1908-1910 Sturmey Archer Model V 3-speed gear #V54838
(Now sold)
The company had various problems with this gear, and it was superseded soon after its introduction. As a result it is now one of the rarest models of Sturmey Archer 3 speed gear.
STURMEY ARCHER TYPE V 3-SPEED GEAR
This 3 speed gear is a Sturmey Archer Type V. The Type V Three-Speed was current between 1907 and 1910. The two pictures below illustrating it are from the Sturmey Archer Archive.
The Type V wide-ratio three-speed was essentially a Tricoaster without the back-pedal brake. This double epicyclic gear used ball bearing planet pinions, which were all the rage at the time, and was widely publicized by Sturmey Archer. BSA’s three-speed hub was very similar.
But subsequent opinion was divided over whether it was an improvement. In addition, as Tony Hadland reports in The Sturmey Archer Story: “Installing 18 or so tiny ball bearings in each planet pinion must have made a significant addition to production costs; and cycle repairers probably loathed the idea.”
Meanwhile, the relationship between the Bowdens, owners of Raleigh, and William Reilly, inventor of the Tricoaster, had deteriorated badly by 1909. Harry Reilly (William’s brother) had set up the rival ‘Armstrong-Triplex Three-Speed Gear Co’ in 1906, using one of William’s discarded hub designs. William Reilly resigned from Raleigh in 1910, and was made the scapegoat for problems with the Type V hub, which was replaced in 1910 by the Type X – which was simply the old 1907 hub.
The Type X continued until 1914, when it was replaced by the Type A – this was essentially the ill-fated Type V double epicyclic gear, but with plain pinion bearings and new fine axle thread.
STURMEY ARCHER ‘TYPE X’ and ‘TYPE V’
