superape

I have this dream to create the ultimate townie road bike. I basically want to take a old road bike and some how add a SA 3 speed hub. So now I would have a bike that has the simplicity and speed of a single gear road bike but the usefulness multigrears. Any help or ideas of how to accomplish this would be great.

nlerner

36-hole Sturmey Archer hubs come up on eBay frequently, and with one of those you can build it into a 700c or 27" rim, depending on the frame you're trying to fit. I've done that with a bunch of bikes, most recently a '72 Raleigh SuperCourse (see below). Whether it's the ultimate townie road bike, I'm not sure, as that kind of description usually means (to me, at least) a front rack and a single speed, but ymmv.

Neal

rhenning

Buy a 1955 to 1965 Schwinn Corvette. Schwinn beat you to what you want. Roger

rhenning

Buy a 1955 to 1965 Schwinn Corvette. Schwinn did it for you 54 years ago. Roger

bibliobob

Single speeds don't come with extra speed.

Grand Bois

I thought about it for about 20 years before I finally got around to building it. I used one of the new alloy three speed hubs and a 1959 Reynolds 531 Carlton frame. I've added fenders and I'm not sure I like it that way.



I'm working on another one now. It will use a Raleigh Competition frame and a Sturmey-Archer five speed hub with stem shifters.

superape

Well I was looking for more of a road bike, so taking a 60s-80s light weight road bike and making it 3 speed. Basically doing what the fixie people are doing but make it more functional haha.

superape

Dirtdrop, amazing! That is exactly what I am looking to do. Thank you for posting this. I really want to do a similar style build. Want to sell it? Did you lace up the hub to that wheel? Any tips you have to source the parts? Thanks

mickey85

If you get a bike that takes 26X1-3/8 you can get 3 speed wheels from bikepartsusa.com

Or, you could do like I did...put drops on an old 3 speed Free Spirit cruiser. After a couple months of that crap, I swapped it back out to the North Roads bars.

caloso

When they finally release the updated 3-speed fixed hub, I think you may see a few more of these.

Grand Bois

No, I don't want to sell it. I love that bike.

I got the hub from aebike.com for $53. I'm using a 70's trigger shifter from eBay. The Sturmey-Archer hardware came from Harris Cyclery. My local bike shop built the wheels using Sun CR-18 rims and DT Competition hubs. The crank is a T.A. Professional 3 pin and the bottom bracket is a Miche 115mm.

Here's a U.S. source for Sturmey -Archer parts that I just found:

https://smartbikeparts.com/

I just ordered the 15.9 mm chainstay stops that I've been searching for.

gamecat

I've been mulling something like this over for some time. Down to the SA 5-speed and stem shifting. It must be the fred in me, but I actually like stem shifters.

delver

Three speeds are great, I have about six, four 27" and two 700". Mix of SA AW's and Shimanos. Lots of fun. All my wheels I build out of stuff I find. Thats the fun for me and why I have so many.

I would recomend this https://www.velo-orange.com/star8swh.html All the joys of an internal hub with more than three gears. If I did not have Student loans to pay I would get this and the front dyno. pop them into a decent frame, trick it out with all that you want for bars and the like and pow. Sourcing wheel parts and building or having them built could run more than this wheel costs.

sailorbenjamin

I got a buddy with a shimano 8 speed IGH on his Raleigh Supercourse. He puts hundreds of miles on it.
The hub had problems early on and they replaced the internals under warrenty but it took months to get the parts and for a while it looked like he'd have to relace the whole thing around a new hub.
Anyway, problems seem to be gone and he's riding it a lot.

nlerner

While I really like my road bikes that are set up as 3 or 4 speeds (including a few that came that way originally in the 1950s), my two attempts at trying to love Shimano Nexus 7 and 8 speed hubs did not work out. One problem is that I really didn't like the grip shifter (though J-tek is now making a bar-end shifter). The other is that both hubs just felt slow and heavy. I'm not a speed demon by any means, but those hubs made me feel like I was dragging around a heavy weight. When I took the Nexus 8 wheel off of my Raleigh Int'l and made it a 5-speed with a rear cluster, a derailleur, and bar-end shifter, it went from heavy-***** to one of my favorite rides (and a great climber, too). Of course, ymmv.

Neal

Grand Bois

The stem shifters came with the hub. They're dorky, but very practical for an upright riding position. I never thought I'd bolt stem shifters to a Cinelli stem.

a77impala

I laced a Shimano 3 speed hub to a 27" rim and converted a Maruichi fixte for my daughter. I also laced one to a 26" mtb rim and converted a Fuji folding bike, I have a 20" rim laced with a 3 speed hub ready to go on my grandson's bike when he gets old enough to use hand brakes.

gamecat

Sweet!

I know, I need help.

mickey85

Not sure if I'm reading this right, but VO says that the lowest gear you can get on that thing is direct drive...man, you'd better set that thing up as 52/11-12 if you want to get any kind of speed out of it...

Most IGH's that I've looked at have the direct drive somewhere in the middle. I kinda like that idea better, I think...

stronglight

No reason not to rebuild the hub for a different modern rim size. I've built up a 27" wheel for use on an older bike road bike using an old Sturmey-Archer 3-speed hub (dated 1974). Don't know what bike it had been used on previously - a Raleigh "Roadster" type bike, I would assume.

I was confronted with one obstacle. When I measured the axle between the lock nuts, it was clear that it would be too short to fit into the 120 mm. rear spacing of the bike. This was NOT a problem. I quickly found a longer axle (from Harris Cyclery, I believe) and simply re-built the hub.

WHAT! ... Rebuilt the hub???? ...

Okay, I know this sounds like a nightmare and I was actually pretty wary of breaking down all those internal planetary gears. I had NEVER disassembled a S-A 3-speed or any other internally geared hub before. But, with a simple illustration showing an "exploded view" of the internals, it was really surprisingly simple to put it back together again, just right. The diagrams look like it might be formidable simply because of all the unfamiliar parts, but everything is really quite obvious when you have the parts in your hands.

And, no fancy tools are required. That's one of the beautiful things about those old hubs. A friend once told me that while in India he would often see guys repairing such hubs - completely disassembling them on just a newspaper right outside on the street and using a simple wrench and while hundreds of people walked around (or stepped over) their little street side "repair shops".

If you ever decide to tackle any hub modification, perhaps just replacing the single cog (which will change your entire gear range), and you have a decent digital camera, it might be good to take a photo of each step of disassembly as you remove each piece. This would give you a reassuring image of exactly how everything should again appear as you put it all back together in the reverse order, step by step.

The S-A "AW" model is a wide range hub. I forget the exact gearing with my chainring and cog configuration, but I believe I have something like a 35 to 97 inch range and really use the middle gear most of the time, with the low gear just for more serious hills and the top gear for going down hill or zipping along at a pretty good speed on the flats.

I think it is a great idea. Go For it!

Grand Bois

You're right, that hub was designed for 20" folders.

delver

[QUOTENot sure if I'm reading this right, but VO says that the lowest gear you can get on that thing is direct drive...man, you'd better set that thing up as 52/11-12 if you want to get any kind of speed out of it...QUOTE]


There was a lot of discussion on the Velo O blog about that. I had forgotten. Still, I don't understand why you would need a 52/12 combo for speed in direct drive... I was figuring on about a 38/12, and running it in the middle gears for cruising, and direct for the hill climbing gears. There are some monster hills in my town, and I can usualy pull them with that combo. The top gears would be for the flat/downhills.
But I have been terribly wrong and confused before...

The old hubs are pretty easy to take apart, and a smart guy can get them together again pretty easy, but I generaly use my Glens step by step(grease covered photocopies from my book)instructions.

I have a forty spoke hub somewhere in the shop, If anyone is interested. I will probably never use that one.

rhm

Actually, it's pretty high even for a 20" wheel. But it's really great with a 16" wheel!

___________

I have a Shimano 8 speed hub on my old Trek 720 touring bike, that I had set up to look more or less like an old three speed with upright bars, etc. But last Saturday I switched the bar. I put the twist shifter on a flat MTB style bar, cut the whole thing to 46cm and drop bar ends on it, with road brake levers on the drops. The whole thing looks a lot like a randonneur bar, and there are several comfortable hand positions. So far, I like it. Photos will follow!

gamecat

BTW Dirtdrop, I like the fenders on the Carlton. From what I can see.

awc380

This style of bike seems to be the new fixed gear (in internet bikeforum-theory, at least)....I guess they are fixed gears, some of them.

All this 'porteur' bike talk I wager....thank god they're so nice-looking.