Raleigh Rear Wheel
 

What an embarrassment. I cannot get the rear wheel back in my 1980 Raleigh 3 Speed.

Without warning, the rear wheel slipped forward and jammed in the chain stays. I managed to reset the wheel, and tightened it back up. It was a pain, as everything was gobbed up with grease and dirt, and tightening the non-drive side seemed to cause the whole axle to spin. Anyway, it rode fine.

A week later, the wheel slipped and bound up again. Tightening it back up, I thought I had cross-threaded the non-drive side. Frustrated, I took the wheel upstairs and cleaned it thoroughly.

Once it was clean, I had a close look and the threads looked ok. Sure enough, the axle nut threaded right on. The threads are fine. A googling made reference to washers next to the axle nuts, which mine did not have. Also, I could see that the axle has flats on it to hold it still.

So, I fussed with it again. I managed to get the drive side in and tighten-able, but not the non-drive side. If I can squeeze the drop outs together enough to get the axle nuts started, the non-drive side kind of "snaps" each turn and will not tighten very much. The non-drive side simply will not tighten. I switched axle nuts back and forth, no change.

If I hadn't seen the wheel come off the bike, I'd assume they didn't fit together. It's the weirdest thing.

Any advice?

Are you missing the anti rotation washers? If so, get some.

These are more than I like to pay but here they are. They will snug everything up and prevent unwanted slippage.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/STURMEY-ARC...-/290510264860

The OP says his axle nuts are in serviceable condition. We should mind that the SA AW axle with it's anti rotation flats results in significantly less nut/axle thread surface in user. The axle is rather hard, the nuts are typically fairly soft as they should be. It's very easy to overtighten the axle nuts and start the thread damaging process. Also know that the AWs like some slight slop in the axle bearing adjustment. Allowing the axle to spin within the cones/locknuts means that the bearing adjustment is changing... Andy

I had tried replying before, without success. My anti-slip washers don't look like the link.

The cones issue had occurred to me, but I can only hope at this point it's not THAT far out of adjustment.

And there really is precious little thread room, especially on the n-drive side. In your experience, should there be washers between the nut and the drop out?

On all of my aw tree speeds it goes like this:

- axle nut
- washer
- drop out
- anti rotation washer

There should be no washer between the cone locknut and the dropout. The anti-rotation washers go between the axle nut and the dropout with the tab(s) in the slot. There will be a cone-fixing washer between the cone and locknut on the drive side and maybe a spacer washer between the non-drive side cone and lock nut.

A few more posts for you and you can upload some pictures, which will be very helpful.

SJS Cycles in UK is my main source of SA spares. They have a variety of anti-rotation washers. The key dimensions are the thickness and slot width (usually 9.5mm).

In the shops I've been in we placed the reaction (anti rotation) washers either inside of outside the drop outs to match the drop out spread. The vast majority of production bikers that used SA AWs have some variation, from "perfection" in rear width. Only when the amount of remaining axle outside of the drop out prevented the reaction and the standard axle washers would I use reaction washers as the common outside of drop out axle washer under the nut.

BTW there are at least two rather different reaction washers out there. One is a stamped item with a bent tab engaging the slot. The other is a cast looking item with two flats spanning the washer's drop out face and having a series of sharp topped ridges which are meant to further bite the drop out to prevent slippage. These second ones I usually use outside the drop out if possible. Andy

This is starting to make sense.

Thanks for everyone's input, I will try it again today...

Progress!

I found that the non-drive side had an anti-spin washer and that it was installed backwards. That's how it came to me, I don't know how the previous owner managed to get it put together.

In any event, everything fits together MUCH better. The axle nut on the non-drive side is suspect, I think that it has become too worn to hold under load. Even threaded all the way on, it actually popped off at one point as I worked on the other side. Hopefully a new nut with nice new threads is the end of this episode.

Thank you to everyone who posted in response, it was a huge help getting this done.