The Raleigh
I didn't really have a specific notion of what I was looking to build, when I started on a project of building a new fixed gear bicycle. At the time, I knew that I wanted a bike that could have fenders and racks, that could be used for riding around the city, and to be my primary bicycle when winter set in and the snow and salt would normally play havoc with the ANT's drivetrain1. But the actual parts and design were all up for debate. Recently used modern bike or vintage? Get a complete bike or build it all up from scratch? Then I saw a Craigslist posting for an interesting new-ish product, a 3-speed fixed gear hub, and every design idea that I was grappling with coalesced around that discovery.
not in this picture: newer aluminum toe clips, fenders and a proper cable stop
The conventional appeal for most fixed gear bicycles is their simplicity. Aficionados can wax lyrical about the purity of a single pair of gears and of a bike that doesn't need shifter cables or derailleurs or any of those silly mechanical accessories that just get in the way of the 'essence' of the bicycle. I am not in that choir, but I'll read their verses from time to time. I tend to prefer to have a selection, so as to use different gears for climbing hills or for descending, for cruising on flats with a tailwind or for hauling groceries in a headwind. Yet, I do like the direct connection between my pedals and the wheels that comes from riding fixed. For the longest time, folks like myself who wanted it both ways would have to make do with hunting down venerable remnants of the Sturmey Archer ASC, a British three speed fixed gear hub which gave you the efficiency of a fixed gear and the convenience of variable ratios. Sturmey-Archer stopped producing the ASC in 1958, but with new ownership and a fixed gear revival underway, management recently sought to reintroduce the concept with their new S3X
The decision to go with the S3X drove a lot of other design choices that I had to make around the bike. The fact that I was going to use a multi-speed hub meant that I had to use a shifter. The fact that the S3X needed a bar-end lever shifter more or less ruled out a conventional curved road bar, because it was impossible to set up the shifter and brake lever without having it look utterly lopsided and, frankly, retarded. As I started surfing around the web for ideas, I kept on coming back to classic North Road style bikes, like ANT's Scorchers and the Pashley Guvnor.. The sweeping curve of a North Road bar provided some of the ergonomic benefits of a standard road bar, but also allowed me to mount a shifter and a brake lever on opposite ends of the bar. The results are, I think, charming in their intentional asymmetry.
Once I had gone down the road of a North Road bar and a Sturmey Archer hub, it seemed a shame not to use a British frame as the core of the bicycle. So, I started trawling for Raleighs and Mercians, and eventually found TheRetriever, who sold me a Raleigh Supercourse that was older than I was but still possessed of good paint2 and most of the original braze-ons. He had originally built it up as a singlespeed but fortunately had not yet shaved off all of the cable guides in an overzealous search of minimalism, so I could reuse those for the Sturmey's cables. The rest was getting a new rack, transferring the fenders from the Centurion and building a new wheel around the S3X.
I've had the bike through an autumn and a winter, and it's made me happy. It is, spiritually, a descendant of the Raleigh 3-speed utility bicycle with its swept-back handlebars and rack and fenders; but with a little more speed and agility. It handled six snowstorms fairly well and has also been useful to ride in the rain. The frame is a little small to be fully comfortable, though, and while I've taken this bike on some 30+ mile rides, it compares poorly to the ANT for long distance, which is fine since my main intent was for something easy and dependable for city riding.
When people ask me my opinion on the S3X, I usually start by telling them that it's less like a fixed gear with three speeds and more like a multi-geared hub that doesn't let you coast. The distinction is important if you value fixed gears for their simplicity and ease of maintenance, since the S3X doesn't necessarily give you either. The shifter cable needs a proper amount of tension or it could randomly disengage, which can be dangerous in unfortunate circumstances. You also need to disconnect then readjust the shifter when replacing a tire or working on the rear wheel, which again takes a bit away from the 'set-it-and-forget-it' appeal of a single fixed gear. But, with that said, it is nice to have a bike that has what I refer to as "grocery", "sprint" and "cruising" speeds, where depending on whether or not I'm loading it down with bags of potatoes or getting into midnight red-light races with friends or just cruising across town between commutes, I can always find a gear that works for those moments.
1A fixed gear isn't particularly immune to salt and corrosion, but because it's a simpler mechanism, it's easier to replace and the failure mode is more graceful. Instead of having different gears wearing away at different rates based on their usage, eventually resulting in a series of drivetrain parts that violently disagree with each other, a fixed gear's transmission still ultimately succumbs to its own age-related dementia, but at least everyone involved is equally demented.
2A few months after posting this, I was spending an afternoon out with Peter White and was saying, "so last year, I took on a project bike of rebuilding a Raleigh around the new S3X hub."
"what kind of Raleigh?"
"'73 Supercourse."
"Ah ... Nervex lugs ..."
"Oh yeah, you know it."
not in this picture: newer aluminum toe clips, fenders and a proper cable stop
The conventional appeal for most fixed gear bicycles is their simplicity. Aficionados can wax lyrical about the purity of a single pair of gears and of a bike that doesn't need shifter cables or derailleurs or any of those silly mechanical accessories that just get in the way of the 'essence' of the bicycle. I am not in that choir, but I'll read their verses from time to time. I tend to prefer to have a selection, so as to use different gears for climbing hills or for descending, for cruising on flats with a tailwind or for hauling groceries in a headwind. Yet, I do like the direct connection between my pedals and the wheels that comes from riding fixed. For the longest time, folks like myself who wanted it both ways would have to make do with hunting down venerable remnants of the Sturmey Archer ASC, a British three speed fixed gear hub which gave you the efficiency of a fixed gear and the convenience of variable ratios. Sturmey-Archer stopped producing the ASC in 1958, but with new ownership and a fixed gear revival underway, management recently sought to reintroduce the concept with their new S3X
The decision to go with the S3X drove a lot of other design choices that I had to make around the bike. The fact that I was going to use a multi-speed hub meant that I had to use a shifter. The fact that the S3X needed a bar-end lever shifter more or less ruled out a conventional curved road bar, because it was impossible to set up the shifter and brake lever without having it look utterly lopsided and, frankly, retarded. As I started surfing around the web for ideas, I kept on coming back to classic North Road style bikes, like ANT's Scorchers and the Pashley Guvnor.. The sweeping curve of a North Road bar provided some of the ergonomic benefits of a standard road bar, but also allowed me to mount a shifter and a brake lever on opposite ends of the bar. The results are, I think, charming in their intentional asymmetry.
Once I had gone down the road of a North Road bar and a Sturmey Archer hub, it seemed a shame not to use a British frame as the core of the bicycle. So, I started trawling for Raleighs and Mercians, and eventually found TheRetriever, who sold me a Raleigh Supercourse that was older than I was but still possessed of good paint2 and most of the original braze-ons. He had originally built it up as a singlespeed but fortunately had not yet shaved off all of the cable guides in an overzealous search of minimalism, so I could reuse those for the Sturmey's cables. The rest was getting a new rack, transferring the fenders from the Centurion and building a new wheel around the S3X.
I've had the bike through an autumn and a winter, and it's made me happy. It is, spiritually, a descendant of the Raleigh 3-speed utility bicycle with its swept-back handlebars and rack and fenders; but with a little more speed and agility. It handled six snowstorms fairly well and has also been useful to ride in the rain. The frame is a little small to be fully comfortable, though, and while I've taken this bike on some 30+ mile rides, it compares poorly to the ANT for long distance, which is fine since my main intent was for something easy and dependable for city riding.
When people ask me my opinion on the S3X, I usually start by telling them that it's less like a fixed gear with three speeds and more like a multi-geared hub that doesn't let you coast. The distinction is important if you value fixed gears for their simplicity and ease of maintenance, since the S3X doesn't necessarily give you either. The shifter cable needs a proper amount of tension or it could randomly disengage, which can be dangerous in unfortunate circumstances. You also need to disconnect then readjust the shifter when replacing a tire or working on the rear wheel, which again takes a bit away from the 'set-it-and-forget-it' appeal of a single fixed gear. But, with that said, it is nice to have a bike that has what I refer to as "grocery", "sprint" and "cruising" speeds, where depending on whether or not I'm loading it down with bags of potatoes or getting into midnight red-light races with friends or just cruising across town between commutes, I can always find a gear that works for those moments.
1A fixed gear isn't particularly immune to salt and corrosion, but because it's a simpler mechanism, it's easier to replace and the failure mode is more graceful. Instead of having different gears wearing away at different rates based on their usage, eventually resulting in a series of drivetrain parts that violently disagree with each other, a fixed gear's transmission still ultimately succumbs to its own age-related dementia, but at least everyone involved is equally demented.
2A few months after posting this, I was spending an afternoon out with Peter White and was saying, "so last year, I took on a project bike of rebuilding a Raleigh around the new S3X hub."
"what kind of Raleigh?"
"'73 Supercourse."
"Ah ... Nervex lugs ..."
"Oh yeah, you know it."