I originally built my commuter up with a Shimano Alfine 11 speed hub, then it pissed all its oil out on the garage floor and that, in combination with it being inefficient and "squishy" feeling made me go single speed.
One half of a windy winter later and single speed was getting a bit much for 21km daily commuting so I built a wheel with this Sturmey CS-RK3 cassette disc brake hub that shifts with a 3-speed left Shimano shifter and wowly what this is the fastest shifting I've ever experienced!
It feels (and should be) super efficient and you can upshift under full power in a sprint without any complaint and it shifts INSTANTLY! If you've clicked the lever it's already there!
by rcyclingisdawae
7 Comments
Wow! Great to hear about the left-hand Shimano shifter working for this. I have wondered if that could work on a Nexus 3-speed (you would know) but have doubted it or I would have heard about it — I don’t think this cropped up via Sheldon Brown.
What about that chain-cog in your setup, I guess it’s being used as a spacer?
Who makes bikes with Sturmey Archer?
They are nice, but I think they’ve been this nice since the ’90s (or was it 80s?) when they tweaked the internals to remove the possibility of a “false neutral”, and the theoretical possibility of it jumping out of 3rd, that the old-school ones had.
I’m a big fan. I have two almost identical transportation bikes, one 3×9, one with a 3-speed, and I almost always reach for the 3-speed because it’s just pleasant. They are very efficient too, especially compared to multi-ratio IGHs.
Yes the ratio jumps are big (33%) but that means if you are spinning out but can’t hold the next gear, you just have to relax a bit and accept you’re only riding 80-90% of the speed you *could* ride right now. BFD. And they should be geared to sacrifice top end, as you can just freewheel the downslopes.
I really like having their thumb shifters on them, though I have one of their “rotary” hubs, and annoyingly the thumb shifter for them is close to the price of the hub. I’d still buy one if I needed it though. And I think it’ll work well enough with something close to right, as the important adjustment is 2nd gear, and 1st and 3rd can be just “go as far as you can in that direction”.
Huh. I’ve wanted an igh for my commuter for a while but only looked at alfine and rohloff and decided I don’t want to spend that much money. Maybe I’ll go Archer.
Always wanted to do a build like this, but split frames are tough to find. Very nice.
Very interesting. I have a Priority Apollo and I like the drop bar IGH, but I HATE the Microshift brifters, which are the only option out there as far as I know. Microshift going back to a clunky Shimano style from the early ’00s for the shifting solution seems so dumb. They have Sword, so they can make shifters with under the tape shifter cable routing, so why can’t they do that with the IGH shifters? Ugh..
Anyway, what I wonder is if you could do this same setup with a triple/left hand road brifter? I’ve never known if triple shifting is the same between flat bar and drop bar shifting, so maybe it’s not really feasible.
On your setup, what gearing did you run for SS and then what gearing did you use for this setup?
Rotary shifting version eliminates the fragile Indicator Chain