Touring - Someone should make a gear reducer hub

Like an old VW Bus final drive. Get off the bike, flip a lever for flat mode or hills mode.

Have you ever heard of a company called Sturmey-Archer? They have been making a product like this for, oh... almost 100 years. It's got a gear for the flats, a gear for the uphills, AND a gear for the downhills! You don't even need to get off the bike to actuate it!

Not a hub, but the Schlumpf Mountain Drive works kind of like that...
http://www.pbwbikes.com/product_info.php/products_id/59

LOL! That Sturmey Archer would mean three shifters on a bike. :) But it's good and inexpensive. That Schlumpf is pretty expensive but sure looks like it works.

Isn't that the point of your regular gears?

:wtf:

I have a SRAM dual drive on my bike friday with a 7 speed rear cassette and a three speed internal also in the hub. I don't know of a reason one couldn't put a double or triple chain ring on the front too. I am no techie, so there may be a reason not to. How much gearing one needs is another question altogether.

Isn't that the point of your regular gears?

Not enough when you have to drag a kid in a trailer plus both people's gear.

That could be done with a planetary gear set in the rear hub without to much trouble.It would work like the old hand crack pencil sharpeners on the inside,same principle(remember those).Instead of a hand crank,the cluster would drive the sun gear.That would give you 27%-33%,up or down,depending on which way you ran it.It would triple(guessing)the weight and diameter of the hub.You would have to make it big enough to fit a sun gear and a set or two of orbiting gears.You wouldn't even need a cable,you could reach in the hub with an allen wrench and turn it 180 degrees to engage/disengage.I'd be surprised if someone didn't do some version of it already.

I've never seen the lever deal on VW reduction boxes but I know the made alpine gear sets for them.

Flip flop hub with different sized cogs?

LOL! That Sturmey Archer would mean three shifters on a bike. :)

Like this:
http://www.geocities.com/cyqlist/ssshifta.jpg

http://sheldonbrown.org/otb.html

63 speeds. There is a description 3/4 of the way down.

I had the Shram dual drive on a recumbent. If it is anything like a Rohloff, it may have a minimum ratio or it gets overstressed, relative to a tripple up front.

I used to have this gizmo, it's still out there, where you mounted a 4th ring on the inside of the the tripple. You could pull a stump with it. Not sure whether it would work with modern shifters, but it was fine on friction. It's a mountain tripple thing.

This isn't the one I had, but it is a similar idea:

http://www.abundantadventures.com/mt_plus.html