I've seen a couple threads here recently with older three speed type Sturmey Archer hubs.

When I was younger, I recall someone who had an internally geared hub combined with a freewheel and derailleur.

Anybody know who made the hub, or how this was done? I'm curious.

Thanks.

It's pretty easy to do on your standard Sturmey Archer AW hub. The cogs are 1/8" thick, and the driver is designed to hold one cog and two 1/16" spacers; so you can put two cogs on the driver, dished away from each other. Typically people do this with tooth counts differing by 3, so an 18t and a 21t, 19t and 22t, 20t and 23t, etc. This gives convenient half steps. I have this setup on my 1940-ish Fothergill bike (photo below).

Cyclo used to make a couple cog clusters of three cogs that fit on the same driver. You can get a pretty wide range that way, but several of the 9 speeds are redundant.

Shimano also used to make a two speed hub that took a standard freewheel; you see them on eBay periodically.

The early AW hubs had threaded drivers that would accept a freewheel. IRC the Hercules hubs did as well. You can buy new SA hubs with cassettes.

in the 50s I bought a single piece of steel; machined to replace the stock Sturmey Archer cog , it was machined with 3 cog sizes in it.

snap ring as before held it on the hub Sturmey Archer still was the hub , but another British company 'Cyclo' Made the 1 pc cog cluster.

I fitted a derailleur to make the 3 cog cear change, with 1 lever & another lever for the 3 internal gears..

Now there are both S-A and Sram (who bought Sachs that made them ) have regular derailleur cassettes

on the driver assembly of 3 speed Hubs.. And..

Sturmey Archer-Sun Race makes a 3 speed hub with a 2 cog set on the driver, for Brompton .. now..

in the recent past, before the Sram buyout, Brompton got their 3 by 2 speed rear hub from Sachs, Germany.


And right Now, you can buy a S-A S3X hub & thread on a freewheel or a White industries 2 cog freewheel..

The AW/Cyclo 3 cog hybrid set-up circa 1956 is what I've been running on my town bikes for decades, bought it NOS in ~1970.
With a range of 41-106 GI, nice steps and the ability to shift while coasting it has meet my requirements nicely.

It is overly complicated, combines the advantages/disadvantages of both the IGH and the derailleur, fussy, heavy, and requires advanced math to determine which lever to move in which direction to select the "next" gear. Typically British.

-Bandera

Yeah, but you had to disassemble the hub and clamp the driver in a vise to remove the freewheel.

The Cyclo conversion mentioned above used a splined cluster:

My Bike Friday has a SACHS (SRAM now) 3X7 system

Hmm, I think I have a threaded SA driver or two in the bin. Might have to experiment.

I ran an AW hub with a 5 speed freewheel on it a while back. It was very cool to have done it, but after a short while, I abandoned it. It was truly the worst of both worlds. The simplicity of a 3 speed was ruined by adding a 5 speed cluster and derailleurs. The simplicity of a derailleur bike was ruined by adding a hub that weighs 117 pounds and has its well known quirks. The gear range had a tremendous amount of overlaps. My advice would be to either ride a derailleur bike or an internal hub. Don't combine the two.

Thanks all. Good to know I haven't lost my mind after all these years. It was a 3 speed freewheel that was used on that bike, I do remember that.

I understand the "Typical British" comment. I cut my teeth on British cars back in the day. Quirky, but sure were nice looking rides. It's a debatable topic, but I don't think I've ever seen a better looking set of lines on a car than the early 100 Healeys.