How many gears do you really need? (3 speed SA hubs)

Teuchter

Having spent a lot of the last month bombing around on my fixie that I finally completed recently, I've been starting to think about my bike needs for commuting. I ride 20 miles a day all year round, all weathers. Generally level or low hills. Being West Scotland I see plenty of wind and rain. Normally my main ride is the old 12 speed road bike but I've taken to using the fixie for nicer weather. I also have the Dahon which is mainly used where a folder would be useful, the other bikes are not roadworthy or when I fancy a change.

I had been thinking of replacing the road bike with an old touring bike with more mudguard clearance as it's becoming mainly for bad weather use. Something like an old Dawes Galaxy strikes me as ideal. Then I started thinking about other old bikes. An old road bike with a 3 speed Sturmey-Archer hub appeals for it's simplicity (I'm sure I could successfully service one if required, unlike hubs with more gears), its more "weatherproof-ness" and its clean looks. This could either be an old bike with one fitted or a newer bike I'd convert from derailleur gears.

What that long-winded speil is getting at is my main concern about an old SA is... would I likely find the range of gears or inefficiency a problem for the sort of commuting I'd be doing?

I'm interested in any advice or experiences.

stickman

The SA is great, i've got 2 SAs and 2 XRD-3s (SA with hub brake). There's various hubs up to 8-speed if you need more.

lae

The SA 'AW' 3-speed (by far the most common) has a range of 1.33 - 1.00 - .075. You can get modern shimano hubs (Alfine and Nexus) which are 7 or 8-speed and have a range of 1.6 - 0.5 (if I recall correctly). So they do have a lot more range, and they're more common than SA hubs (apart from the AW hub of which there are dozens on ebay). They are slightly heavier, though (1.6kg for a Nexus!), and SA hubs are really quite easy to service. I wouldn't want to take apart an 8-speed hub without some serious documentation! Plus they don't look as nice, and are quite expensive too (£150ish).

If you try to figure out what your favoured lowest and highest gears are, then you can use Sheldon Brown's gear calculator to see what ratios each hub will give.

I'm afraid I don't know anything about SA hubs other than the 3-speed ones, but Sheldon Brown's site has loads of info.

~~~

Incidentally, does anyone know if Nexus/Alfine hubs can be used with downtube shifters? I'm building a hub-geared clasically styled tourer, but the control lever that comes with the Shimano hubs is just disgusting and would look totally out of place.

stickman

Yes, AW is what 2 of mine are, that just totally slipped my mind. Sturmey do other 3-speeds, wide ratio and close ratio.

flashes

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AlanSmith

Hi Teuchter,

how's sunny Clydebank? That used to be my stamping ground in the early eighties when I was at Glasgow Uni.

Anyway you were asking about experiences with hub gears, specifically SA. I just got back into cycling after an absence of 20+ years. The only bike I still have is my old winter trainer which is fixed wheel. I was aware of the re-launch of the Sturmey-Archer fixed wheel three speed but didn't want to spend that kind of money, I had also read on Sheldon-Brown's site about conversion of an SA 3 speed to a 2 speed fixed hub. So off I went to my LBS who for £10 was happy to sell me an old SA hub from a big box of old bits and bobs.

Once I got home I realized that what I had was a 5 speed hub which still can be converted to fixed but is a lot more hassle. I decided to keep it in the original state and built it into a rim to have a go at freewheel and gears. With a bit of fiddling and fabricating some brackets and a bellcrank I have it all working. I'm using the non-indexed gear change levers on the down tube so there was a bit of trial and error to start with. I have a really good spread of gears something like 25" in bottom to 115" in top. One thing you may not realise is that the sprockets on SA hubs are very quick and easy to change and are as cheap as chips, something like £2.50 from SJS. I reckon a 3sp hub with a selection of sprockets would be a very practical proposition for you without the complications of the five speed. Especially if you don't want to spend a lot.

For me, well I put the fixed wheel back on this afternoon. Having gears is nice for steep hills but I'm cycling for fitness so at the moment it's back to fixed and honk up those hills.

Long term, I reckon I'll go for an Alfine hub with disc brakes but that will be on a new frame.

Teuchter

Cheers for the replies so far. One of the things I liked about the idea of the 3 speed SA hubs was the relative simplicity of maintaining and servicing it myself (at least according to Sheldon). Never tried it myself but I'll likely find out soon enough now as I've just bought a cheap old Triumph Trafficmaster 3 speed for the missus to potter about on. It's been sat in a shed for 20 years so will no doubt need some tidying up and fettling.

I think I could handle the range of gears provided by a 3 (or 5) speed SA, especially as I've been spending more and more time on my fixie recently. The last time I rode one however was my Raleigh Grifter. That was quite a long time ago when I was growing up in Shetland where there are quite a few decent hills and it's not known for calm weather!

Alan, not wishing to offend the locals (I'm not originally from the Glasgow area - it just happens to be where the work is), but there's not too much that's nice (or sunny) in Clydebank these days! Visited the Auchentoshan distillery there last month and that was worthwhile however!

Jake the Peg

For commuting, I used to ride a fixed built into a 1980 Peugeot steel frame. But with a new child and trailer (Chariot) and a 60 m climb to the child carer in the morning with paniers (laptop, clothes etc), I realised I was going to expode my knees.

So I built a AW30 3 spd into a Mavic rim. Use 3rd gear set at ~70 inches for main riding along the flat bike path to work (12 km each way). Drop into second to get up the ramps on to the bridges. And of course 1st gear to tow the trailer up the hill in the morning.

All works beautifully, hardly any cleaning to do. I can really recommend it. I have the shifter on the seat pillar with the uncased wire just going directly down to the hub - since I only change gear once every 20 mins, it works nicely.

Jake.