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Is anyone using their 3 speed hubs at all?
Thinking about one on my commuter.
Or experiences of the 5/8 speed type either.
I maintain our fleet of 50 royal mail bikes all fitted with SA 3 speed. Easy to set up and pretty much maintenance free. No experience of 5/8 speed set ups though.
I bought the 8 speed one once. It's junk shaped to look like a hub - avoid.
So important, I had to say it twice.
What happened to your 8-speed? I've used over a hundred in Brompton conversions, with very few problems, but I've heard tales of woe from other bike shops about them.
One of the gears\clutches sheared in it with less than a thousand miles on it. Before that I thought it was reasonably value for money, but then after replacing it with the Alfine I realised how poor the shifting on the SA was compared to the alternatives. Looking at the manufacturing quality of some of the SA parts, I could imagine that there might be quite a bit of variability in the product which might explain the mixed response. I've had a bearing shatter in the Alfine after about 8000 miles (which still aint great), but I got a free replacement upgrade to the revised innards so I'm not complaining 🙂
The 8 speed and 3 speed are not remotely similar. 3 speed is pretty bomb proof.
I've run the latest model 3 speed as an on and off experiment when not running my 29er as singlespeed (6 bolt disc mount and takes cassette spline sprockets).
I actually really like it - feels much more efficient and direct / un-mushy than 8 speed Alfine or 7 speed Nexus. Gear 1 is silent and very smooth for climbing, gear 2 is direct drive so very efficient but you do get tick-tick-tick of pawls. Gear 3 feels OK and has a different tick tick of pawls. Thumb shifter is good. Think I got the complete unit with shifter, nuts, sprocket, anti-turn washers etc for about £90 from Ison / Billys.
Downsides:-
Could only find it in 36 hole.
Chainline is quite a way inboard compared to ss hub, so you might need to fiddle with bb / chainring position.
Not sealed (but has been fine for road and summer off road use).
The supplied axle end cable guide / cable stop is OK but very bulky and heavy. It also clipped my heels on a very short stay 29er. I ended up running an old style Sturmey hollow nut cable guide instead.
Setting indexing is a bit of a guess.
If running an old style axle nut, you might need a clamp on / brazed on cable guide and some ingenuity.
The long axle model for 130 / 135mm spaced dropouts is achieved by them using a heap of spacer nuts on each side. This means the bearings are a long way inboard so axle may bend in heavy use (the axle is already hollow with a weakening cutout in the very centre for the shifter gubbins).
For a pseudo-ss commuter with headwind / tailwind gear options it would be quite good (as long as you can handle the tick-tick-tick).
The 3 speed is a well proven product with over 100 years of evolution. The wrinkles were all ironed out over 70 years ago,
It's has the gears you need for a roadster, one for uphill, one for the flat, and one for downhill. 🙂
Perfect on a Pompino (or similar).
I love the tick of SA hubs, keep thinking I might go three speed for my town bike