Rohloff Gear Hubs

Anyone who isn't a bike head should just move quietly along to the next post...


Gears after some muddy Fun

One of the most interesting part of our touring bikes are the Rohloff gears we put on them. 14 Speed internal gearboxes, rather than a normal set of mountain bike chain ring, cassette and shifters.

There are a couple of really nice things about it:

- Except for a few ratios it's very quiet.
- It copes very well with mud, grit, sticks and other things; the only thing we do is stick a bit of chain lube on our chains every now and again. It doesn't make any grating and grinding noises when shifting like normal gears do with muck on them.
- The range of gears is very wide, as wide as the highest and lowest gears on a standard mountain bike setup, and ours are actually setup just slightly lower than normal.
- You can shift when the bike isn't moving, which is surpassingly nice once you get used to it especially with a touring load.

The only negative (apart from price) is it moves the center of gravity of the bike back a touch, on a mountain bike jumping over logs you might notice, but on a touring bike with 20kg of stuff on the rear rack, it's hardly an issue.

The gearbox starts out slightly rough and noisy when brand new, but now both of ours have done 1000km+ they have really quietened down. They only maintenance they get is an oil change every 10,000km and a new sprocket as they wear out, even that's reversible. Those crazy germans they think of everything.


A nerds eye view