Rohloff hubs

Pat said:

I have been looking into Rohloff hubs lately, and nearly all of the comments
I find on the Internet have been by people using the hubs in their
recumbents or trikes. I was thinking of using one on a diamond frame road
bike, but my LBS was shocked by my suggestion. At this point, it is mostly
an academic debate on my side as I recuperate from shoulder surgery, but I
am interested to hear of other riders' experiences with the Rohloff hubs.

Aside from using a couple on demonstrators (both uprights, as it
happens, a Birdy Grey and a custom build diamond frame) I've no direct
experience, but note that Thorn, one of Britain's more respected
manufacturers that concentrate on touring bikes, have recently launched
a range designed specifically around the Rohloff and they are,
apparently, doing very well.

http://www.sjscycles.com/thornbrochure.asp

Haven't got one, not related, etc. etc. disclaimer.

Pete.
--
Peter Clinch Medical Physics IT Officer
Tel 44 1382 660111 ext. 33637 Univ. of Dundee, Ninewells Hospital
Fax 44 1382 640177 Dundee DD1 9SY Scotland UK
net [email hidden] http://www.dundee.ac.uk/~pjclinch/

On Wed, 1 Dec 2004 08:47:16 -0600

Pat said:

I have been looking into Rohloff hubs lately, and nearly all of the
comments I find on the Internet have been by people using the hubs in
their recumbents or trikes. I was thinking of using one on a diamond
frame road bike, but my LBS was shocked by my suggestion. At this point,
it is mostly an academic debate on my side as I recuperate from shoulder
surgery, but I am interested to hear of other riders' experiences with
the Rohloff hubs.

I'm shocked that people will pay $1000usd for an internally geared hub.
People do, tho.

"Pat" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

I have been looking into Rohloff hubs lately, and nearly all of the
comments
I find on the Internet have been by people using the hubs in their
recumbents or trikes. I was thinking of using one on a diamond frame road
bike, but my LBS was shocked by my suggestion. At this point, it is mostly
an academic debate on my side as I recuperate from shoulder surgery, but I
am interested to hear of other riders' experiences with the Rohloff hubs.

Pat in TX

Google Rohloff hub. Early examples were troublesome - mostly oil leaks as I
recall. These hubs are expensive. If you were thinking of putting a
Rohloff on something like a $300 upright I'm sure your LBS would be a bit
shocked.

A Rohloff would represent a major bike upgrade investment. Do your
research.

skip

: >
:
: Google Rohloff hub. Early examples were troublesome - mostly oil leaks as
I
: recall. These hubs are expensive. If you were thinking of putting a
: Rohloff on something like a $300 upright I'm sure your LBS would be a bit
: shocked.
:
: A Rohloff would represent a major bike upgrade investment. Do your
: research.
:
: skip

Nnah, what got me thinking about Rohloff was getting my new Moots catalog
and seeing that they are offering the hub on their titanium bikes....

Pat in TX
:
:

Pat said:

: >
:
: Google Rohloff hub. Early examples were troublesome - mostly oil leaks as
I
: recall. These hubs are expensive. If you were thinking of putting a
: Rohloff on something like a $300 upright I'm sure your LBS would be a bit
: shocked.
:
: A Rohloff would represent a major bike upgrade investment. Do your
: research.
:
: skip

Nnah, what got me thinking about Rohloff was getting my new Moots catalog
and seeing that they are offering the hub on their titanium bikes....

Pat in TX
:
:

The hubs were developed for mountain biking.
There are race teams using Rohloff hubs in the mountain bike world.

The internal ratios are set up for mountain biking, not recumbent use.

There are some upright touring frames explicitly designed for the Rohloff.
There are upright folders using Rohloffs.
Here's Sheldon Brown's upright with Rholoff:
sheldonbrown.comrohloff.htmlOpen ↗

Here's a manufacturer of mountain bikes designed for the Rohloff.
vandesselsports.comb buzzBomb.shtmlOpen ↗

The hub is such a fine piece of engineering it has adapted well to recumbent touring and commuting use even though it was designed for a completely different bike.

There is a local rider leader when I last talked to him about a year ago his Rohloff spoiled him with its 25k troublefree miles on his upright (and he was wearing out dual drives every 4k miles).

I have had one for about four years. Although I had problems with the first
one I had, those bugs have mostly been worked out. Some lowlife stole my
XT-cassette wheel out of my storage are, so I couldn't go back to a
derailleur setup even if I wanted to, without buying a new rear wheel. I
have mine set up without any derealleurs or even the singlulator, since the
distance works out to be just about right on the V-Rex (no chainguides
either). There's some small interference with the front fork where the
chain tends to rub it a bit, but it's not a big problem. Just rubs off the
paint.

I have to actually swap out chain links to change chainrings, but one of the
simplest setups for a full road range of gears would be to have two rings up
front, the singulator at the back, and just change gears with your finger on
the chain. I'll need disks or guides on the inside of the inner ring, and
the outside of the outer ring, to keep from dropping the chain when you
"shift" though. Or you could get one of those internally geared cranksets.
I think they're called "mountain drives" but can't recall for sure. That'd
really be sweet. And expensive.

--
--Scott
"meb" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Pat said:

: >
:
: Google Rohloff hub. Early examples were troublesome - mostly oil
leaks as
I
: recall. These hubs are expensive. If you were thinking of putting
a
: Rohloff on something like a $300 upright I'm sure your LBS would be a
bit
: shocked.
:
: A Rohloff would represent a major bike upgrade investment. Do your
: research.
:
: skip

Nnah, what got me thinking about Rohloff was getting my new Moots
catalog
and seeing that they are offering the hub on their titanium bikes....

Pat in TX
:
:

The hubs were developed for mountain biking.
There are race teams using Rohloff hubs in the mountain bike world.

The internal ratios are set up for mountain biking, not recumbent use.

There are some upright touring frames explicitly designed for the
Rohloff.
There are upright folders using Rohloffs.
Here's Sheldon Brown's upright with Rholoff:
http://www.sheldonbrown.com/harris/rohloff.html

Here's a manufacturer of mountain bikes designed for the Rohloff.
http://www.vandesselsports.com/b_buzzBomb.shtml

The hub is such a fine piece of engineering it has adapted well to
recumbent touring and commuting use even though it was designed for a
completely different bike.

There is a local rider leader when I last talked to him about a year
ago his Rohloff spoiled him with its 25k troublefree miles on his
upright (and he was wearing out dual drives every 4k miles).

--
meb

meb said:

The hubs were developed for mountain biking.
There are race teams using Rohloff hubs in the mountain bike world.

The internal ratios are set up for mountain biking, not recumbent

use.

Quoted message said:

meb

MEB- perhaps you could explain this. As I understand it, the Rohloff
hub has equally-spaced gear ratios over a 5-to-1 range. This matches
what is usually described as necessary for recumbent use.

For my own purposes, I find a 4.5-to-1 ratio range adequate on my Tour
Easy (25 to 110 gear inches).

Jeff

My friend Richard owns just such a beast: a Greenspeed with both the
Rohloff and a Mtn. Drive:

http://tricolour.net/gtvs6.html

It is also the first Greenspeed take-apart tandem (he emailed back and
forth with Ian Sims on the design). It can either be packed into two
travel bags, or switched between tandem and solo modes.

Mark

meb:

I'll jump in here. I have two chainrings, 38T and 46T with a 16T sprocket.
The gear range on the smaller ring is 16.6 to 87.7 while on the larger ring
it's 20.1 to 105.5. If you've ridden a recumbent very much in hilly terrain
it should be obvious that the range offered is about three gears shy of
being optimal, although it's "OK." Strictly speaking, it'd be ideal to have
something like 16 to 120. The absolute minimum chainring you could use is a
36T with a 26 inch rear wheel. I've been told by Thomas that although this
is stretching things a bit, it wouldn't void the warranty. If you had 17
evenly spaced gears instead of 14 that would give you a really sexy range of
15.7 to 121.0 gear inches. Pretty hard to beat that.

If recumbents were a bigger part of the market it might be worth the
development.

--
--Scott
<[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

meb said:

The hubs were developed for mountain biking.
There are race teams using Rohloff hubs in the mountain bike world.

The internal ratios are set up for mountain biking, not recumbent

use.

Quoted message said:

meb

MEB- perhaps you could explain this. As I understand it, the Rohloff
hub has equally-spaced gear ratios over a 5-to-1 range. This matches
what is usually described as necessary for recumbent use.

For my own purposes, I find a 4.5-to-1 ratio range adequate on my Tour
Easy (25 to 110 gear inches).

Jeff

Freewheeling said:

...Or you could get one of those internally geared cranksets.
I think they're called "mountain drives" but can't recall for sure. That'd
really be sweet. And expensive.

Schlumpf Innovations [1] makes three bottom brackets with internal
planetary gears for a direct drive and either overdrive or underdrive.
There is the "Mountain Drive" with a 2.5:1 underdrive, the "Speed Drive"
with a 1:1.65 overdrive, and the "HIgh Speed Drive" with a 1:2.5
overdrive. These are currently a little over $400 US (and used to be
around $300 US prior to the recent decline of the US dollar).

Greenspeed offers a Schlumpf-Rohloff 28-speed drivetrain as an option (I
briefly rode a GTO thusly equipped).

[1] <http://www.schlumpf.ch/>

--
Tom Sherman - Rock Island County Illinois
Tetrahedral carbon lattices are not forever.

Pat said:

I have been looking into Rohloff hubs lately, and nearly all of the comments
I find on the Internet have been by people using the hubs in their
recumbents or trikes. I was thinking of using one on a diamond frame road
bike, but my LBS was shocked by my suggestion. At this point, it is mostly
an academic debate on my side as I recuperate from shoulder surgery, but I
am interested to hear of other riders' experiences with the Rohloff hubs.

Pat in TX

About 18 months ago I converted my DF touring bike to a Rohloff. Kept the 48T chainring and used a 17T cog on the Rohloff, this gives me almost the same range that I previously had with my triple 22 to 114 gear inches. It has worked with no problems, no oil leakage, and only slightly noisy to this slowly deafening old man.
I liked it so well that when I fell in love with a trike this past October I had it set up with a Schlumph and Rohloff. The trike is 20" drive wheel so with a 40T chainring on the Speed Drive and 16T cog on the Rohloff I have two riding ranges. The low range is from 13 to 69 gear inches and the upper range goes from 21 to 113 inches. A very nice match to my touring bike plus the lower range. I haven't put many miles on it, became too cold for me about a month ago and a move also got in the way of playing. However, the few miles that I put in were great! I'm a Rohloff convert. 🙂

Freewheeling said:

I'll jump in here. I have two chainrings, 38T and 46T with a 16T
sprocket. The gear range on the smaller ring is 16.6 to 87.7 while on
the larger ring it's 20.1 to 105.5. If you've ridden a recumbent
very much in hilly terrain it should be obvious that the range
offered is about three gears shy of being optimal, although it's
"OK." Strictly speaking, it'd be ideal to have something like 16 to
120. The absolute minimum chainring you could use is a 36T with a 26
inch rear wheel. I've been told by Thomas that although this is
stretching things a bit, it wouldn't void the warranty. If you had
17 evenly spaced gears instead of 14 that would give you a really
sexy range of
15.7 to 121.0 gear inches. Pretty hard to beat that.

Low too high. High too high as well, come to that. The top gear on my race
bike is 106" and that doesn't get used overly often. If a hill is steep
enough to have me doing much more than 50 km/h I'm quite happy not to pedal
down it. My Trice has 13-86" and the Speedmachine 17-100 (though the
highest gear used on a regular basis is also 86"😉.

--

Dave Larrington - http://www.legslarry.beerdrinkers.co.uk/
World Domination?
Just find a world that's into that kind of thing, then chain to the
floor and walk up and down on it in high heels. (Mr. Sunshine)

Dave Larrington said:

Freewheeling wrote:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

15.7 to 121.0 gear inches. Pretty hard to beat that.

Quoted message said:

Low too high. High too high as well, come to that. The top gear on my race
bike is 106" and that doesn't get used overly often. If a hill is steep
enough to have me doing much more than 50 km/h I'm quite happy not to pedal
down it. My Trice has 13-86" and the Speedmachine 17-100 (though the
highest gear used on a regular basis is also 86"😉.

The Streetmachine GT as supplied default goes from just over 20 to about
120. The bottom end could be a little lower and I've /never/ managed to
spin out in top. And I have tried, on some pretty good hills. I can't
see much use for more than about 100" on a tourer: like Dave says, there
comes a time when you can just let gravity do the work and still have
lots of fun.

Pete.
--
Peter Clinch Medical Physics IT Officer
Tel 44 1382 660111 ext. 33637 Univ. of Dundee, Ninewells Hospital
Fax 44 1382 640177 Dundee DD1 9SY Scotland UK
net [email hidden] http://www.dundee.ac.uk/~pjclinch/

I have a Schlumpf Speed Drive- Rohloff Speedhub drivetrain on my Trice
Mini. I only use the overdrive on the Schlumpf for high speed descents
and strong tailwinds. First gear is 14.5". Top gear with the Schlumpf
in direct drive is 76.28". Top gear with the Schlumpf in overdrive is
125.86". The crank length is 152mm.

Zach Kaplan

Zach:

If you're still inside the torque specs for the Rholoff then you must be
using a small drive wheel. I guess I'm not sufficiently familiar with the
Trice to recall what it uses, but that sounds like a really nice setup. My
top gear with the Rholoff is around 87 inches, and I rarely feel like I'm
undergeared. But I'm also not in a huge hurry, usually. (In fact, didn't I
buy the Rholoff from you?)

--
--Scott
"Zach" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

I have a Schlumpf Speed Drive- Rohloff Speedhub drivetrain on my Trice
Mini. I only use the overdrive on the Schlumpf for high speed descents
and strong tailwinds. First gear is 14.5". Top gear with the Schlumpf
in direct drive is 76.28". Top gear with the Schlumpf in overdrive is
125.86". The crank length is 152mm.

Zach Kaplan

Dave:

Yeah, I'd be quite happy with a high of around 105. That suggests that the
Rohloff is two gears shy, rather than three. If I had a fairing, though, I
might want that 17th gear (though, admittedly, not very often). At 90 rpm
I'd be doing 32 mph.

--
--Scott
"Dave Larrington" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Freewheeling said:

I'll jump in here. I have two chainrings, 38T and 46T with a 16T
sprocket. The gear range on the smaller ring is 16.6 to 87.7 while on
the larger ring it's 20.1 to 105.5. If you've ridden a recumbent
very much in hilly terrain it should be obvious that the range
offered is about three gears shy of being optimal, although it's
"OK." Strictly speaking, it'd be ideal to have something like 16 to
120. The absolute minimum chainring you could use is a 36T with a 26
inch rear wheel. I've been told by Thomas that although this is
stretching things a bit, it wouldn't void the warranty. If you had
17 evenly spaced gears instead of 14 that would give you a really
sexy range of
15.7 to 121.0 gear inches. Pretty hard to beat that.

Low too high. High too high as well, come to that. The top gear on my
race
bike is 106" and that doesn't get used overly often. If a hill is steep
enough to have me doing much more than 50 km/h I'm quite happy not to
pedal
down it. My Trice has 13-86" and the Speedmachine 17-100 (though the
highest gear used on a regular basis is also 86"😉.

--

Dave Larrington - http://www.legslarry.beerdrinkers.co.uk/
World Domination?
Just find a world that's into that kind of thing, then chain to the
floor and walk up and down on it in high heels. (Mr. Sunshine)

Scott:

Yes, you did buy your Rohloff from me in late 1999. It was the first or
second one I sold. I've sold numerous Rohloff hubs and Rohloff equiped
bikes and trikes since then. Pretty much all the ones I sold in the
first couple years required their seals to be replaced under warranty
due to oil leakage. Their newest seal design they've been using since
late 2003 is very nice, no reports of leakage and it has lower friction
than the previous seals.

The Trice Mini has a 355mm rear wheel with 48T chainring on the Speed
Drive and 15T cog on the hub so it is well within the torque limits of
the hub. I find the 76.28" top gear with the Speed Drive in direct
drive is good for 40-42 km/h and I seldom use the 14.5" first gear.
I've been thinking of removing the Schlumpf and going to a conventional
single chainring crankset giving a somewhat higher first gear and a
much lower top gear. That would save weight and reduce drivetrain
friction but since the Schlumpf is on there I'll probably keep it on as
it is occassionally nice to have a high top gear for long gradual
descents taken at 50-55 km/h and also it allows me to use a smaller
chainring which lets me stay out of the less efficient lower 7 gears on
climbs where I can maintain a minimum speed of 12 km/h.

I have a regular 42 km loop ride with 728 metres of climbing which I
have been doing on the Trice Mini. It has some sections of climbing
where the grade is 12%. The lowest gear I need to use to get up these
is 3rd gear which is 18.72". My best rolling time for this loop on the
Mini is 1:51:36. My best rolling time for the loop on my much lighter
and more aerodynamic Bacchetta Aero with Rotor Cranks and derailer
gearing is 1:37:50.

The ride is more relaxing on the Trice Mini because there is no need to
balance on the steep climbs, no need to watch out for wet mud and
gravel on the corners on the descents and on the fastest, straightest
descent where speeds can get over 70 km/h the dual front hydraulic disc
brakes of the Micro sure stop a lot better than the sidepull road
calipers on the Aero.

Zach Kaplan