I got the Park 15/16 and 17/18 before I read the replies here. So...for best effect, I'll need to use two 16mm wrenches at the same time?

You really need 3 wrenches:

13/15
13/14
15/16

17mm is rarer but it does show up every once in a while on the outside locknut and often you can get away with using a regular 17mm as long as you are not trying to adjust it in the frame.

Often you might need two 15mm wrenches at the same time, or a 14 & 15, or a 13 & 15. Having those three different wrenches I listed above will cover you for most situations. I don't think I've ever run into a 14/14 combo or 16/16.

If you only have the 13/14 and 15/16 and you run into a situation where you need both 15's or both 13's you can't use both at the same time without cutting the wrench in half. The 13/15 comes in handy.

If you buy them all on amazon at the same time you can combine shipping (which runs nearly as much as each wrench itself.)

You're trying to adjust an SA hub right? You can get by with one.
Set the right cone first, then the left: http://www.sheldonbrown.com/sturmey-...coneadjustment

Sheldon's page seems to have changed--I tighten the right cone down finger tight, then back off 1/4 to 1/2 turn so the lockwasher lines up with the flats. Lock it down, then do the left cone.

Yes, it's an SA hub. I only did the non-drive side, and was able to back off 1/2 turn on the cone/washers/nut arrangement as a whole. It really made a big difference. (PS: I think my LBS is to blame for the previous too-tight adjustment. I first noticed it after I had them put on new tires.)

I've never had luck with adjusting the tension off the bike with the SA hubs. Either it is unacceptably loose or tight enough to drag the pedals. THe quickest/easiest method is with the wheel in the bike and the axle nut tightened down on the drive side. Adjust by taking up all the slack like a normal wheel and then test for pedal drag. Incrementally loosen the non-drive cone and re-test until the pedals stop dragging -stop.

Maybe I just suck at it.

I do use your method with the drive side though as it shows in the videos. Back off the driver cone no less than 1/4-turn or more than 1/2-turn before putting the clip on and tightening down the locknut.

Today's smooth-as-silk ride included a stop outside the aformentioned "LBS"...

(Yes, that's a "Public" 3 speed next to the Raleigh)

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5188/...ca78cfe2da.jpg
April 2011 by w1gfh, on Flickr

Once the right side bearing adjustment is set properly there is no adjustment needed and all future adjustments need to be done from the non drive side.

If the pedals are walking it is either a case of the bearings having excessive pre-load or a chain that is too tight... have also noted that with my AG and generator there is a little more drag and a little occasional walking even when the bearings are set and the chain is properly tensioned.

Of course... this occasional walking happens at very cold temperatures and not on beautiful warm days like today when the butterflies are out and I am going out for a ride.

:)

It is a very international bike with a mix of Japanese, German, Czech, Taiwanese, and has the English parts where they are most important... in the drive end of things. The geometry is almost identical to a Sports and if anyone has wondered what a Sports would be like if it was built on better frame tubes (Ishiwata 022 butted) I can tell you that it is very nice indeed.

http://www.ravingbikefiend.com/bikepics/2011shasta2.JPG

A question about seat post clamp orientation. Is there a correct direction?

If the clamp is forward of the post, toward the front of the seat, there is more spring action which would be welcome on B72. It places the seat further back from the handlebars.

I would think that the having the clamp toward the rear of the seat is correct since the weight of the rider is more concentric with the post. But does it matter? Is it just preference? Should it be viewed as a seat adjusment. How did these come stock?

Isn't spanner merely the British word for wrench?

I had thought that that size of the SA cone wrench was incompatible with metric sizes. I guess not, and I guess my metric cone wrenches are merely too thick for the SA hub. Well, good thing I have an antique Sturmey Archer cone WRENCH.

Spanner.

Spanner.

Spanner.

:)

And just because I can never stop tinkering... my Shasta 3 speed is now a 6 speed.

:)

http://ravingbikefiend.com/bikepics/...dualdrive6.JPG

Sturmey Archer Dual Drive Conversion

P.S.

SPANNER.

P.S.S. The SA cone SPANNER is a speck smaller than 16mm but can't remember what the Imperial equivalent is... they are also very thin and a little fragile but are a great little SPANNER to have in your travelling kit.

I love spanners

I knew a wrench once, she had great cones, but she just couldn't tighten my nuts properly

The SA spanner is Whitworth, not metric. An inch equivalent is going to be either ?/32 or ?/64. I have a conversion table somewhere...

Aaron :)

It is close enough that a 16mm serves as a suitable replacement... the cones are hardened and the spanner will suffer before you damage the flats.

The small SA spanner is not very hard and we have gone through a few of them at the shop as they develop stress cracks.

Pedal drag / pedals walking ... mine do that. Mental note, I will need to look into that.

Cone wrenches are an expendable item. They will tend to wear out over time if you use them a lot. That's because they are THIN and sometimes cone locknuts are really overtightened by ham-handed mechanics and assembly-line workers at the factories. This nut does NOT need to be that tight! Sometimes getting these nuts off will really pain you as you watch your tool getting rounded off but you have no choice here. Often you can use a regular wrench or a good 6-point deepwell socket on the locknut if the wheel is not in the frame. The inner cone flats will be captive inside the locknut so the cone wrench will fit tighter and not want to twist like the locknut wrench might if you don't hold it perfectly straight on the locknut without anything keeping it straight.

Like Noglider said it is harder to damage the cone wrench flats but sometimes locknuts are softer. The cone is hardened to keep the bearings from eating it.

The Park DCW-series (DCW stands for "Double-Sided Cone Wrench -by the way!) are one of the best cone wrenches for the price/value I've ever owned. Stay away from the Avenir 4-sided wrenches as they are nearly single-use disposable. Park benchtop professional cone wrenches are really nice but you'll probably need to buy 2 of each one and they are much more expensive. Like I said above you can probably get away with just owning 3 of the 4-wrench DCW set but if you have all 4 you pretty much have all the possibilities covered.

I can't remember ever wrecking a cone wrench, and I've been working on bikes for 35 years now. I'm not saying I've never done it; I just don't remember doing it.

Sturmey Archer was smart. Their axle nuts are made of soft metal so that if you overtighten them, you'll wreck the nuts, not the axle. Perhaps the cone SPANNER (happy now?) doesn't destroy the cone. Are they still that smart now in Taiwan? It seems that they are at least as smart as the English company was and better, too.

Whitworth is a very different standard than Imperial, because the nominal size of a spanner is based on the outside diameter of the threaded portion of the bolt, not the head. So the sizes of the spanners are about half what you'd expect them to be.

The Asian heavy manufacturing tradition was quick to adopt the standard of sacrificial fasteners very early on. Japanese motorcycles way back in the 70's often used easy-to-strip fasteners that didn't destroy their components -especially on the engine cases.

Well-meaning home wrenches would complain about how easy the Phillips heads of fasteners on motorcycles easily stripped and would immediately go out and systematically replace most of the fasteners with hardened bolts from their local hardware store only to find out that they have a ruined engine case or lever perch down the road. This is still common today with pretty hardened anodized Allen-head kits to replace the OEM fasteners on most motorcycles and "performance" small Asian automobiles. You can find these just about everywhere online.

Most people have no clue how to properly torque fasteners and many people think that the tighter you make something the better it is. Softer fasteners are used for a reason...

Now that I have the cones straightened out, I need to do something about the rust spots on the Raleigh's steel rims. There is only one (attached pic) really bad one, and I'd like to prevent it from getting any worse. From reading the thousands of forum posts on this subject, the methods seem to be (a) WD-40 and steel wool, or (b) vinegar and aluminum foil. Thoughts?

http://bikeforums.net/attachment.php...hmentid=197422

I don't think WD-40 will help much. Acid is generally better. I like to use brass-bristle brushes. You can get them in the plumbing aisle at Home Despot. They're cheap. Get several, in various sizes. (Wait, is it brass or copper? I can't remember. In any case, they're softer than steel and don't scratch steel.)

Oxalic Acid. If you go to any Ace Hardware you can buy one can of it for under $10.

It is so simple and easy. To be 100% safe use a very dilute solution in a shallow pan like a plastic drywall mud pan -Ace has these too. Be careful with it on the spokes as it can sometimes make them crusty. If you use something like a wheel-truing stand you can often just put the drywall pan right under the wheel and slowly spin it every few hours (or more if you are impatient) to cover all the spots and without dunking the rim so far as to get on the spokes if you are careful. 12-24 hours of soaking will kill all but the most nasty of rust. Scrub with a toothbrush to speed things up a little bit.

Barkeeper's friend also has oxalic acid in it as well as a built-in scrubbing feature. Scrubbing with one of those plastic/nylon scrubbing pads with a bit of water gets the worst of rust off without damaging the chrome. I will often do this to the spots that the first soaking in the OA bath doesn't get and then do the OA bath again.

Or you can use a big rubbermaid tub for the OA bath but be careful and watch the spokes and do not submerge the hub. If you have too much OA it can really hit the spokes and sometimes if you have old OA solution that you have used on other things maybe it picks up junk in solution that will react with the zinc plating on the spokes. It's all chemistry and I'm no chemist. I do know that OA is magic stuff for rusty chrome but you have to be careful with other metals (especially alloy which is a no-no) and zinc-plated steels which can either turn black or white and crusty. Polishing with rubbing compound will bring that stuff right back most of the time but I fear the zinc coating is gone. One of these days I'm going to do some research on DIY electroplating to restore zinc plating to bike parts.

OA is magic but you have to play with it a little bit because sometimes it is black magic instead of white magic ;) -works great on chrome though! You are pretty safe with just the Barkeeper's Friend though. I use a lot of that in my home bike-restore shop.

And by dilute solution I'm talking like 1/4-1/2 teaspoon of the Savogran stuff in that drywall mud bin filled with water. It doesn't take much at all.

On fasteners... when I am teaching workshops I always stress that SA wheel nuts are soft and cannot be over torqued as they will strip and much of the holding power comes from those very toothy SA lock washers.

A nut is easy to replace while changing out an axle in an IGH because you stripped the threads is a little more work... the proprietary nature of the SA nuts means folks cannot swap them for harder ones.

They should also be oiled prior to removal as if they are seized they can also be stripped quire easily... the new SA hubs also have the same hardened axle and softer nuts.

And the locknuts on the cones are supported by the cone lockwasher clip on the drive side and the force of the axle nuts holding everything together from both ends. They only need to be tight enough not to spin/move while the wheel is being installed. This doesn't take much. Some of the cone locknuts I've removed have had in excess of 65-70ft-lbs of torque on them. The Shimano Hub I was working on the other day had over 100 at least. I couldn't believe it.

The locknuts only have a few threads, they really can't support that much torque! 5-10ft-lbs is totally sufficient to keep them from moving during the assembly/disassembly process.