Hello, I haven’t looked in on this thread in a while, and I hope everyone is well, spared from Covid (please) and enjoying their rides. I’m getting plenty of enjoyable miles out of my three-speeds, the step-thru Sports in particular. Had a bit of a mystery problem with the BB, which turned out to be a worn-down fixed cup.
But lately my friend Max has posed a challenge. He doesn’t want to get rid of his old Raleigh three speed, for reasons I won’t go into but understand, but insists he needs lower gears. He knows the cog can be swapped out for a bigger one, but he wants not just a lower low gear but more gears.
Is there a reasonably simple way to do this? I can’t think of it. We might be able to find an old FW or S5 hub and shifter and have a new wheel built or swap the internals into the existing hub shell. But here in the USA, those hubs and 4 speed shifters are hard to come by. Max might also be dubious about spending on such old parts. I'd have to find out.
Max thinks he can buy a new five or eight speed hub off Amazon and have a wheel built with that, but Max doesn’t know about overlocknut dimensions, rear triangle spacing, or the width of the slots in the rear dropout. SA offer a current 4 speed hub with 120 mm spacing, which at least isn’t too far off, but would the slots need to be filed back?
Convert the bike to an old style 5 speed derailer bike. Used parts should be cheap and not hard to find. There must be a way to fix a derailer hanger to the dropout. Would need to swap the drive side crank to work with the narrower derailer chain, I think (not sure). But those slots would need filing, wouldn't they?
Maybe swap the front drive side crank for a two-ring from a derailer bike, add a front derailer and a rear chain tensioner?
Or add an extra sprocket and derailer to the existing AW hub. But that’s hardware from the old days. Again, very hard to find all that in the USA.
This one has me scratching my head.