A blog about skating and cycling, or vice versa

Sturmeyed#

Wed, 07 Jul 2010 10:26:19 +0000

Another in the occasional series of bike frobbing: this time it's not my bike it's my wife's. Lessons learnt stripping down a Sturmey Archer AW hub

What I wish I'd known prior to starting

1) sweep the floor before starting, because at least one bearing and one pawl spring will end up there at some point and the latter are a real bitch to find

2) the instruction to "hammer and punch to unscrew the right-hand ball ring" really is a good one - straight up, this is the only way to get it off. They don't mention giving it half a can of wd40 and an hour to soak in, through, which was also necessary on my specimen

What I wish I'd paid more attention to in Sheldon's instructions

3) don't hold it vertically, something will fall out (see (1))

4) when the ball ring eventually starts moving, control your feelings of success and elation for at least long enough to mark the relative positions of hub and shell. The shell has a dual-start thread and it's apparently important to put it back on the same track it came off (no, I don't know why). I forgot to do this, so tried it both ways when reassembling and went for the thread with less wobble - hope that was the right decision

Other than that, I got it apart successfully, found nothing obviously wrong but plenty of grunge, so degrunged, regreased bearing races, reassembled, refilled with oil and put it back on the bike. Seems to run a lot smoother, but still doesn't much like shifting down while the bike is stopped (ok if you backpedal a bit first, but that's not an easy task when you're stopped at a light with one foot on the ground). Which is a shame because if you don't have shifting while stopped you might as well have got a derailleur in the first place.

From http://www.cyclechat.net/forums/showthread.php?p=1330961#post1330961

See also http://www.sheldonbrown.com/sturmey-archer/aw.html