I’ll jump into the Rohloff discussion with a few of my data points:
I have two Dean bikes with Rohloffs, a mtb and a randonneur. My mtb is a 29er and weighs 36# with dual suspension and S&S couplers while my rando weighs 31# with fenders over 32mm tires, dyno hub, S&S couplers and f/r lights. As has been mentioned, the Rohloff hub has a 526% overall range of gears, which means gear #14 is 5.26 times greater than gear #1. The hub gearing has 14 equally spaced gears of about 13% gain/loss between shifts. Gear # 11 is the straight, unaltered gear with all others mechanically geared up or down. Gearing depends on wheel size, front chainring and rear cog. I just finished an offroad tour in Utah with Adventure Cycling and was very happy with the performance of my Rohloff. My mtb gearing is at the highest ratio Rohloff recommends with its 17 tooth rear cog with 32 tooth chainring. That’s 15 gear inches, equivalent to a derailleured bike with 22t chainring and 42t rear cog. If I understand it correctly, Rohloff claims using a smaller chainring or larger rear cog would overstrain the hub. My Dean Randonneur came with 48t chainring and 16t cog. That gave a gear range of about 23 to 119 gear inches. That’s too high for me so I changed to a 39t chainring giving me18 to 96 gear inches. I rode this bike on my End-to-End in (very) hilly UK and loved its low end. I couldn’t keep up with my fellow riders in most places, but I often beat them up long, steep hills. As far as riding with a Rohloff, my experience is that it’s great if you’re riding with slower riders or by yourself but, if fellow riders are equally strong and on light bikes, you’ll soon be off the back or straining to keep pace. Rohloff claims a 1000km break-in period, after which shifting effort and noise should be reduced. For some Rohloff pros/cons from an expert, see http://www.sheldonbrown.com/harris/rohloff-impressions.html It’s been reported that Rohloffs never break down. Sarah Outen is presently finishing her round-the-earth human powered journey. She has biked, kayaked and rowed her way for over 25,000 miles. She chose a Rohloff for its reputed robustness but ”…we noticed that the phlange of the Rohloff hub (the centre barrell of the wheel which houses the gearing mechanism) had cracked in two places and would be causing bigger issues in time. ...Hercules (her name for her bike), [after being worked on by a professional mechanic] is [now] doing well and his rear wheel should last until we reach Winnipeg and meet up with the replacement Rohloff hub, kindly provided by Santos bikes in the Netherlands." So they DO break. During my End-to-End my shifter cable started disintegrating rapidly. It jammed the twist shifter. I was able to jury rig another cable but it was not optimum. I’d recommend for anyone traveling away from expert wrenching to replace their own cables before starting. Not only would you know you had good cables but you’d also learn the intricacies of the unintuitive cabling scenario. Ray Lisbon, CT -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
