Alfine Hubs - opinions?

notsoblue

Hello Tourers,

I'm in the market for a new tourer. My old workhorse is a Scott Hybrid which managed a LEJOG and some weekend touring. It was never really a great fit for me, and after riding drop bar carbon loveliness for the last year I'm looking for something other than heavy flat bars...

So after some research I've been severely tempted by an On-One Pompetamine Versa 11, however as I've had no experience of touring with hub gears I'm interested to hear opinions from others. Specifically with regards to gear ratios and maintenance. How easy are they to get repaired etc? Has anyone had experience of both Alfine and Rohloff hubs?

Cheers!

andymiller

It might be worth asking on an MTB forum - that's probably the place where you'll get most feedback on the long-term durability of Alfine hubs. Alfines have been around for 2-3 years on MTBs.

The problem with hub gears IME (with a Nexus hub) is that if they do go wrong you won't be able to fix it, and chances are neither will your LBS (unless it's a Shimano Service Centre). In my case I got a new hub under warranty by Madison - the distributors but I still had to pay for a new wheel.

I have a Pompino and it's a nice bike, but you could also consider a Kaffenback (the same frame but with dropouts for derailleur gears).

If your reason for choosing a hub gear is because indexed gears are a pain in the proverbial - well you could go for bar end shifters (or bar end shifters converted into 'thumbies') and use them in friction mode.

MichaelW

I have used Alfine 8 on a Dahon Cadenza for about 4 years. The gear range is not sufficient for my style of touring but others have managed with it.
It hasent let me down and the only maintenance Ive done is one oil dip after 3 winters use. The innards were all in good condition with no rust. Alfine 11 is a bit different with wider range and built-in oil bath.

Plenty of lowland Euro tourists use Nexus. I know of 2 serious expedition style tours using Alfine. Chris Bellmodified his with a double chainring setup.

campbellrae1

Used the Alfine 11 on a recent trip in Australia and was really disappointed when comparing it to the old 8 speed, just felt really slow to shift. However, that may change after a couple of thousand miles and it's fully worn in.

Not sure of internal hubs for touring over-all to be honest. Great when they work(and that should be 99.99999% of the time) but when they go wrong you are up the creek without a paddle. Most that I dealt with working in the LBS just ended up as free wheels, you could get no drive whatsoever. That's not so bad if you are in town, but in the middle of nowhere I would rather have a normal system where you can just bodge a single-speed or something to get you there! Just as mentioned above.

Having said that, Rohloff have their world-wide guarantee where they will get you moving again no matter where in the world you are and you will get hit with the bill later. Nice idea that one!

In terms of the gearing range, the Alfine 11 had what felt like all but the two or three hardest and easiest gears on a standard MTB triple, not sure of the exact numbers, but it felt like that.

Hope this helps,

Campbell.

andymiller

The figures I've seen quoted for the gear range are 406 percent - as opposed to 524% for a Rohloff. But I don't know what the equivalent figure for a 9-speed triple. Anyone know?

A double chainring would be an option - but then you wouldn't you need a front derailleur and a chain tensioner - so nullifying a lot of the advantages of an internal gear?

squeeler

After 2 weeks in the alps this summer I can confirm that the Alfine 8 speed does not have a low enough low gear or a high enough high gear for me. However it is perfect for my daily commute.
Can't comment on the Alfine11 or Rohloff though, other than on paper they look to have a wider range of gears.

GyatsoLa

Lots of people tour with the Rohloff, a few (but not many) go back to dereilleurs. I've had a Rohloff for about 8 years now, it is a great piece of equipment for touring, it works very well and its reliability is excellent. I haven't used an Alfine, but I suspect it doesn't have sufficient gear range for heavyweight touring - I think it would be fine for light and fast touring. If you search around travel blogs you'll find quite a few long term tourers who have put on tens of thousands of km's on Rohloff hubs in often terrible conditions with no problems at all. The main failure issue seems to be occasional failures of the flange where the spokes pull through.

andymiller

GyatsoLa wrote:

Lots of people tour with the Rohloff, a few (but not many) go back to dereilleurs. I've had a Rohloff for about 8 years now, it is a great piece of equipment for touring, it works very well and its reliability is excellent. I haven't used an Alfine, but I suspect it doesn't have sufficient gear range for heavyweight touring - I think it would be fine for light and fast touring. If you search around travel blogs you'll find quite a few long term tourers who have put on tens of thousands of km's on Rohloff hubs in often terrible conditions with no problems at all. The main failure issue seems to be occasional failures of the flange where the spokes pull through.

Well yes, maybe, but the question was about Alfine hubs. The reliability of Rohloff hubs doesn't guarantee the reliability of the much cheaper Alfine.

notsoblue

Cheers fellas, a lot of food for thought in this thread. The reliability issue is interesting from a risk perception point of view because it would seem that the Alfine would be more resilient on a tour than derailleurs, but if something were to go wrong it would be far more of a problem and this worries me! Perhaps having parts in reserve ready to be fedex'd out might be the way forward?

Andy, whats the weight like on the Pompino?

andymiller

I was looking at the pompetamine on the on one pages and it does look very nice. I'd be very tempted to get one as a city bike.

But by way of comparison Planet X have just. Announced the latest version of the Kaffenback - £699 for a flat-bar version specced with Deore.

notsoblue wrote:

Cheers fellas, a lot of food for thought in this thread. The reliability issue is interesting from a risk perception point of view because it would seem that the Alfine would be more resilient on a tour than derailleurs, but if something were to go wrong it would be far more of a problem and this worries me! Perhaps having parts in reserve ready to be fedex'd out might be the way forward?

Andy, whats the weight like on the Pompino?

The Pompino might be best descrobed as 'sturdy'. I'm sure there are lighter steel-framed bikes but for a tourer sturdy is what you want.

I don't agree with you about the reliability of deraillers on tour.

If you are riding in thick mud or you are riding downhill MTBs then derailleurs have real disadvantages in that the rear mech can get clogged and it is vulnerable if you crash or ride over rocks in the wrong place. So it's easy to see why some MTBers would go for them.

But mud and crash damage aren't really issues while touring.

Hub gears have an advantage in that you can fit a nice chunky, durable 1/8 inch chain. But a decent 9-speed chain should last 5,000 kms and spares are easy to carry or buy en route. They also have the advantage of a perfectly straight chainline - but unless you do things like combine the largest chainring with the largest casette sprocket, chainline isn't really an issue in practice.

Derailleurs do suffer from the problem that the indexing goes off as the cable stretches - but this isn't really such a big deal - and you can avoid it completely by using bar end shifters in non-indexed mode.

I don't think greater reliability is really a reason for going down the hub gear route. Yes you could argue that derailleurs are higher maintenance, but that needs to be set against easier fixability/replaceabilit if things go wrong.

mz__jo

Can the Alfine hubs be reduced fron 135mm to 130 for retrofitting to a road frame? I think I am less worried about big top gears than others on this forum.
Are there any actual experiences with breakdowns on Alfine hubs or are we talking unfounded fears?

campbellrae1

In the last 6 months in the LBS I have seen 2, admittedly that's not many, but it's still 2 more than I would like given how they break! As mentioned by another poster, it's risk perception. While there is a tiny chance that they will go wrong, what happens when they do is a right pain in the behind.

From my point of view, I have just built up my own tourer, aiming for an RTW in a few years, I thought long and hard about going internal but just couldn't persuade myself that it was worth the risk of it going wrong, you can almost always bodge something with a standard set up and spares will be easier to come by in the back of beyond. However, if it's for something a bit less mad, say in Europe or North America, I would have probably gone down that road.

In terms of your original maintenance question, internal needs less work in the long term, just give it a service once a year or every few months depending on how much you ride and you're good to go!

dilemna

A very interesting thread.

I think if the Alfine failed Shimano would want you to BUY another hub or wheel. Where as on the few occasions that Rohloff hubs have gone wrong, Rohloff have honoured their worldwide warranty to supply a replacement to a stranded cyclist.

One thing to do would be to have a touring frame with horizontal drop outs and also a hanger to mount a deraillieur if needed or holes to bolt on a hanger and deraillieur.

MichaelW

If Alfine fails, you can remove the whole internals and replace the whole unit

andrew_s

The Alfine 11 is restricted to an effective bottom gear chainring to sprocket ratio of 1:1.

The input ratio is limited to 1:1.9 (eg 34x18), and the bottom gear ratio is 0.527, which gives a lowest allowable gear of 27" on a 700c (27") wheel.
That's a bit high for loaded touring, and if you gear lower and have problems, you've no warranty.
A derailleur set up with the same gear range would be 28/38/49 on 12-28, with no possibility of lowering the bottom gear.

The Rohloff hub similarly has an input ratio limit of 38x16, but on the Rohloff, direct drive is 11th (5th on Alfine) so low gears aren't really a problem. Gears of 20" to 105" are pretty much the normal set up.

satanas

Apologies for reviving an old thread, but I'm wondering what people think now that the Alfine 11 has been around for a while. I've been following threads at mtbr.com and just looked at a 20 page(!) thread at the CTC. Seems like some people are still having significant problems with the Alfine 11. Maybe there are lots of happy A11 riders out there, but there's not a lot of evidence on forums that this is the case.

FWIW, I'd *really* like to see some evidence that the A11 might be reliable as I can get one for about half the price of a Rohloff (basic model) or ~1/3 the price of the disk-compatible Rohloff hub. Shimano are generally good with warranty here in Oz, and I don't tend to break stuff but I'm reluctant to buy anything there's a cloud over. (And it'd be used for MTB-ing and/or remote-ish touring, so failure would be a serious PITA.) If it matters, I've got experience fixing just about everything bike-related except IGHs, so am not worried about adjustment, etc. Spares availability is another matter though, and here I guess derailleurs are the winner.

I guess the answer is to pay the extra for Rohloff, but I could buy an A11 and a frameset as well for the same price... :roll: