tommywpg

I rode everywhere as a kid. We were constantly planning interesting trips, building jumps and offroading on out cheap kids bikes. We became fairly adept at fixing the bikes we'd trashed through out reckless and abusive bike use constantly scavenging parts from our old bikes and, generally got ourselves back on the road (or ramp or jump or trail) in twenty minutes or less.

That was a long time ago. I haven't ridden in years.

Last weekend I picked up a 1970s looking CCM Elan 3-speed and decided to make a project of it.

The first thing I did was strip everything down and prepare for a complete overhaul. I had a few problems along the way, but managed to figure things out thanks to forums like this one and a wealth of youtube videos.

There's a fair amount of rust all over. Nothing too deep but the paint is in bad shape. I paid $30 for the bike and the seller gave me three spare tires after I inspected them and remarked that they were in a terribly deteriorated condition and wouldn't make it through the week. He also threw in tubes. Nice older guy who buys piles of bikes and parts at various police auctions and such. He said he's sold 65 bikes this year despite a really long winter and an almost nonexistent spring.

As I said, I've taken to bike apart, removed the tires and tubes, cleaned up the rims and tape and cleaned all the bearings. I need to pick up some grease and oil before I can put all of that back together.

The two thing I'm unsure about are installing a new 3-speed cable and were to find some of the parts cheap. I've never dealt with a 3-speed before. It is a Sturmey Archer hub and I'm, hoping folks here can walk me through the process. I did think about making it a one speed, but decided to repair the 3-speed when the seller gave me the cable for free.

I'm loving this forum and have found it really helpful. Thanks for taking the time to read this.

DMF 

Are you in Pennsylvania?

tommywpg

I'm in Winnipeg, MB, Canada

Retro Grouch 

Assuming you have the right replacement cable and indicator rod, replacing a SA shift cable is about a 2 or 3 on a 1 to 10 difficulty scale.

tommywpg

Nice to know. Are you aware of a tutorial I could look at?

badmother

Is the old cable in place or missing? If it is there take pix before remowing the old wire.

If nothing is there then pix would be helpful. There is different shfters. If you take a close look at the shifter you`ll find out where to insert the cable. You first need to find out what end of the cable to use and what end to cut away.

Grand Bois

Here's a good place to start:

https://www.sheldonbrown.com/english-3.html

My method when installing a new cable is to put the shifter in third and set the length of the cable so there is just a bit of slack and then fine tune from there with the adjuster. If the shifter won't go into 1st, the cable is too tight. If the shifter goes into 1st but the hub doesn't shift down, the cable is too loose.