Your latest bike purchase?

[hozn]

@Sunyata 165807 wrote:

I 100% agree with this.

I have a Raleigh Misceo 4 with a belt drive and an Alfine 11 speed. The bike and belt are fantastic, routine maintenance on the bike solely requires putting air in the tires. The IGH is… less than fantastic. Granted, I am probably a more aggressive rider than what Shimano probably had in mind. I have had the bike for three and a half years and have just under 10,000 miles on it. The hub has needed servicing three times (it is currently at Bikenetic getting serviced as we speak, they are great at getting it to run smoothly again). I would love to replace it with something a bit more reliable and smooth. But… $$$

To be fair, though, even the pricey options like Rohloff are not maintenance free. I only have one data point from a bigger and harder rider than I am, but this hub had similar maintenance/rebuild schedule to what you are describing and this was really expensive maintenance (IIRC $300-500 to rebuild?). Ultimately the Rohloff broke his Titus Racer X frame so that was the end of that experiment. He has never considered an IGH again for the MTB. But I can see the appeal for commuting, esp with the belt drive. I’d consider Alfine 11 with Di2 if it was lighter and performed better.

Now that we’ve got brakes and hub spacing sorted for the drop-bar bikes, it does seem like a drivetrain evolution is overdue.

[dkel]

I’m told Rohloff shifting is indexed inside the hub rather than at the shifter, and supposedly that makes for a much better shifting experience than the Shimano options (I’ve also heard Di2 is helpful in the Shimano offerings). Those Rohloff hubs are prohibitively expensive, though—practically the cost of my entire build for that hub by itself. For commuting, I’d say Rohloff is overkill, based on price alone. Alfine is a good choice if you’re carrying a decent amount of stuff for work, but I would recommend the Sturmey 2-speed “kick shift” for traveling light: bike configuration is like SS, but you get a climbing gear in addition. (To be fair, it suffers from its own operation quirks, though, like seemingly every other IGH option!)

[LhasaCM]

@hozn 165812 wrote:

To be fair, though, even the pricey options like Rohloff are not maintenance free. I only have one data point from a bigger and harder rider than I am, but this hub had similar maintenance/rebuild schedule to what you are describing and this was really expensive maintenance (IIRC $300-500 to rebuild?). Ultimately the Rohloff broke his Titus Racer X frame so that was the end of that experiment. He has never considered an IGH again for the MTB. But I can see the appeal for commuting, esp with the belt drive. I’d consider Alfine 11 with Di2 if it was lighter and performed better.

Now that we’ve got brakes and hub spacing sorted for the drop-bar bikes, it does seem like a drivetrain evolution is overdue.

FWIW – when I was buying my Breezer Beltway (previous bike), I was torn between the Alfine 8 and 11. At the time, the Alfine 11 had some sealing issues (i.e., the hub wouldn’t necessarily stay sealed properly and you’d have minor oil leakage), which could be an issue or at least obnoxious to deal with, but I from what I’ve seen, that’s gotten better. On the flip side – the Alfine 8 is much more annoying/labor intensive to perform its regular service (since you have to take the hub out of the wheel to give it a bath as opposed to having a service port). Having serviced my Alfine 8, I can honestly say that I’m shocked those gears withstood what I asked it to do.

And I agree that the pricey options are not maintenance free, nor hassle free, but the hope is that they are more durable relative to the cheaper IGH options. But all have their own little quirks. For Rohloff, for example: Soma had to tweak the Wolverine design to be able to withstand the load the hub can place on the dropouts (so the v.1 frames may not be able to cope and are not officially approved). Besides, in general it’s safe to say that the more expensive the thing is that breaks, the more expensive it’ll be to fix. (Says the person who just bought a bike with a Pinion gearbox. Here’s hoping I don’t need to worry about making a claim against the 5 year warranty…)

[FFX_Hinterlands]

@LhasaCM 165744 wrote:

Yes – I’ve been riding belt drive bikes for a couple of years now. I had a Breezer Beltway 8+ that worked nicely (Alfine 8 IGH), but the external bearing eccentric bottom bracket eventually just drove me nuts (I think the combination of my weight and the trailercycle’s loaded weight were just too much for it under sustained load), so I upgraded earlier this month to a bike with a Pinion gearbox.

Pinion Gearbox! YES! I’ve been waiting for someone to mention here. Is it the magnesium model? I have a Shimano 8speed IGH with coaster brake on my dutch bike. I would welcome more pinion options here in the US, although they require a special frame and not suitable for upgrading an existing frame.

[LhasaCM]

@FFX_Hinterlands 165843 wrote:

Pinion Gearbox! YES! I’ve been waiting for someone to mention here. Is it the magnesium model? I have a Shimano 8speed IGH with coaster brake on my dutch bike. I would welcome more pinion options here in the US, although they require a special frame and not suitable for upgrading an existing frame.

Nope – I got the P.18 (I figured if I’m taking the plunge and ordering a bike online from overseas, I may as well really go for it), so it’s the original machined aluminum block rather than the cast magnesium in the newer C-line models. Since I’m not the lightest to begin with, and I’m often pulling a trailercycle with a 6 year old, I don’t really notice the extra weight

[FFX_Hinterlands]

@LhasaCM 165848 wrote:

Nope – I got the P.18 (I figured if I’m taking the plunge and ordering a bike online from overseas, I may as well really go for it), so it’s the original machined aluminum block rather than the cast magnesium in the newer C-line models. Since I’m not the lightest to begin with, and I’m often pulling a trailercycle with a 6 year old, I don’t really notice the extra weight

Ha Ha, you’re explaining you are not a weight weenie to a guy who rides a 50 lb Dutch Bike! Did you ask any bike shops if they’d touch it if you needed it to be serviced?

[LhasaCM]

@FFX_Hinterlands 165849 wrote:

Did you ask any bike shops if they’d touch it if you needed it to be serviced?

Not yet – I’ll cross that bridge if I get to it. However – there’s not a lot of servicing a bike shop can do with the gearbox. The box itself is meant to stay sealed and only opened for maintenance if necessary “at the factory” (Pinion has established a service center in Colorado, I believe, for US customers) – so that would mean taking it off of the bike and shipping it somewhere. The annual maintenance is a real simple oil change which I’ll do myself, and for everything else that may need to be done, it’s either something I’m very confident doing myself (changing tires, tensioning the belt, replacing the front thru-axle since the one that shipped with the bike can’t be removed when the front rack is installed, etc.) or something that isn’t too “special” about my bike that a good shop should be able to do if I don’t take it on myself (e.g., any headset maintenance that’s needed, if/when I need to replace the shift cables).

That being said – even with my previous bike (Breezer Beltway , I had to be mindful of who worked on it. For example, at the shop where I bought it, some of the mechanics were flummoxed (or just not familiar) with that particular setup, so when I was having bottom bracket issues, I had to schedule it for the owner to take a look at it. Partially based on that experience, and acknowledging that I was buying something online anyway, I went into this purchase knowing that I may have to be “on my own” as far as a lot of the maintenance goes.

[FFX_Hinterlands]

@LhasaCM 165859 wrote:

That being said – even with my previous bike (Breezer Beltway , I had to be mindful of who worked on it. For example, at the shop where I bought it, some of the mechanics were flummoxed (or just not familiar) with that particular setup, so when I was having bottom bracket issues, I had to schedule it for the owner to take a look at it. Partially based on that experience, and acknowledging that I was buying something online anyway, I went into this purchase knowing that I may have to be “on my own” as far as a lot of the maintenance goes.

I asked a bike shop to dip-lube by Shimano inter-3 hub (with coaster brake). They reassembled it wrong and ruined it, then blamed me for asking them to work on it. They ordered new internals and put it back together. So yeah, I don’t think I’ll have anyone here in Northern VA take apart my 8 speed hub.

It’s great to hear pinion has a US service center. That’s what I was wondering. Thanks for all of the info.

[LhasaCM]

@FFX_Hinterlands 165860 wrote:

I asked a bike shop to dip-lube by Shimano inter-3 hub (with coaster brake). They reassembled it wrong and ruined it, then blamed me for asking them to work on it. They ordered new internals and put it back together. So yeah, I don’t think I’ll have anyone here in Northern VA take apart my 8 speed hub.[/quote]

Seems like a lousy experience – and what I feared when it was time to service my 8 speed. When I thought about the cost (since it’s a lot of labor involved) and how long it might take or what could go wrong with someone who wasn’t familiar with it, I figured I may as well take my time and learn to do it myself. Did it once…then I went ahead and upgraded…

@FFX_Hinterlands 165860 wrote:

It’s great to hear pinion has a US service center. That’s what I was wondering. Thanks for all of the info.

The US service center is being run by/in concert with Gates (which makes sense). I think it just officially launched last week at Interbike, but they announced in a while back. A couple of months ago, Bicycle Touring Pro had a pretty comprehensive (if basic) interview with the Pinion NA program lead.

[dkel]

@FFX_Hinterlands 165860 wrote:

I asked a bike shop to dip-lube by Shimano inter-3 hub (with coaster brake). They reassembled it wrong and ruined it, then blamed me for asking them to work on it. They ordered new internals and put it back together. So yeah, I don’t think I’ll have anyone here in Northern VA take apart my 8 speed hub.

@LhasaCM 165891 wrote:

Seems like a lousy experience – and what I feared when it was time to service my 8 speed. When I thought about the cost (since it’s a lot of labor involved) and how long it might take or what could go wrong with someone who wasn’t familiar with it, I figured I may as well take my time and learn to do it myself. Did it once…then I went ahead and upgraded…

My 8-speed hub needed service early because the clutch was pissing me off—it almost pitched me right off the bike when it jammed the drivetrain in neutral unexpectedly after a shift. Rather than spend $40 on the service (and eventually $80 on two services), I spent $70 on the stinky Shimano transmission fluid, and did the job myself (I’ll come out ahead the next time I do the job!). It wasn’t that hard except that it takes quite a while to get the thing apart (especially the damn snap ring!). The hub works much better since I did the service. Is there some other aspect of this that I’m missing that makes the job difficult? I think it would be pretty hard to mess it up (there’s only one way that the parts go together, as far as I can tell), and I don’t consider myself to be much more than average at the mechanical stuff.

[Harry Meatmotor]

@dkel 165898 wrote:

My 8-speed hub needed service early because the clutch was pissing me off—it almost pitched me right off the bike when it jammed the drivetrain in neutral unexpectedly after a shift. Rather than spend $40 on the service (and eventually $80 on two services), I spent $70 on the stinky Shimano transmission fluid, and did the job myself (I’ll come out ahead the next time I do the job!). It wasn’t that hard except that it takes quite a while to get the thing apart (especially the damn snap ring!). The hub works much better since I did the service. Is there some other aspect of this that I’m missing that makes the job difficult? I think it would be pretty hard to mess it up (there’s only one way that the parts go together, as far as I can tell), and I don’t consider myself to be much more than average at the mechanical stuff.

The 8spd isn’t terribly complex, but from a mechanic’s perspective the difficulty lies in getting everyone to leave you alone for an hour in the shop to fix them. Having various small needle nose pliers and a couple different snap ring tools helps tremendously.

[LhasaCM]

@dkel 165898 wrote:

My 8-speed hub needed service early because the clutch was pissing me off—it almost pitched me right off the bike when it jammed the drivetrain in neutral unexpectedly after a shift. Rather than spend $40 on the service (and eventually $80 on two services), I spent $70 on the stinky Shimano transmission fluid, and did the job myself (I’ll come out ahead the next time I do the job!). It wasn’t that hard except that it takes quite a while to get the thing apart (especially the damn snap ring!). The hub works much better since I did the service. Is there some other aspect of this that I’m missing that makes the job difficult? I think it would be pretty hard to mess it up (there’s only one way that the parts go together, as far as I can tell), and I don’t consider myself to be much more than average at the mechanical stuff.

I wouldn’t describe the operation on the Alfine 8 necessarily as difficult. However, since there are a lot of parts to keep straight, plus the joys of the snap ring, I would say that it is tedious, but not mindlessly so if you haven’t done it a lot before. And while it doesn’t quite work in the end (so it’s obvious something isn’t right), you can get some of the parts put back on backwards/out of order, which would be problematic. Because of all of that, I think that operation is something that it is easy to screw up, especially if it’s a busy environment where there could be frequent interruptions.

[dkel]

@LhasaCM 165917 wrote:

I wouldn’t describe the operation on the Alfine 8 necessarily as difficult. However, since there are a lot of parts to keep straight, plus the joys of the snap ring, I would say that it is tedious, but not mindlessly so if you haven’t done it a lot before. And while it doesn’t quite work in the end (so it’s obvious something isn’t right), you can get some of the parts put back on backwards/out of order, which would be problematic. Because of all of that, I think that operation is something that it is easy to screw up, especially if it’s a busy environment where there could be frequent interruptions.

Yeah, that’s pretty much my experience. Plus the stink of that transmission fluid.

[honestmachinery]

@dkel 165926 wrote:

Yeah, that’s pretty much my experience. Plus the stink of that transmission fluid.

I unscrewed one side of a 3 speed hub in a moment of youthful indiscretion. The guts came out like a springy snake in a peanut can, and it took many allowances and extra chores and a grudgingly helpful shop to put it back in order. I remain committed to external gears.

Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

[dkel]

@honestmachinery 165940 wrote:

I unscrewed one side of a 3 speed hub in a moment of youthful indiscretion. The guts came out like a springy snake in a peanut can, and it took many allowances and extra chores and a grudgingly helpful shop to put it back in order. I remain committed to external gears.

I don’t do any service unless I have the service manual handy, or some detailed info in a book or online. Even then, I can very easily—and all too often do—get in over my head, turning a half-hour job into an hours-long chore. So far, I’ve gotten myself out of every situation I’ve gotten myself into…so far (knock on wood!).

To your point about external gearing: service and maintenance is pretty clear on a derailleur system, and it’s a very robust system to ride. IGH systems require almost no maintainance…until that maintenance interval is up! An IGH merely delays—and compounds—the inevitable. For my temperament, that works out pretty well, but it’s clearly not for everyone.

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