tcs

Funny - I've read hundreds of posts about 29er bikes and nobody ever mentions the way the necessary smaller chainwheels look; they just use what works.

Dan Burkhart 

I'll admit to having been one of those suggesting the 8 speed was not suitable for full size wheel bikes, but my experience since building up a 700c bike with one has convinced me otherwise.
I even pull a cargo trailer with mine, and although I sometimes wish for lower gearing, it works flawlessly.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DfHo2UzV0w

photogravity

I concur with you when it comes to mountain bikes, but for a traditional road oriented bike, I think many find the aesthetic off putting. I am primarily about what works but if there is a means of accommodating common aesthetic sensibilities I will usually do so.

Heatherbikes

I've got both! I have a 5 speed sturmey archer hub and drum brake for my raleigh sports and the 8 speed freewheel hub for....?
Since I ride neither bmx or mountain bikes I don't really know where to look for such a small chainring crank

FunkyStickman

If you have a 110/74mm road triple crank, you can put a 24T ring on it. It would be furthest in, so you'd have to make sure the chainline isn't too far off, but it would work fine. What kind of road cranks can you get ahold of for cheap?

Patrick512

I just finished rebuilding a Schwinn Traveller with X-RD8(W) and X-FDD hubs and I love them both. Especially in the rain. I'm using the S-A crankset with a 30t chainring and the 25t cog that came with the hub and I'm pleased with the ratios it provides in a 700c wheel.

The only problem I have is the internal parts seem to break when I accidentally shift under load. It's happened to me twice now. I'm going to move the shifter away from where my hands naturally grip the handlebar to hopefully prevent that from happening again. I really hate that barrel shifter. It's manageable, though. When one planetary gear module fails, then you lose half the gear ratios. For example, my 3rd module is out right now so I can't use 4, 6, 7, or 8. That leaves 1 through 5 (minus 4) and it's just fine for getting around town until I make time to fix everything. It's still under warranty and my LBS says warranty issues are easy to take care of with S-A.

Not to derail this thread any further than it has already gone (but watch me do it anyway), does anyone else have this problem?

Pics:
https://picasaweb.google.com/1026816...eat=directlink

Heatherbikes

I have finally built up a bike with the 5 speed sturmey archer hub with drum brakes and love it! I can even climb hills. I've got the 22t cog and the front chainring is 46t. I assumed the bike would be a commuter to the nearest town where the grocery store is etc and a relatively flat ride. Well, i've been using it everywhere. The grade of some hills is just too difficult to bike up, but I have climbed over 1000 feet with relative ease. Okay, on some hills I am sweating and panting until I decide to walk, but impressed with how far I can go. I even took the bike, a raleigh sports on a mountain bike trail. I didn't know it was a mountain bike trail at the time, but it was fun. The hub functioned fine with all the wiggling. The drum brakes are amazing. You do have to remember not to shift while pedalling, but it's been great. I have kept the original cottered cranks etc until there is a problem and they are acting up, so will upgrade eventually.
I am so thrilled that I cannot wait to build up a bike with the 8 speed hub. I just regret not getting the drum brake version.
If you want a relatively problem free winter or commuting bike, I seriously recommend the sturmey archer hubs and drum brakes.

Scooby214

Glad to hear the good ride report. Does the shifting work well? Is it easy enough to adjust and keep adjusted? I have a Sturmey S-RF3 on my commuter bike. I sometimes wish I had gone with the 5 speed, but had heard that its shifting was finicky.

Heatherbikes

The shifting seems fine, I was told by a few bike mechanics that the SA 5 speed hub is a very good hub. I have not trouble adjusting it. I am having a bit of trouble that I think is from the old bottom bracket and crank, but not sure. Every once in awhile it gets clunky and have not been able to figure out if it is the hub or the crank/bottom bracket. I got the 5 speed bar end shifter and it is great. I was told that or the downtube shifter were superior to the other options.
It's a very smooth ride, reliable and so easy to use after much brain hurting over the instructions and installation.

Dan Burkhart 

I just realized this is a thread I posted to months ago. Since then, my SA 8 speed has experienced a failure. Sturmey Archer sent me a new internal assembly, but after disassembling, thoroughly cleaning, and oil lubing the old internal with one broken pawl and a broken ring gear tooth, I stuck it back in the shell and it's humming along nicely.
I still recommend the 5 speed over the 8 for any riding that includes hills, at least in a full size wheel.
Glad to read this worked out for you.

robin-d

I'm considering this the SA 8 spd in addition to a mid-drive electric hub motor (Bafang BBS02) to make an ebike from my 120mm OLD single speed bike.

I know that the 8 spd is direct drive on it's lowest gear. Does that mean that it would be the sturdiest gear to use for motor assisted hill climbs?

Moe Zhoost

Probably should have started a new thread.

fietsbob

Shimano Alfine 11 and their nexus are popular,


More?
R'off is a Full MTB gear range in 14 evenly spaced gears
probably a thousand on cycle tours at any one time..

Inside a Smaller Wheel, the gear range can really be lower..

16:38x26 is close to 16:53x20.. so a 38, 53 would widen the range even more.

PRH

Did a test last year with a 5 speed SA hub, didn't pass. 1st off, SA offer no support at all, they don't have a technical manual themselves, and are not able to provide them to customers, their customer service is downright rude. So such questions as how often to lubricate or with what, how to adjust the bearings, how to adjust the brake, tear it down, etc. there's nothing, only old internet info on years older models. You will need new expensive tools if you want to service yourself, circlip pliers, very large cone wrenches, an SA specific spanner, and these aren't cheap.

The main problem with the 5 speed though is imprecise shifting. The indexing is in the shifter, not in the hub where it should be. Older SA 5 speeds had a cable pulling from 1 side and a 2nd cable pulling from the other side. Now it's just 1 and a spring. The result is my hub never shifter into 1st gear. At times other gears would disappear. Of 5 speeds I had effectively 3, and there was often disconcerting rubbing and grinding going on from being "on the edge" of a gear. Below -5 C. it would stop shifting, some metal somewhere would contract and that's it.

Adjusting the bearings is a nightmare. They warn you "in the Internet" (not SA they give no instructions) never to touch the drive side come because it's supposedly factory set and its location affects shifting adjustment, but mine seemed to be loose, and just to tighten the locknut you have to partially disassemble the hub. And if you disassemble the hub entirely, how are you to know how to set its correct position when re-assembling...? SA won't or can't tell you. As I learned later "from the Internet" SA hubs are not like regular wheel hubs, you have 3 bearing surfaces not 2, there is the left and right cups and cones as usual, but also there is the large bearing circle between the right hand hub shell and the part of the hub where the cog drives, and these bearings are directly exposed to the outside, entirely visible without any kind of cover. Absurd. As I learned "from the Internet" a properly adjusted SA hub should have slop and play side to side at the rim, I.e it should move back and forth a few mm. Absurd. Adjustment of the 3 bearings is done only from the left hand no drive side. There is no way that such a bearing setup can ever be fine adjusted as one does with a regular bicycle hub. There will always be slop and play and so friction and it only gets worse with water invasion from which there is little protection. Lubrication from outside is impossible, the only way to lubricate isn't tear the entire thing down and clean and regrease everything, and for someone in home conditions this would be 1 long entire day in the best case. I never tried it, despite the fact that I have worked as a mechanic and have built and serviced wheels for decades.

The SA 5 speed hubs now are massive, very large and heavy, much bigger than a Shimano 8 speed hub, and heavy as H. They are supposed to be heavy duty, which looked like an attractive feature, but if they don't shift accurately then that possible advantage goes away. There's just too many minuses with these hubs for anyone who is even a half serious cyclist. Stick with the lighter and less expensive tried and true 3 speeds SA hubs. Or go to a single speed for your city bike, which is what I did. I use the SA drum brake hub in front, and the SA freewheel hub with drum brake in the back, with a single speed SA freewheel. These hubs use cartridge bearings, and are excellent, the brakes are not super strong, but are completely protected from water, mud, snow, ice and so are ideal for a city commuter, much better for hard conditions than discs and of course rim brakes. These hubs I highly reccomend.

Dan Burkhart 

Not quite sure where to start here.I will agree with you on some of your points which I will get to later.
First off though, if you had come here with your bearing adjustment issues, there are some here with the knowledge to guide you through. It's not really that complicated.
You do not indicate your location, but if you are in North America, SunRace Sturmey Archer NA is pretty much a one man operation. We are such a minuscule portion of their world market, we don't rate any more than that.
I've had some dealings with David, both resulting in free internal assemblies being sent out, so no complaints there.
Tech support is sadly lacking as you point out however. I think they could do much better in that department.
Aaron Goss of Aaron's bicycle Repair in Seattle recently spent time at the SunRace headquarters in Taiwan making repair tutorial videos for them. I have not seen the results yet, hopefully soon.
As to the 5 speed hub itself, I think the move from the ball lock type to the wide range was a missfire. The ball lock type was very reliable, functional and durable. I've been using one for over a decade with all kinds of heavy duty use including pulling a utility trailer around.
I also put one the electric assist bike I built for my wife. Again, zero issues. I sold and installed several more of these which served their owners well.
I have also sold several of the wide range models, and found them to be much more finicky to adjust to get the shifting to work properly, but I never had to deal wit a broken one.
Now to the new RX model which I think is what you are talking about with your comment on the massive heavy hub.
I have one here, and you're quite right, it's chunky. It's touted as being heavy duty, but we'll have to wait and see.
I plan to dissect the hub as part of my "How it works" video series some time over the winter, and then at some point, mount it in a bike and do a practical real world test on it.

PRH

Hello, yes it is an RC-RX5. These hubs are referred to sometimes even by SA themselves as "C50's" for some reason. They are the rotary shift hubs, which I assumed when buying is a more modern and therefore assumedly better hub, but it doesn't seem to be so. It could be a part in the rotary mechanism contracts in the cold under -5 c as I experienced when it stops shifting (I could stop and push it with my finger from gear to gear, but that's no way to live), but that's again only one of the issues.

Again the indexing is in the shifter, not in the hub like a Rohloff where it ought to be, had they designed it that way then the whole headache with adjusting the shifting and the extreme imprecision would go away. The bearings should be cartridges at all 3 points, and the internals should be externally lubricate-able with an oil port, which apparently much older SA hubs had in the last century. As it is none of these things are present, they only went halfway in their new design and the result is a failure. Evidently someone had something in mind when redesigning it, maybe cargo bikes, to explain the massiveness, maybe they were going for increased durability. They don't try to tell you on their site what it's for, they just throw it out there and hope someone buys it, and then they can get lost as SA won't take the time to tell them how to adjust it, lubricate it, etc.

SA (or whoever owns them now, Sunrace I guess they are called) seem to have moments of brilliance, and moments of absolute stupidity. One of their moments of stupidity is a complete lack of service technical documentation. They don't seem to able at all to market their products either, the only people buying them are those who remember them from their childhoods or live in a country where historically they were widely used like GB. You really have to try very very hard to find and use their stuff, and you have to be a very knowledgable cyclist to do so, or to even be aware that they exist, which is a pity because some of the stuff is uniquely brilliant, like the drum brakes, which are the absolute best for a commuter bike in city conditions. Just try to find a bike with them OEM installed though, don't believe there is even one in the world. They don't sell the advantages of these drum brake hubs though, and on their site they don't even mention they have cartridge bearings, they just put them out there and shrug their shoulders and maybe themselves don't know why people but their stuff. When you write to them they certainly don't seem to care. A pity, they won't survive much longer in business that way, I've had the thought to buy a bunch of drum brake hubs and stick them under the bed for the future when SA go under.