I was taking some parts off a junker bike today and noticed a rear hub that is similar to a flip flop hub for fixed gear/freewheel but the rear wheel has a Suntour Perfect 14-22 5 spd freewheel (in pretty nice shape) and the opposite side of the hub looks like you can screw on a freewheel also. The hub says Brampton and Made in England.

It would be kind of cool to have something like that with two different free wheels on it. One for flater area riding and one with a wider range for hilly area. It could be the perfect cross country touring set-up. I imagine that would be too wide, though.

The interesting thing is threads on the opposite side of the freewheel look like they're stepped or at two different levels. Maybe it is just a flip flop for single/fixed and a normal freewheel.

Made to fit two different kinds of freewheels?
It looks old, though(to me). Did they make flip flop fixie style hubs back then? I know nothing about that stuff.

Those hubs were commonly found on Raleigh Grand Prix bikes in the 70s. Probably the best thing about the bike!

Neal

Yes. "stepped" threading like that has to be for a fixed sprocket and lockring, the outer (lockring) threads should be LH. Very nice hub, the hipsters will all want it, so use a good lock .

Similar hubs were also fitted to every single Holdsworth Equipe to come my way, four in total. I think that I might have a couple still tucked away in The Old Shed.

.HoldsworthJulian.jpg

so the other side is for a single fixed cog?

What are you supposed to do, flip the rear wheel around and then break 10 links off your chain?

Pretty much, however, it does help if you are running a quick release chain, with two quick releases installed. A competent rider can swap the back wheel, adjust chain length and get going again in less than an hour:-)

Seriously, though, I have often wondered the same thing. The only answer I can come up with is I don't know.

Hope that is a help.

i guess if you carried a chain tool it wouldn't take too long to do, but then you get to ride with a half pound of chain in your pocket (or wherever)

You could actually, with quick releases, probably pull the rear wheel, pop the master links off of the chain, and reinstall again in 15min or less. It's really not a difficult or time consuming job if you've done it a couple times. However, what's the point? You may as well just include your fixed/SS gear size in your freewheel and stay in that gear if that's the gear you desire.

The only thing that makes sense to me is that it would allow them to produce one hub and use it for multiple applications and save money. More for their benefit than the cycler. Which is fine as long as it's a quality hub. If it rides well and saves everyone money in the long run then great.

Wouldn't it be the same as any fixed/free hub, but with an axle specific to its use on a 5-speed setup? In other words, perhaps Brampton made the same shell for fixed/free and multi-geared applications. It wouldn't take much to respace that hub's axle and turn it back into a fixed/free.

Neal

thats a good point neal, does a singlespeed freewheel take up the same amount of threading as a multispeed freewheel?

then like you said....

I don't think it does. Isn't that the purpose of a dished wheel? To accommodate for the width of the 5+ freewheel? I believe flip/flop hubs are pretty well centered (not dished).

I can't really tell from the photos, but this novice suspects someone has put a 5 speed freewheel on a flip/flop hub (intended to be SS/fixed).

I'm not so sure. I didn't take the freewheel off. The threads in the photo are on the opposite side of the freewheel - the non-drive side when it was on the bike.

I'm not following you. The picture below is of a flip/flop hub with a SS freewheel side and a fixed cog + lock ring side. Doesn't the second photo in your OP show the same? You can use a spacer on one or both sides (as pictured below).

Yes - that's essentially what the hub looks like. When I read your post I though you meant someone had screwed the 5 spd freewheel on the fixed gear side. Sorry if I read it wrong.

The stepped hub is definitely for a fixed cog and lock ring and the purpose of the 5 speed / fixed set up could have been for summer and winter training where the fixed cog would get installed without having to buy another wheel.

Spacing on old 5 speeds is 120 mm and old track hubs were 110... and these old 5 speed wheels have very little dish.

There were also tandem hubs that had threads on both sides in order to mount a brake on the left side. Somebody used to make a thread-on drum brake and I think there were disc brakes, too. They weren't meant to stop the bike, but were used as an assist to the normal brakes for long decents so the rims wouldn't get over heated. Some people would use a single friction shift lever to set the drag, then modulate with the rim brakes. Others would mount a brake lever on the stoker's handlebars for the hub brake.

The Raleigh my Brampton flip flop hub came on was a Gazelle, Dutch built. I've heard that in Northern Europe they did this so they could go fixed in the winter and 10 speed in the summer.

Drag brakes do not use a stepped hub and many people still use them but disc brakes have made these rather obsolete... the drag barke can be locked to set a certain speed and does not heat up or add wear to the rims like rim brakes do

On the stepped thread side one of the threadings should be reversed threading. And I'm in agreement that the fixed side was probably for off season training and conditioning.

And if you wanted to get really creative (if not goofy) you could rig up a chain driven generator for the left side while running the freewheel on the right side. Call it an alternative to a dyno hub. Last time I priced a decent dyno hub it was way out of my budget.

Smaller diameter portion does appear to be LH threaded.

Arai Drag brakes go on RH threads, on the left side. the braking force tightens the drum on quite well.