 A couple of months ago I was having a bit of a sort-out in my shed and came across my first Sturmey-Archer hub that I used to help understand how these little cylinders of elegant, engineering magic actually work. When I first acquired the hub it was still part of a rear wheel that I got from a bicycle recycling place where its steel spokes were slowly rusting, languishing on a shelf under a pile of other rear wheels. It was looking particularly sorry for itself, wearing a layer of grime that I suspect had been building up ever since the hub was made in 1982. However, to my surprise after a bit of elbow grease and a large helping of engine degreaser, the hub was looking like new. They really are lovely things, but it had served its purpose of revealing its secret workings and had been sat untouched at the back my shed until my aforementioned sort-out.
Seeing the hub again got me thinking – wouldn’t it be great to build a bike around it? It’s the sort of informal thought-experiment that I can merrily entertain myself with for a few weeks, turning it over in my head whenever I get 15 minutes to myself. Perhaps while staring out of a train window or during my commute. A couple of things then happened. First, I remembered that I still had a whole bunch of components in a box that had once been the culmination of a similar thought-experiment. This one happened to be a rather disappointing attempt to build a road bike around a Shimano Alfine hub that I tried about eight years ago (that’s a whole other story). This meant that a decent amount of everything that I would need was already close at hand. Second, during my musings I stumbled across the perfect frameset – a cadet blue Viper from Brick Lane Bikes. Smooth welds, integrated seat mast and that colour! I know that there can be issues with sanding down aluminium welds, it’ll probably be as stiff as an unopened book, and even that colour still won’t make it quite like an original Cinelli Laser, but who cares. I think it looks great. I then recalled a sportive I did a while back that my mates Dad had helped to organise. We’d got chatting before we set off and he was reminiscing about the old three speed racers that used to be cutting edge back in the day. It got me thinking, what would a modern interpretation of a three speed racer look like? A resto-mod, if you like. Mixing old and new. So that's the plan - a modern interpretation of a three speed racer. Ideally, it would have been great to go the whole-hog and throw some deep-section carbon rims at the idea, but my financial realities mean that things will need to be a little more modest. Even so, I think it could be a lot of fun and pretty stylish to boot. So, hopefully I’ll be back in a month or so with the results of my endeavours, and I’ll soon find out whether my hunch was inspired or a festive folly.
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