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A Bitter April Fool's for Sturmey-Archer

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A Bitter April Fool's for Sturmey-Archer

Old 04-01-23, 10:41 AM
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tcs
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A Bitter April Fool's for Sturmey-Archer

On April 1st, 1956, the S-A Board of Directors approved the discontinuation of AW production and manufacturing cutover to the new SW hub.

https://www.sheldonbrown.com/sw.html

At the request of dealers and OEMs, the AW would be returned to production in 1958.



Fun fact: Drum brake and Dynohub versions of the new SW were prototyped but never manufactured. The AW gear mechanism stayed in continuous production in the AB (drum brake) and the AG (Dynohub) versions.
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Old 04-01-23, 10:51 AM
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The unproduced SB:

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Old 04-02-23, 08:41 PM
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Thanks for posting this! It's ironic that SW production began on April Fools' Day; the hub fascinates me as a near miss. From reading the article on the Sheldon Brown site, it had some interesting engineering, but probably wasn't tested rigorously enough to reveal its weaknesses and went into production with all the flaws it's known for. That history seems to have repeated with the XRF5(W) decades later (another near miss).
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