Cycling UK Forum

I've recently curated a no-date 'Patent' Sturmey-Archer AW* for future generations. Screwed into the hubshell is a little brass Garland lubricator (patent 576408, 1944). Thing is, the membrane slit-seal is not in evidence. Unscrewed from the hubshell, you can see daylight right through the lubricator. The lubricator was obviously assembled in some way but I've gently pried and screwed the little brass body around and can't see any way to disassemble it.

Is there any known fix/repair? Perhaps a cottage industry refurbishing Garland lubricators operated out of, er, a cottage? Available NOS or reproduction replacement membrane slit-seals with instructions? Or am I on a fool's errand, tilting at windmills and attempting to extract sunbeams from cucumbers? I should just replace it with an S545 and get on with life, right?

Thanks!


*Hadland indicates these no-date AW hubs were manufactured whilst Sturmey was selling off K inventory - or were mysteriously conjured up during the time production facilities were taken up with producing war material.

like this?



IIRC these lubricators are riveted through the hubshell?. I'm not sure the underlying hole in the shell is of the correct size (or correctly tapped) to accept other lubricators or not.

There are three issues here

1) preserving originality
2) getting lube into the hub
3) keeping lube in the hub.

One method which addresses all three points is to block the original lube port up (having degreased it) with black mastic, and to add lube via the hollow axle instead. This retains the original look and renders the hub functional, which (barring new guts for the lubricator) is probably about as good as it is going to get...?

FWIW the plastic lubricator ports have finally gone NLA, it seems, so there isn't a very good (practical) alternative.

cheers

Actually, my Garland is threaded and screws in (and out) of the shell in the manner of an HSA106.

I might ~guess~ the hub predates the Garland lubricator by a few years and therefore some sporting blade treated his AW to a little bling in the late 40s or early 50s.

that is not the usual Garland lubricator that I have seen before in SA hubs (which is as per the photo I posted above) which is usually set almost flush with the hubshell surface. During the early 1950s the usual SA lubricator was a metal widget with a flip top; this wasn't oil-tight, so folk often fitted alternative lubricators, and I'm assuming that yours is an example of that. Details of the hubshell and the internals may allow you to more accurately date the hub; there may have been more than one period when they made hubs with no date mark.

cheers