quite a few of them, I must be obsessed with 3-speeds too. For my daily workout bike I mostly have used a 21-speed mountain bike since I like going fast, and for that a 3-speed's skinny tires don't feel safe when going over 16 mph. For the same reason, I don't like using flimsy 10-speed road bikes.
Several months ago my brother-n-law gave me his old Steyr 10-speed (c. 1972). While stored in his garage the rim was trashed when junk fell on it during the 1994 Northridge earthquake, so he moved it out into the weather to rot since 1994, so even its good rim was rusty beyond repair.
I was going to recycle its parts, but then it dawned on me to turn the Steyr into a 3-speed since I had all the parts I needed laying around. Since the rims I had were 26" and the Steyr used 27" wheels, I had to lower the brakes to reach the new 26" rims, which wasn't very hard to do.
I removed all the ball-bearings and cleaned the bearing races, buffed all the metal, and put it back together. At first I used a skinny 1 3/8" rim up front, but decided to replace that skinny rim with a mountain bike's wider rim, so I ended up using the same wide tire that my 21-speed mountain bike uses.
Since the Steyr's main crank is larger than the main cranks on most 3-speeds (52 teeth), the bike is surprisingly fast, but very stable with the wider front tire, so I'm very happy with my 3-speed FrankenBike and now use it for my daily bike rides:
