jackbombay

Hello!

I've long been a fan of Sturmey Archers, and have several, my favorite is a "resto-mod" Hercules I built up about 15 years ago, its a superb townie, but I do now and again take it on longer rides.

Some details on the bike, I think its a 63', I had some cable stops brazed onto to the frame to lose the clamp on ones, got it powder coated semi gloss black, retapped the BB to accept "modern" square taper BBs, dug up a Ti BB out of my parts box, aluminum stem and bars, Mafac center pull brakes, and built a 700c wheelset for it built around a NOS 28 hole AW I got off ebay. I did open up the hub and clean it throughly and re-oil. The chrome fenders are in pretty good shape too.

Last weekend I actually rode a century on it, I've been biking a lot this spring and summer so I hit the century pretty hard and managed an average speed of 16 MPH, a little over 6 hours of pedaling. The ride was around lake tahoe with an out and back leg to Truckee. Was a great day weather wise too!

Last november I rode a century on my road bike with 11,000' of climbing, and I'm more fit now than I was then... There is a bruiser of a ride in early July that I may want to ride on my 3 speed, the stats are 129 miles and 15,000+' of climbing... The tahoe century was sort of flat, 5,000' of climbing, I ran 52/24 gearing and it was perfect really, I could sit and pedal the climbs comfortably in 1st gear, or click it to second and stand up and smash pretty comfortably, but there is a lot more climbing on the perspective upcoming ride, and I'll have to pedal easier than I did on the tahoe century to ride for an additional 5 hours or so, so I'll need lower gears, much lower gears I think...

SA says you shouldn't go below a 2:1 ratio, meaning I should only drop to a 48 up front, but I read of one guy that ran 40/21 which is a bit lower than SA recommends, but I have no idea how hard he rode it...

I'd love to go 42/24, but I'd hate to blow up this hub, not finishing the ride due to a mechanical would be a bummer, but to break my baby would really suck. The lower top speed of 42/24 would be about 18 MPH, where the 52/24 is about 22 MPH, I'm fine with being spun out at 18 MPH.

So, anyone have experience with gearing SA's way down and how they fare under such circumstances? As the load on the hub gears is largely relative to my weight, I weigh 158 pounds...


Couple pics for you guys, EDIT/// I can't post pics yet.