Sturmey Archer AW Riding Techniques

[jimlews]

No typo.
The CW was robbed from an abandoned kiddies trike.
The centre was cut out and filed to go over the steel cotter d cranks.
I cut the original swaged chainwheel off and drilled five holes through the bit remaining around the crank arm a la TA Pro VIS.
Similarly drilled the 22t CW using a TA outer as a hole guide.

Good brakes?
NO WAY
The bike was a pre war Norman roadster; so roller lever brakes acting on non concentric Westward rims.
The braking was interesting - but fun; especially when the trailer tried to overtake the bike.

[gazza_d]

[The gearing range choice on your Moulton sounds very sensible to me, well something that at one time I’d have happily picked and used ... but I’m a bit heavier and older now, and then there’s my 11kg ‘companion’ sat on the rack too.

With a five speed set up using fourth as a normal gear and fifth as an ‘overdrive’ is, to my mind, the best choice. When lack of spare parts supply forced a moved from my Sach five speed hub to a SA three speed hub then the pragmatic choice for me was to use 3rd as my normal gear and these days that’s in the low 60’s.

Yea the lack of available parts was a factor in me dumping the SRAM 5 speed..I managed to break a couple of bits and could not get parts so it felt vulnerable. The shifting mechanist was fiddly as hell too.
As the bike is 120mm spaced (TSR 2) and needs a coaster brake, alternatives were limited and the Nexus 3 was stupidly cheap. I'd like to drop another 5 or even the SA 8 so in it at some point.

quote="Carlton green" post_id=1687598 time=1650273913 user_id=47920]
[It’s all interesting though, seeing what other folk finds suits them and why. There’s always something to learn from others.
[/quote]
Very much so.

[gazza_d]

The gearing range choice on your Moulton sounds very sensible to me, well something that at one time I’d have happily picked and used ... but I’m a bit heavier and older now, and then there’s my 11kg ‘companion’ sat on the rack too.

With a five speed set up using fourth as a normal gear and fifth as an ‘overdrive’ is, to my mind, the best choice. When lack of spare parts supply forced a moved from my Sach five speed hub to a SA three speed hub then the pragmatic choice for me was to use 3rd as my normal gear and these days that’s in the low 60’s.

Yea the lack of available parts was a factor in me dumping the SRAM 5 speed..I managed to break a couple of bits and could not get parts so it felt vulnerable. The shifting mechanist was fiddly as hell too.
As the bike is 120mm spaced (TSR 2) and needs a coaster brake, alternatives were limited and the Nexus 3 was stupidly cheap. I'd like to drop another 5 or even the SA 8 so in it at some point.

[It’s all interesting though, seeing what other folk finds suits them and why. There’s always something to learn from others.

Very much so.

[Carlton green]

When I started this thread I really hadn’t expected the direction which it took, but it has still proved to be a useful direction.

A few days ago I reduced the overall gearing on my SA propelled Utility bike by 10% (gears are now 57”, 43”, 32”), that’s maybe only a marginal difference but it does make a difference. I now have three climbing gears rather than one for the flat and two for upward gradients. For what I use that Utility bike for the change has been positive overall; it’s all a trade-off, the change allows me to cycle up hills with less stress and fatigue but a cost for that is the loss of a more useful top gear. In terms of the time taken for journeys I wouldn’t say that the lower gearing is slower and indeed it might be quicker as I climb more easily. I use this bike for transporting an 11kg Terrier, 11kg feels like a lot to pull up some of my local hills.

For solo riding, for personal transport on the rolling country lanes around where I live, the earlier gearing (63”, 47”, 35”) was about right for me. It was a happy compromise between spinning out in top gear and still having to walk the occasional hill. I think that I’d find the lower gearing unsuitable for unloaded day rides - too much spinning out - however I’m glad to have fitted a smaller chain-wheel to get easier utility riding out of this particular bike. Without the other posts I wouldn’t have considered dropping the gearing this low and the change has been useful.

My thanks to all who contributed to the thread.

[Carlton green]

I thought it might be interesting to revisit this thread near a year and a half after the last post in it. Has anything changed? Has anyone anything to add?

My SA AW continues to do an excellent job and the lowered gearing has proved to be just about right for my use of my bike in the (rolling / hilly) terrain local to my home - note that I typically have a 12Kg passenger too, so load lugging. Over the period since the previous last post I think that I’ve become a slightly stronger rider, but it’s only a marginal gain and similarly my cycling style has marginally improved too.

The low top gear was selected to make the better use of the limited ratio range available from the SA AW. I decided to sacrifice a potentially higher top speed for being able to avoid dropping down a gear (when say into a slight headwind or up a slight gradient, etc.); that sacrifice has also given me a more flexible top gear and the benefit of more useful middle and bottom gears. Maybe I could manage a few inches higher - certainly could without my passenger - but I think that - and with a little in hand - I’m both the better side of and near to the performance curve’s peak.

Edit. The more I ride and think about it the more sense it makes to me to spin-out a little ahead of pulling the highest gear that I can manage at higher (normal) cadence. Pushing all the time, peak output to match a higher speed load, just tires you out and I can’t trust myself to use third as an ease back overdrive. The current gearing is perhaps a little low for an ordinary rider, but I’m hauling a load around and that demands a compromise. Whatever, deliberately spinning-out early, as a tool to limit continuous peak power input, might work well for others too, just a concept to share.

The use of an SA AW encourages ones’s development of the art of compromise; I’ve found it best to be able to steadily tap along at a sustainable pace rather race along only to discover that you’re now exhausted and have run out of low gears . I’m also convinced that just because you can flog up a hill doesn’t mean that you should; enjoy walking a few paces, it’ll do you good .

[jimlews]

I presently don't have an AW equipped bike.
The one I described upthread was stolen

Any AW equipped bike I build will have to have hybrid gearing.
I live in a hilly/mountainous area where the inclines are long and steep.
So although every AW has the option of that fourth 24" gear, I prefer to
ride uphill as I find it less taxing than walking. With a standard AW I'd
do a lot of walking - more walking than riding!

So, my scheme is as follows.

AW 3 speed rear hub with 22t sprocket.
A triple chainset furnished with 22:32:38 CWs
The front changer would be actuated by
a left hand bar end shifter.
The 1/8"chain would be tensioned by an under bottom bracket swing arm

Although I have added complication to the system, the benefits outweigh the dis-benifits IMHO.
Advantages are:

It is still a robust system.
The gearchange regimen is simple and intuitive.
The chain tensioner would be relatively simple to fabricate.
(A worn out alloy chainwheel might provide the material.)
A tension spring could be fabricated from a spoke.

I would be happy to go cycle-camping on such a bike.

[Biospace]

...
[/i] Quoting Tiberius from: viewtopic.php?p=1559153&hilit=Sturmey+Archer#p1559153
...

I loved jimlews' comment that with a hybrid hub/derailleur drive, the chain can be run between gears while at rest, it's something I'd never considered.

The riders I still think of in awe are my grandfather and our neighbour Mr Peerless, both professional gardeners who rode 1930s Raleighs, with rod brakes and SA three-speed. Off they would go, tools tied along the crossbar, old sack on the front, old fruit tray on the back, and they would ride up the hill outside our house, about 1:3, at a steady tread, wearing heavy working boots and leather gaiters. Their speed was so slow that it seemed impossible they could stay upright
...

This reminds me of a day's cycling with a friend in the Peak District. He had only recently taken to bicycles (through Covid lockdowns) and chose his first purchase, a 1960s Raleigh DL24 to demonstrate what he'd found about its (and his) hill-climbing abilities. I was riding my Touristique and was amazed to find him able to climb a 1 in 5 with an incredibly slow cadence (and road speed) more easily than I was with many more and lower gears. We swapped bikes and found very similar results, with a little practice (on my part).

Over lunch we tried to work out just what was going on, among other factors, some interesting biomechanics.

[Brucey]

i used to ride everywhere on a SA AW; later on I used a SA 5s hub [converted from an old 4s]. The old Sachs 5s hub used a rod each side [much like the old SA 5s hub] and I think any SRAM 5s hub can be similarly converted using modified SA parts. Before my stroke I successfully converted a SRAM 7s hub in a similar way but with a pushrod on the LHS. Since then I have worked out how to modify almost any cassette to fit a standard SA driver and how to modify an SA AW hub to make it much lighter and for it to build into an even stronger wheel,with much neater/QD cabling. I have even figured out a really good way of giving the SA AW roller bearings on the planet gears [something it never had before]. In short I have been very far from idle despite the circumstances!

[Carlton green]

This reminds me of a day's cycling with a friend in the Peak District. He had only recently taken to bicycles (through Covid lockdowns) and chose his first purchase, a 1960s Raleigh DL24 to demonstrate what he'd found about its (and his) hill-climbing abilities. I was riding my Touristique and was amazed to find him able to climb a 1 in 5 with an incredibly slow cadence (and road speed) more easily than I was with many more and lower gears. We swapped bikes and found very similar results, with a little practice (on my part).

Over lunch we tried to work out just what was going on, among other factors, some interesting biomechanics.

That style of riding links into my thread about torque and power versus cadence - I’d really like to know a lot more but the thread has probably died for want of specialist input. Maybe it’s just me, but slow cadence and steady pedal pressure can get me up some hills that defeated faster attacks; obviously beware of repeatedly putting excessive load through your joints ’cause that’ll likely and eventually lead to damage.

[jimlews]

It's really good to have you back with us Brucey.
I've always admired your erudition on matters epicycling and look forward to much more from you in the same vein.

I presume that your scheme for fitting freehub sprockets would entail some machining of the SA driver ?

[Brucey]

I presume that your scheme for fitting freehub sprockets would entail some machining of the SA driver ?

no the mods are all in the cogs

[Brucey]

IIRC correctly Brucey had some good threads and posts about the Sturmey Five Speed and he managed to cover a lot of distance with them - a flawed design expertly beaten and cajoled into good service?

that's about the size of it. The only intrinsically reliable [IMHO] 4s hubs were the
FG & FW hubs; conversion of either to 5s is possible & I used a pushod on the LHS to control the sun pinions. In latter years I converted the hub to remove the [tiny] friction arising from the spring loaded sun pinions & I experimented with arrangements using more than one sprocket, using the 'magic gear' principle [rather than a derailleur] to maintain a semblance of chain tension. Such arrangements would of course also work with an AW or indeed almost any IGH.

[plancashire]

I had SA AW 3-speeds on my bikes when I was a teenager and a student. I just rode them, sometimes quite fast, and didn't think much about it. I lived in flat places. Later I bought bikes with more gears and paid more attention but by that time the SAs had gone.

Does my 3-speed Brompton with a SRAM gear count? Again, I use it in a flat area here in the Rheinland. On my big bike I'm a fast spinner but that does not work so well on a Brompton as the feet fly off the pedals, so I adopt a slower cadence and ankle more. I find I hardly ever use the top gear 3 except with a strong following wind or a long safe downhill stretch.

I've tried my sister's Brompton 6-speed in a slightly hillier area but I can't say the doubled gears helped much, particularly with two changers, which I am less used to these days as I ride Rohloff and the 3-speed Brompton mostly.

[Carlton green]

I had SA AW 3-speeds on my bikes when I was a teenager and a student. I just rode them, sometimes quite fast, and didn't think much about it. I lived in flat places. Later I bought bikes with more gears and paid more attention but by that time the SAs had gone.

Does my 3-speed Brompton with a SRAM gear count? Again, I use it in a flat area here in the Rheinland. On my big bike I'm a fast spinner but that does not work so well on a Brompton as the feet fly off the pedals, so I adopt a slower cadence and ankle more. I find I hardly ever use the top gear 3 except with a strong following wind or a long safe downhill stretch.

I've tried my sister's Brompton 6-speed in a slightly hillier area but I can't say the doubled gears helped much, particularly with two changers, which I am less used to these days as I ride Rohloff and the 3-speed Brompton mostly.

It sounds like your Brompton is quite highly geared - maybe over geared, but that’s for you to judge - and I’m not going to split hairs about the three speed hub on it (it’s similar enough so let’s set differences to one side and include it ).

I was thinking of this thread earlier today and my parallel one to it on torque versus cadence. As an experiment I’ve been trying to cycle slowly up hills applying just enough pressure to keep the cranks turning. This ‘gentleness’, just slowly easing the pedals around at their pace, is actually quite effective and has seen me climbing some inclines in second rather than third; I’ve found the experimental results quite surprising and the style is quite different to what I usually do (power or spin along).

Slow cadence ‘gentleness’ doesn’t tire your muscles in the same way. The time to go slower is before muscle exhaustion forces you to do so - the time to go slower is so before you need to. Just engage that low gear, don’t chase the fastest cadence up the hill and ease the pedals steadily around avoiding muscle exhaustion as you climb. That seems to beat peddling quicker, to keep up momentum, and getting exhausted part way up. It’s all about balancing gearing that would get you up a particular % incline with with fresh legs and keeping the legs fresh, or rather in constant and balanced renewal, rather than depleted or spent.