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The normative case of pre-loved Rohloff pricing

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Andre Jute:
In a cog-removal thread, a really interesting question has been raised about the price of a used Rohloff gearbox. The "normative case" in the title of this thread is the condition that should in theory prevail; here it's a sort of economist's irony.


--- Quote from: lestat_12345 on May 24, 2018, 06:29:22 am ---I think I probably paid too much for the [used Rohloff] unit but, hey ho, as long as it works, I'm okay with that.
--- End quote ---

To give you some perspective: You can get a used, working, Rohloff for about £500-£600, most commonly in Germany, but those have generally been through some mud plugger's backside, and you can see it in the photos.

Whatever you paid, you've got it now, so yours above is probably the best attitude. Sir Frederick Royce said, "The value of a thing will please long after the price is forgotten."


--- Quote from: lestat_12345 on May 24, 2018, 06:29:22 am ---Anybody have an inclination as to how much an 11 year old, low usage, Rohloff should sell for?
--- End quote ---

Actually, I'd go further than Paul goes here:


--- Quote from: PH on May 24, 2018, 01:14:56 pm ---If you know it [the Rohloff gearbox] hasn't had much use, I'd have thought it worth not much less than the original cost, if it was still on its first sprocket I'd consider it just run in.

--- End quote ---

My Rohloff box is older than yours, from 2006, but what matters is the mileage and the condition, not age. On considering your conundrum, I've decided that anyone who wants my Rohloff would have to pay a premium over new, so it would cost him probably more than small change in excess of a thousand pounds.

How do I arrive at this startling conclusion? Consider these facts:

1. Rohloffs have no MTBF (mean time between failure) because, with many Rohloffs now over 20 years old, and many well over a 100,000 of either kilometers or miles, there have been too few breakages to establish a pattern. It's clearly a reliable box you will leave to your grandchildren. So a low mileage, say sub-10,000km/6000m Rohloff box is just run in. The useful life of a Rohloff is unknown, but conservatively assumed to be well on the far side of 200,000 miles, for practical purpose infinite.

2. However, if a Rohloff, which is assembled by hand rather than mass-produced, is likely to break, it will usually break within a few thousand kilometers; virtually all other breakages (so few that most of them are individually known) happen under continual adverse conditions such as loaded touring in places where civilization is a firing squad offense. So a low-mileage but run-in Rohloff (check the appearance of the casing) is virtually guaranteed to escape the inconvenience of returning it to Germany for repair.

3. A Rohloff hub gearbox is a piece of agricultural German machinery, never intended to be a refined touring gearbox for well-off cyclists. As a consequence it takes a long time to run in. (Chalo Colina, a famous Boeing toolmaker and bike mechanic -- the designer of Aaron's 48-spoke Rohloff shell -- and the owner of several well-used Rohloffs, once said, "A Rohloff starts to be run-in when a Shimano hub gearbox lies down and dies." Actually, two Shimano Nexus gearboxes died on me well before my Rohloff was run-in.) During this extended running-in period of the Rohloff the lower range is a bit noisier, and the gear change much stiffer, than on a well-run-in Rohloff, which by contrast is utterly silent and quite as smooth-changing as the Shimano (which is a noted smooth-changing box if it is well set up).

So any lucky person who bought my Rohloff box would be able to:
a) avoid the careful listening for expensive crunches, and the relatively stiff gear change control for several thousand miles;
b) because the box is just run in, be virtually guaranteed that the box doesn't suffer from the very rare hand-assembly glitches that new owners worry about unnecessarily but quite understandably;
c) know that very little (less than 3%) of the useful life of the gearbox has been consumed;
d) as a consequence be able to ride his new Rohloff with careless abandon.

All of that, I reckon, is worth a stiff premium over the current new price. Another way of looking at it is that I would have to break in another Rohloff, and the wear and tear on my peace of mind is worth something to me, and the absence of that wear and tear on himself should be worth something to the second owner of a well-run-in Rohloff. All that remains is to agree a number for this signal service.

Mike Ayling:
Interesting post.

Mike

lestat_12345:
Thanks for the post Andre. It has certainly given me some 'peace of mind' concerning my recent purchase. Also, according to your logic, it sounds like I got a bargain. Still have to get the wheel built and the Rohloff tested but I've done a few preliminary tests and it all looks good.

PH:
Interesting thoughts as usual Andre Jute, though there are a couple of things I'd place value on that are not accounted for in your musings.  So some musing from me!
Unless you're very lucky or prepared to wait a while, the chances of finding the exact variant of hub seems unlikely, less likely the further away from the most common you want.  Some compromise may be required. you'd have to work out for yourself the Compromise = £££ ratio.
I can'r remember the details of the Rohloff warranty, I still have the warranty card that came with it and it doesn't say!  Nor does it say it's not transferable though as I needed to register it I suspect that's the case, such peace of mind certainly has a value.
Dealer service, I have no similar purchase to compare to, most things either fail within the warranty period or last long enough for me to have had the value from them.  The Rohloff was of course bought as a long term investment and the service from SJS has gone well beyond the warranty.  I've had two flange breakages, the first just bad luck the second may have been the result of changing wheel sizes (See below).  Both were replaced FOC including rebuilding the wheel, it's easy to put a value on that, the shells would have been £125 each plus whatever you pay for a wheel build.
Wheel building - all hubs suffer if you change the way the spokes fit, sometimes you get away with it, sometimes you don't, there can be no doubt that starting with a fresh hub and sticking with the same build is the better option.
Resale value - On the accounting principle that cost is purchase less residual value,  it's possible the newer hub the hub the higher it's value. Considering my hub cost £720 plus £120 for it's recent conversion to disk, and I'm reasonably confident it would sell for £500+ that cost over 14 years is outstanding. £24 a year  :o :o :o :o :o

I'm bored with people telling me how expensive they are. I can no longer be bothered explaining how wrong they are, I just laugh.
So back to how much is  S/H worth, well that is of course between buyer and seller, as a buyer I think the maximum I would pay is 70% of the new price, if I were to sell mine* I'd let the market decide but anything over 50% of the new price would be considered bonus.

*It'll never happen.

Last point

--- Quote ---than on a well-run-in Rohloff, which by contrast is utterly silent
--- End quote ---
Having ridden with several other people Rohloffs, there's a noticeable difference in the noise they make, mine usually wins, even after this time it's far from silent.  Apparently they did change something about a decade ago that reduced the noise, I read that I could have mine changed but as the noise never bothered me I didn't follow it up.

Andre Jute:
Those are good points, Paul. It never occurred to me that anyone would buy a used Rohloff by its lonesome. My remarks assume that the used Rohloff is strung into a well-built wheel, from which you would be able to deduce more about the gearbox condition and prior use than you usually can from the appearance of a used box by itself, especially if the box is shiny aluminium (which once was the only finish offered) rather than the red or black ones which are more likely to display evidence of a hard life.

About the silence or otherwise of Rohloff boxes: It does seem that Rohloff boxes vary in their tendency to be heard over mileage, and between boxes. But we had a piece of new road put in, very smooth, and I made my test on it in the dead silence of 0300 hours (I'm anyway a night owl) on a windless night, riding on the white and orange painted lines, which are smooth enough to subtract tyre noise from the equation. My Rohloff box is silent. (For those who don't know, I've written about performed classical music all my life, and I design and build my own tube hi-fi equipment, and for upmarket Japanese -- read "obsessed" -- manufacturers too, so you might say I'm a professional listener with well-educated ears.)

By "silent" I mean that I can hear no noise when tootling along in gear 11. There's some residual noise around gears 7 and 8, but it is much fainter than when the box was new and doesn't bother me: one expects any gearbox in the harder-working gears to be noisier than in the direct or near-direct gears or overdrives. It is noticeable how often walkers in the lanes are startled to find a bike they never heard approaching suddenly passing them.

Be interesting to know whether Dan thinks his Rohloff is silent. He returned to that point repeatedly while he was considering such a major investment; I seem to remember that he explained that for him noise is a "deal breaker". Matt's also been building up the miles quickly with these big tours of his, so perhaps he noticed the breakpoint.

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