Alfine Hub service

jeepie

According to the Shimano docs the Alfine hub should be serviced every 2,000 miles. Mine's done two winters in all weathers and in all probability more than that. It's still working like a dream, however, with buttery smooth, reliable and quick shifts.

Would you leave it until the gear changes become clunkier or follow the guidance and service as per the manual? Do you think it will be more cost effective to service it to keep it running longer, or get as much out of it as I can between services?

Cheers J

Jay dubbleU

I would say if it ain't broke don't fix it - the service time is only a guideline

vorsprung

Mine was new in January 2010 and since then has done 8500km in crap weather. The bike it is on is my crap weather commute bike. If it is nice in the summer I take a different bike

In the recent cold snap I had a little difficulty with gear changes but other than that it has been working great. It was also a little more noisey. However, this is compared with the ninja like silence of a new unit.

Last weekend I did the "oil dip" operation on it, took about an hour

I removed the hub gear innards by undoing and removing all the LHS nuts, bearings etc, then the plastic lockring on the RHS. To undo the plastic lockring I actually removed the join, the spring lockring and the sprocket but I think you might be able to undo the plastic lockring without all this. The instructions on the Sheldon Brown website pretty much explain how to do it. I am not a mechanical genius, if I can take the inside of the hub gear out and reinsert it, anyone can. The tools to remove the hub were two 17mm cone spanners, a 15mm cone spanner and a screwdriver to push the plastic lockring with.

Anyway, once I'd done this it was easy to pull out the entire inside of the gear. It comes out in a single unit. The good news was that the grease on the inside of the unit was clean, the seals really work

There is a special "oil dipping" kit that Shimano do at vast cost (approx £50) with "special" oil. The idea is that you dip the whole unit in the oil for a couple of minutes. The grease that has dried out in the hub soaks up more oil and then is refreshed. I am told that any oil will react in this way. So I got a litre of Wilkos gearbox oil (for £2.73) and dipped the hub mechanism in that. Before I dipped it I had cleaned the outward facing parts so that no external dirt found its way into the inside via the oil bath.

I reassembled it. There were some bearings really near the lockring that looked a bit dry so I injected grease into them. This is possibly the source of the noise as when it was working again it was back to near-silence. It is ever so slightly smoother now.

I am going to do this operation again in a couple of months. Later in the year I will disassemble the entire unit (scary) and degrease /regrease it

shouldbeinbed

Jeepie wrote:

According to the Shimano docs the Alfine hub should be serviced every 2,000 miles. Mine's done two winters in all weathers and in all probability more than that. It's still working like a dream, however, with buttery smooth, reliable and quick shifts.

Would you leave it until the gear changes become clunkier or follow the guidance and service as per the manual? Do you think it will be more cost effective to service it to keep it running longer, or get as much out of it as I can between services?

Cheers J

mines much the same age and mileage and is still absolutely spot on. umming and ahhing whether to book it in for a service but I'm always loathe to fettle with something that is working as it should.