Sturmey Archer 5 star hub gear thumb shifter

[gordonyoung]

a small part has broken off the above - HSJ829 is the gear shifter part number. I did buy a new gear shifter for the bike about 20 years ago and the only place on the web I have found is oldbiketrader.co.uk but the site says when you go to buy that , they are ill at the moment. Anyone know where else I could try? The bike is still very good and very useful for local journeys as it is very easy for a beginner to shift gears and very low maintenance.

[Brucey]

If you can't find another shifter the cure for this is to use a separate control for each cable. Two 3s trigger controls work nicely for this. The shift pattern is such that gears 2-3-4 are accessed using the RH control only. The LH control is only moved on shifts between 1-2 and 4-5.

hth

cheers

[gordonyoung]

many thanks for that idea.

[Brucey]

just to be clear with this particular hub if you don't bother connecting the LH control at all, you get gears 1, 3, 5, using the RH control only. With the LH control connected and the control rod pulled leftwards, you get gears 2, 3, 4, using the RH control.

cheers

[gordonyoung]

Thanks very much for that. I gave the bike to a friend a few years ago and she only really uses it to go to village and visit her daughter. It is a ladies Dawes Diaploma and has a very comfortable riding position, quite light and easy gears with the hub gear. I didn't want to have to buy a new hub just because I couldn't get a shifter. Now I have two solutions - two gear levers (which might be confusing for her ) or one shifter and effectively get a 3 speed bike. I have stuck the small bit that had broken off back on but doubt that it will hold. I was wondering if I could get a new piece from a 3D printer. It is quite a simple piece. It is a very simple way the shifter works but not really robust.

[[XAP]Bob]

You could drill into both ends and add a small metal 'dowel' as per many flat pack furniture joins?

[Brucey]

there shifters are not robust; they also are completely out of place on a lightweight. These two things were enough to put any thoughts of using this kind of hub on a nice lightweight bike out of people's mind. Early five star hubs also had a very bad reputation for blowing up spectacularly which rather put the tin lid on things.

Sachs sold a very similar shifter for their 5s hub for a while; I have always wondered who copied who, or if all the shifters were made by one or the other company. Sachs shifts break too.....

If you can post photos of what has broken please do so; someone may come up with a repair scheme that is better, or someone might have a shifter that is broken in a different place. I think I have got at least one such shifter in a box somewhere.

cheers

[Carlton green]

a small part has broken off the above - HSJ829 is the gear shifter part number. I did buy a new gear shifter for the bike about 20 years ago and the only place on the web I have found is oldbiketrader.co.uk but the site says when you go to buy that , they are ill at the moment. Anyone know where else I could try? The bike is still very good and very useful for local journeys as it is very easy for a beginner to shift gears and very low maintenance.

You might just have to wait until the folk at Old Bike Trader are well again ... though somehow I missed the required part number on their website. I wonder too whether any other five speed controls could be pressed into service. That does assume that you can get any lever at all.

Repairs to the existing lever might work, a picture of the damage could produce suggestions. I’d be tempted to go with two three speed levers and remove the gear indicator panel from the one that only uses two positions (normal and ‘extra’ (high/low)).

Ultimately you might be forced to accept defeat. I replaced a Sach five seed hub gear with a Sturmey three speed, I find it’s not as good as the Sach but it still works well and allows me to get about on that bike quite well enough. If you don’t want to change all the wheel then I believe that it’s possible to ‘just’ change the internals. There must also be a way to just run on gears 2,3 and 4 of the existing hub with a single lever ... I don’t have to think hard about how the unused indicator rod could be made to be permanently either loose or pulling.

[gordonyoung]

thanks

[gordonyoung]

Hi

Thanks for everyone's help. The pictures shows the shifter and internal assembly and the parts list (this came with the bike about 30 years ago - I keep these things!). I tried sticking the small knob back on but it just came off again. The left hand slider should be a mirror image of the right hand slider. I think that there must have been a compression spring in there, as otherwise I don't see what held the middle piece against the rotary switch - will have to look if it sprung out when I took it apart!

would the dual lever HSJ776 be a special Sturmey Archer part or just a normal dual lever assembly?

Really appreciate the help with this.

thanks Gordon Young

[Brucey]

HSJ776 is indeed a special lever; it works the same way as two trigger shifters i.e. the RH control has three positions.

If you are going to use two levers it probably makes most sense if the RH control is a 3s trigger shifter.

cheers

[gordonyoung]

thanks

[gordonyoung]

If I use two three speed shifters I assume that I should use two sturmey archer 3 speed shifters, Can I use the traditional click shifters I would have had on my old Triumph Palm Beach bike back in the 1960s?

[Brucey]

yes.

BTW in the meantime I have found a shifter that looks like the right thing; I need to give it the once-over though.

cheers

[Carlton green]

I am hopeful that you will get something better (like the original model) or go the two changer route suggested above. That aside I was surfing yesterday and spotted this which might (I don’t know) work; IIRC there are also some questions about this type of twin lever changer contributing to failures so please do your research and ask an expert or two.
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Sturmey-Arch ... SwtEVe1~EI