Bike Forums - U.S.A made bikes

Quote:

Originally Posted by willibrord (Post 20950701)

Its kind of sad that the Taiwanese Sturmey Archer are better than the English hubs. Do you think that Brexit will improve the quality of English manufacturing and return those manufacturing jobs to the UK?

Sturmey Archer were generally better made in England for most of their life. I read about Sturmey Archer as have a few bikes with SA hubs and the metallurgy quality was better on the English hubs and generally the 3 speed hubs were better than the Taiwanese quality for most of their life however at the end SA in England were trying to cut costs to compete and the quality fell as they tried to reduce the unit price to be competitive. There has been issues with modern SA hubs and I've seen comments from a engineer about the Brompton 3 speed hub which while still an excellent hub is not quite as good as the older 3 speed hubs. However the 3 speed hub design is an inherently simple design that performs very well whether you buy a SA England, SA Taiwan or Sachs, SRAM or Shimano Nexus they are very good hubs. However I can't make such a comparison for the hubs with more gears. Quite possible the 4 or 5 speed English hubs aren't as good as the later versions probably due to design revision more than anything. Generally once you go above 3 gears with hubs the reliability and durability drops off considerably unless you buy a Rohloff but that needs a regular oil change to remain reliable and still not as reliable as the simple 3 speed hubs I've read.

I don't think Brexit is so much about restoring British industry it's more about border controls and not having a trading deficit with Europe that we have to pay a membership to be part of. I like being part of Europe but the financial data of being part of the EU is an absolute disaster. Manufacturing in Britain is extremely expensive whether we are inside or outside of Europe. You have to understand membership of the EU has cost cost the UK about half a trillion pounds since the 1970s and with the compound interest that actually makes up a huge percentage of our national debt and that's before you even factor in the damage of the trade deficit and many EU rules that were unfair to the UK. Even so the thought of all the mess that would be caused by leaving the EU is causing many to have second thoughts and our incompetent politicians are dreading dealing with it who probably are completely incapable of managing it. Britain is going to get a lot poorer which ever path we finally choose as our debts will catch up with us. I guess there is at least long term hope with leaving the EU that things will improve I honestly can't see that by remaining in the EU.