Rebuild of a Bendix Two Speed Automatic Hub on an early 60's Schwinn Bicycle

I've sort of inherited a couple of Schwinn bicycles. They were my parents' bikes when I was a kid. Somehow the bikes just kept following either my parents or me around during moves and whatnot. Both bikes have a two speed "automatic" Bendix hub. They've sat in one garage or another taking up space, but never got used in the last 30 or so years. Below is a photo of Dad's bike. I'm not sure if Dad had planned on painting the entire bike blue or if he was satisfied with the color scheme once he'd finished painting the fenders. The red paint is original.

In fact, my first real bike was just like Dad's bike, a red Schwinn two speed. I got my Schwinn when I was about 10 and I proceeded to abuse it terribly, doing wheelies and taking it over jumps at the empty lot across the street. Over time the front forks got bent further and further out - I can't imagine how. When I got my first 10-speed bike in the mid to late 70's my well-worn 10-year-old Schwinn went bye-bye.

This next photo is of the family at Ft Flagler on Marrowstone Island. As the date on the side of the photo indicates, it was taken in 1969. We had a cabin on that island and had four "extra" bikes always stationed at the cabin for our riding pleasure so we didn't have to haul our bikes from home. You can see Dad's red bike in the photo (prior to the blue fender years...), but you can't see Mom's very well. I rode the green one. Only Mom and Dad's bikes survived over the years.

This next photo is showing Mom and Dad's bikes (and my brother's 10-speed) hanging in the garage at Poulsbo. This was about 1984. Notice Dad's fenders weren't blue yet. The fenders look pretty good in the photo so I really wonder why he painted them.

Well, time did no favors to their bikes. The brakes on Mom's bike don't work and Dad's bike barely rolled, so I decided to take the two speed hub apart on Dad's bike yesterday and see what was wrong. One thing I found out on the vast internet is that automatic two speed Bendix hubs came in three versions, and the way to tell the difference is to look at the three painted bands on the hub. Mine are red, so they were the first iteration from 1960 to 1964, and the hub utilizes brake discs. Yellow and blue bands were from 1965 to 1969 or so, and have a different braking and gearing systems, so parts aren't generally interchangeable between the variants.

Wow, there are a lot of pieces to this seemly simple device. I remember Dad taking apart and greasing up this hub back in the late 60s. I don't know what grease he used but it was almost petrified and all the parts were glued together, which explains the high rolling effort. Here are the parts semi-cleaned up.

There are three ball bearing races, two larger ones and one smaller. The photo below shows where the bearing races reside, the large ones are in the foreground and the smaller one is behind. (There is also a loose set of ball bearings not shown here that go into the sprocket hub.)

Shown below is a spring clip thingamabob (indexing spring) that has spring fingers poking in and out. There are also three stubby tabs poking outward on the spring that need to be against the sprocket hub shoulder as shown in the red circle.

Below, the outer bearing race is in place and the brake arm is tightened in place onto the axle shaft, and preparation is made for installing brake discs. The instructions mention that all internal parts are to be greased, including the brake discs. I used Valvoline all-purpose grease with molybdenum.

Brake discs are installed, then the pressure plate is installed. A spring clip holds things together.

Here the spring clip is fully seated.

Line up all the tabs on the gold colored brake discs and center them on the steel discs. The tabs align to slots in the wheel hub.

Install low and high speed clutches.

Now the above parts are slid into the wheel hub, then the sprocket gets installed. Turn the sprocket clockwise while installing, to allow the indexing spring fingers to seat properly.

Next the loose ball bearings are installed into the sprocket hub.

Lastly, the sun gear is threaded onto the axle shaft. The instruction say to screw down tightly, back off 1/4 turn, then install and tighten the slotted locknut. Voila, fini!

These next two scans are of an instruction sheet Dad picked up way back when he took the hub apart the first time. Miraculously this piece of paper didn't get thrown away.

Someday I'll tackle Mom's old bike and get it working properly. Someday......