Raleigh 5-speed find

[rollfaster]

Found this for a friend yesterday locally here. It’s dated a 1967 by the hubs. I’ve never seen this 5-speed internal hub setup before, can anyone tell me about it? Also came without a Chainguard, he just put the blue one on temporarily until he can find the correct color green guard. Thanks for any info you can provide. Rob. @SirMike1983 @dnc1

 

[Eric Amlie]

I have one also, though there is not much I can tell you about it.
I think the next year they moved to a derailleur & 5 cog freewheel instead of the internal gear hub.
The hub is basically a standard 3 speed hub with the addition of a "wide" range added to the "standard" range.
To shift sequentially through the gears you select 1 wide, 1 standard, 2(wide & standard are the same here), 3 standard, and 3 wide.

 

[rollfaster]

Appreciate the info @Eric Amlie!

 

[SirMike1983]

That's a fairly early Sprite. The internal gear Sprite was made from the mid-1960s into the 1970s. It's a Raleigh Sports model with an upgraded hub. The hub is a "5" speed in name, but it actually has 6 gear settings. The original shifter was a plastic two-lever arrangement similar to a 10-speed road bike, but these tended to break. The shifters on yours probably broke and were replaced. A couple of years later, the shifters were change to a medal design as shown below (which also shows the gear sequence).

https://bikeshedva.blogspot.com/2017/02/the-classic-sturmey-archer-s5-shifter.html

The left shifter moves selects the sun gear via a bell crank and pin (don't lose the bell crank - they're expensive), while the right shifter functions as a normal three-speed shifter. So what you actually have is two three speed arrangements in a single hub (three speeds multiplied by two sun gears), except that the middle gears duplicate the same ratio (1:1 direct drive), so you really only have 5 unique gears (hence the "5 speed" label).

Early Sprites had a unique "5 Speed" set of labels on them. Later Sprites had generic Raleigh Sports type transfers.

I owned a very late 60s or very early 1970s Sprite for a few years, but sold it when I had to downsize in the move. I opted to keep a 1958 Raleigh 4-speed Sports instead. The 5-speed is an interesting hub and it's very different with the stock shifters from riding a stock 3-speed. You get a good deal more gear ratio, though you need to learn the quirky shift sequence (and possibly the stock shifter if you're using one). They're also tricky hubs to fix if you need to open the hub up - the gear teeth inside the hub need to be properly "timed" so they do not interfere with each other in order for the hub to run correctly. But certainly working on the hub is doable if you're careful.

A good replacement shifter is to connect the bell crank (left) side to a 10-speed type friction shifter (there are only two settings, so loose and tight are easily managed this way) and to run the right side using a normal Sturmey handle bar trigger shifter.

 

[rollfaster]

Great knowledge, thanks a bunch...now to find that Chainguard!!

 

[slowride]

Nice bike! Here’s pic from ‘67 catalog . Chain guard should be same as sports which should not be difficult to find**

**Personally, I would wait to find one in the bronze green; sirmike has remarked that the color formula changed slightly over the years but likely only you would notice.

I have a sprite but with derailleur from ‘69 which took a different chain guard.

 

[Brutuskend]

I have one too. Not quite as clean as yours but a nice bopping around town bike.

 

[Brutuskend]

Mine

 

[rollfaster]

Nice bike! Here’s pic from ‘67 catalog . Chain guard should be same as sports which should not be difficult to find**

**Personally, I would wait to find one in the bronze green; sirmike has remarked that the color formula changed slightly over the years but likely only you would notice.

I have a sprite but with derailleur from ‘69 which took a different chain guard.

View attachment 1017210

Thanks for posting this!!

 

[slowride]

Found this for a friend yesterday locally here. It’s dated a 1967 by the hubs. I’ve never seen this 5-speed internal hub setup before, can anyone tell me about it? Also came without a Chainguard, he just put the blue one on temporarily until he can find the correct color green guard. Thanks for any info you can provide. Rob. @SirMike1983 @dnc1 View attachment 1016986
View attachment 1016987

View attachment 1016988

Chain guard
https://www.bikeforums.net/classic-...sports-chainguard-fenders-15-trade-stuff.html