SirMike1983
Riding a '38 Autocycle Deluxe
They're neat bikes - interesting hubs too.
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Late-60s Raleigh Sprite 5-Speed
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Oilit
Cruisin' on my Bluebird
I read somewhere that Sturmey-Archer introduced the five speed hub in 1967, if my memory is right. I'm guessing that was in response to the 10 speeds, and the expense probably kept them from being more successful, but I don't really know. How long did they make them? There was a S. A. hub on EBay last year, and it looked like it was seven speeds, made in England. Did Sturmey Archer make a seven speed before they were bought out?
SirMike1983
Riding a '38 Autocycle Deluxe
The 7-speed you saw was probably the late 1990s-era S7 hub. It's an interesting concept, but too little too late for Sturmey in England. By then, the manufacturing tolerances were not as good as in the immediate post-war years as well, and then the shifters were a more modern, plastic thing.
You raise a good point about the S5. The S5 went through a few variations, with some being pretty awful, and others pretty good. The earlier ones are good, but there are a couple later variations that had issues. The S5 has a bit of perplexing early history. The early S5 really is an FW four-speed with a bell crank added to the non-drive side in order to activate a combination of sun and planetary gears that give you very high overdrive. The FW lacks this because it lacks the bell crank, but it's feasible you could modify the FW to take a bell crank and then have, effectively, an early S5 hub. Sturmey should have done this earlier than it did, and then developed the idea a bit to incorporate a 'no neutral' or 'no in-between-gear' feature. The combination of 5-speeds and no neutral would be really nice to have in, say, 1955-60. But they didn't do it. They had instead continued producing the FW while trying to develop the cheaper SW hub, which was a disaster.
I do think the S5 is a somewhat late attempt to keep pace with 5 and 10-speed derailleur bikes:
https://bikeshedva.blogspot.com/2017/04/trying-to-keep-pace-with-derailleurs-4.html
It's not a bad idea, but it was impossible for Sturmey to keep pace with 10-speed (later 12-speed) systems, given the money they had to operate. I think Sturmey was, frankly, somewhat starved for money and pressed by its parent company by the mid-1960s to operate as cheaply as possible. Sturmey designs showed such promise from the early years right up to the 1950s, but then the SW marked a turning point. By the time of the S5, we're talking rather low-hanging fruit to squeeze one more, rather high, gear out of the FW design (which itself was 20 years old by then). Even that failed at first - the earliest S5s came with awful, low-quality plastic friction shifters that broke. The earliest S5s also have a weak, sheet metal bell crank that breaks. These had to be revised, and Sturmey did so within about 2-3 years of issuing the S5.
So I think the S5 Sprite represents the last in an evolutionary line of the "classic" Sports light roadster bikes. You have the Sports frame (a design firmly rooted in the 1930s-40s period), the heavy rear Prestube rack (another 1930s-40s type item), all-steel construction (getting dated by the 1960s), and the S5 hub. You're trying to eek more performance out of a very old school design. That's actually why it appeals to me - it's the final technological development of this particular line of bikes (though this general style of utility bike is still around, just with more modernized components and newer materials).
It's known as 'hybrid' gearing and was particularly popular in the 1950s-60s era. The Cyclo line of conversions comes to mind. They're really neat, but you have to watch which gearing you use with the multiple cogs so you don't get too much overlap in your 6 or 9 speeds. But you can build a really sporty machine out of those.
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bulldog1935
Cruisin' on my Bluebird
searching "hybrid" drive or gearing on this forum will turn up a lot of examples, and links to other sources.
Oilit
Cruisin' on my Bluebird
Thank you, @SirMike1983. That's interesting, and it makes sense. Considering some of the stories I've read about the British motorcycle industry, I'm actually surprised Sturmey-Archer lasted into the '90's.
SirMike1983
Riding a '38 Autocycle Deluxe
wrongway
I live for the CABE
There is a 1962 Raleigh on ebay right now that I would love to have. It is a Convertible model and has the hybrid set up. A year ago I bought a 1964 Raleigh Sports primarily because it has this set up on it. It came with a 3 speed dérailleur, but it never fit right so I took one cog off. It will work with two cogs. I haven't played with it much, but I'm thinking about getting back to it.
SirMike1983
Riding a '38 Autocycle Deluxe
They made a bunch of different Cyclo models. Some were specifically made for 2 cogs at 1/8 inch each, while others could handle more cogs, depending on the model. Raleigh supposedly bought up a bunch of the budget models with limited ranges in the late 1950s and early 1960s and tried to mount them on 3-speed bikes. Some of them had such a limited range that they could only handle 2 cogs and really were "add on" items to expand the 3-speed hub gear range, but really the Sturmey 3-speed remained the heart of the hybrid transmission. Cyclo did make some nicer models, but Raleigh seemed to want to experiment with the budget Cyclos.
The British, and Raleigh in particular, were pretty conservative in their sticking to hub gears, steel parts, and club-style bikes into the 1950s and early 1960s. I saw that Lenton Sports model on eBay - nice bike with slacker frame angles than the higher-end road bikes, but sort of a base model sporting/club bike. If it was a 23 inch frame, I probably would buy it, but I think the shorter frame is a bit too short on 26 inch wheels. The Cyclo-Sturmey hybrid system is a pretty good symbol of the British ambivalence to derailleur systems.
Huret, Suntour and Shimano later did for derailleurs what Sturmey had done years earlier for hub gears in making well-made but affordable parts. Suntour and Shimano ultimately would emerge as the best of the affordable makers.
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bulldog1935
Cruisin' on my Bluebird
no offense, but have to call you on that. Indexing is what Shimano did best to get ahead. Shimano made a weaker Campagnolo copy, and the weight-saving stress-riser they put in their RD body design has followed through today and they still break, primarily in their cheaper grade metallurgy. (Including their post-patent copies of SunTour slant parallelogram)
Bike commuters on Sora and Tiagra discover this all the time, and an RD body crack is the first thing to look for in an old Shimano 300 or Exage.
SunTour, yes. Their design was a clean sheet of paper. Their patented design was so good that top-line French touring bikes were using SunTour in place of French derailleurs from 1971 forward (and after '76, it was not uncommon to see a full-Campy race bike with a shiny new Cyclone RD).
From Chorus forward, every Campagnolo RD is a copy of the body and geometry used on the SunTour V and Cyclone. If you want a new SunTour, look at Microshift (which indexes with Shmano).
where Shimanos crack is at the upper rear pivot in the derailleur body.
If it breaks, you're going to have to call somebody.
Bike commuters on Sora and Tiagra discover this all the time, and an RD body crack is the first thing to look for in an old Shimano 300 or Exage.
SunTour, yes. Their design was a clean sheet of paper. Their patented design was so good that top-line French touring bikes were using SunTour in place of French derailleurs from 1971 forward (and after '76, it was not uncommon to see a full-Campy race bike with a shiny new Cyclone RD).
From Chorus forward, every Campagnolo RD is a copy of the body and geometry used on the SunTour V and Cyclone. If you want a new SunTour, look at Microshift (which indexes with Shmano).
where Shimanos crack is at the upper rear pivot in the derailleur body.
If it breaks, you're going to have to call somebody.
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