Author Topic: Rough friction Feeling  (Read 12398 times)

Cruz

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Re: Rough friction Feeling
« Reply #15 on: July 26, 2018, 02:38:58 pm »
As John hinted at above - is your chain 'relaxed'. The only time I have come across any real noise or vibration through the drive train was when I had the chain too tight. Rohloff run well with a slightly loose chain.
I have checked it and thought that it was problem and gave to chain more relax. Think it is not problem, cause yesterday removed the wheel and spin it with hands and shifted. It really feels rough and gives vibrations 1 through 7 speeds. and it comes from the hub.
« Last Edit: July 26, 2018, 02:55:26 pm by Cruz »

Cruz

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Re: Rough friction Feeling
« Reply #16 on: July 26, 2018, 02:52:37 pm »
I used to think I could feel a roughness in gears 1 through 7, but I later concluded that the noise was making me more sensitive to perceived problems that were not really a problem.
That is the reason i am asking. Is it problem or not. If it is normal for new hub, it is not problem for me too. Before i checked almost everything about this hub and how it works (theoretical only) . But could not find that 1 through 7 it feels rough and with vibrations before it breaks. About noise yes, there are some topics. And it is my first experience with this hub and in real life i don't know how it feels and works, how it must or how it will in future.

geocycle

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Re: Rough friction Feeling
« Reply #17 on: July 26, 2018, 03:27:36 pm »
I was about to reply saying I do not recall any vibrations, then I trawled my posts and I wrote this 31 August 2006, days after getting my rohloff:

'Agreed with all that's been said about the Rohloff -7th is really awful - I was anticipating some noise but not the vibration through the pedals and I was suprised at the freewheel noise.  As others have mentioned 8-14th are great. '

So maybe it is normal! I certainly do not have any vibration issues now and the noise is barely detectable above the road hum even in 7th.
 

Danneaux

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Re: Rough friction Feeling
« Reply #18 on: July 26, 2018, 03:46:03 pm »
Quote
Agreed with all that's been said about the Rohloff -7th is really awful - I was anticipating some noise but not the vibration through the pedals and I was suprised at the freewheel noise.  As others have mentioned 8-14th are great.
<nods> Matches my experience as well, geo'. Though my Gear 7 was never "Awful", I did initially feel a vibration through the pedals and the freewheel noise was awfully loud. Both soon settled down with use. I seem to have gotten a particularly smooth Rohloff on my Nomad, for it has worked perfectly and remarkably quietly almost from the very start.

One further suggestion for Cruz: Be sure to check the cables. If they are set too tight, they can cause some roughness in shift-actuation and difficulties getting cleanly into gear, in turn causing some noise and vibration.

Best,

Dan.

Cruz

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Re: Rough friction Feeling
« Reply #19 on: July 26, 2018, 05:34:54 pm »
Quote

One further suggestion for Cruz: Be sure to check the cables. If they are set too tight, they can cause some roughness in shift-actuation and difficulties getting cleanly into gear, in turn causing some noise and vibration.

Best,

Dan.

I think about it too. That's why have asked in my post, But could not find any manual how cables must be adjusted. Checked the manual book of the Rohloff but there is nothing about that. Maybe someone has experience with it.

mickeg

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Re: Rough friction Feeling
« Reply #20 on: July 26, 2018, 11:56:29 pm »
If I am in for example gear 10, I can twist my grip shifter from 9.5 to 10.5 without shifting, that is how much slack I have in my cables.  This is on my Nomad with EX box.  I assume that it would be about the same on the internal gear cable too, but I have no experience with that.

I do not know if I have too much slack, but since it shifts just fine I do not have too little slack.  I suspect that there is minimal downside if your cables are too slack.  But as Dan noted, if too little slack you can have shifts that do not align the parts right in the hub.


Andre Jute

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Re: Rough friction Feeling
« Reply #21 on: July 27, 2018, 12:27:40 am »
[Remarks inspired by the exchanges above; specific advice to the OP follows]

Gear 7 was never "awful" for me either.

When I first got my Rolloff-equipped bike, I checked that everything was set-up right, much like I would blue-print a mouse-motor (for the British: a Chevrolet small-block V8) intended for competition, taking the manual minimum tolerance as my maximum.

In relation to the Rohloff my excuse is that my attitude above is very common and highly praised both in automobiles and bicycles. (And, of course, if you ride a plastic bike today, you'd better pay attention the torque settings on attachments if you don't want an expensively crushed pipe.)

However, on reading the English Rohloff manual more carefully, at first I didn't believe my eyes: I concluded the translation must be at fault. On reading the German original, I was horrified: did this guy actually attend a proper German technical university? It was absolutely amazing: the designer of a German (this is an important consideration much larger than a mere stereotype) piece of agricultural machinery of excellent reputation wanted me to run it in a loose-goosey (thank you, Sheldon!) manner. Who ever heard of running a chain with a minimum bow slack of 10mm? What sort of German engineer would admit in public, in writing, that he didn't like the firm smack of gears engaging both heard and felt on tight cables? What the devil was wrong with the man to want the axle hardly more than finger-tight so that a cyclist with hair on his chest would need a wimpish low-torque instrument in his hand, even sometimes in public! On a bike that is otherwise set up with clearances, where required, of no more than 1mm!

When I understood that these low-stress settings formed a whole, rounded attitude (the Austro-German word is gestalt), entirely opposed to my high-performance experience and belief-system, I considered revolting and doing it my way, secure in the knowledge that the majority of engineers on the cycle-engineering forum I belong to would applaud my principled stance. Then I remembered my ten-year warranty, subject to annual inspections...

So I remade the settings as they came from the factory. It was in fact just as well that I hadn't yet sent the scathing letter I had drafted to send the manufacturer of my Rohloff bike (not Thorn) because I would have looked an awful fool.

I won't say the looser settings made my Rohloff more resistant to breakage or longer-lived (clearly the designer's intention) because my Rohloff, though often heavily loaded by my painting gear as well as my altogether too corporeal temporal presence and an electric setup with a humongous high-coulomb battery plus a motor chosen for its torque, is not stressed in the same way as high-mile commuters and world tourers stress their bikes; but I have no difficulty seeing how the official setup would work in failure-proofing their gearboxes.

What I will say is that the much more tolerant settings have made my Rohloff much easier to live with. I could probably make an arguable case that the tighter setting would have run-in my Rohloff box a bit quicker; this is not a negligible matter, as a Rohloff takes thousands of kilometers to run in: mine took 6-7-8000km, so a thousand klicks off would be a considerable matter, but then again, an equally arguable case would be that the initial harsh treatment would come off the other end of the Rohloff's lifespan, and would amount to a damned sight more than a miserable thousand klicks. But I didn't find the Rohloff noisy in my most-used gear 11, and what I objected to most, the psychologically depressing sighing sound in gears 7 and 8, wasn't objected to by too many other owners, and eventually went away; what was noticeable was that with my original tight setup the Rohloff was certainly ever so slightly noisier than with the book setup. (Understand, please: my Rohloff was pretty silent from the beginning, but I used to be a music critic and at one stage designed tube amplifiers and horn speaker enclosures for a living; my ears have lifelong training to hear sounds most people don't, and I identify them as noise when most people would dismiss, without conscious thought, the slight ambient disturbance as general background "white sound".)

Specific advice for the OP follows.

Andre Jute

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Re: Rough friction Feeling
« Reply #22 on: July 27, 2018, 12:37:58 am »
Specific advice for the OP:

1. It's smart to worry and ask questions when an expensive gearbox makes any noise at all. But for what a Rohloff will do for you, and for how long it will last, it is a cheap gearbox. It has to be, or it would be far too heavy for bicycle use. It was also, from the beginning, a low-run, handbuilt item. For instance, you're supposed to knock off a few minute fractions of steel of the main teeth of a new Rohloff, and flush the bits out at the first oil change, which is why experienced owners advise you to change the oil twice in the first year or first 10K klicks. The Rohloff is therefore likely, unless you get a rogue perfect specimen, pre-run-in, so to speak, to make a certain amount of noise in the beginning and to grow progressively more silent.

2. The chain should be set up so that when you pull the upper and lower run of the chain together between your fingers, there is 5-10mm of "bow" at top and bottom each. Alternatively, you can pull the chain tight on one run and the bow on the other run should be a minimum of 10/1cm and can be double that. Those of us with Chaingliders, which help in keeping slack chains on the teeth, run even slacker chains without problems. I in fact run my chain on the factory lube for its entire life and never open the Chainglider except to change the chain at the end of its life, by which time it is really slack. (Use the search engine to find Chainglider, Hebie and factory lube if these aspects of running a hub gearbox interest you; my purpose is to reduce maintenance to a minimum rather than to extend the life of the components to the maximum, which such a setup can also do if desired.)

3. Set up the gear cables tight but equal. Now slacken each cable the same amount. On the EXT box this is done at the hub end, rather than at the control end on the handlebar, where adjustments would have larger effects on the longevity of the cables (smaller radius). The cables are at minimum desired slackness when on any gear the indicator on the handlebar can turn almost from the marks for the gear below to the gear above; I never look at the indicator because, after a while with the Rohloff, you just know in which gear you are, but the marks are useful for adjusting the cables. My cables are set up with almost two stops of slackness each way and have lasted in excess of 10,000km despite being stressed by raising the handlebars almost 4in about 6500km ago; I expected the cables to break sooner rather than later and have had new parts on standby for years now. I imagine that to a lifelong roadie, this "imprecision" would feel like sacrilege, but I've learned to love the creative self-protection of the Rohloff, so the play doesn't bother me at all and, since it is clearly a consciously rational strategy of a proven engineer, I have little sympathy with the whining of the roadies (looking at you, Anto! -- you can tell I started cycling as a mountain biker!)

4. All of the above is about following the manual to outermost extent of its spirit. But some of what is in the manual is nanny-state coveryourassery (a very useful German portmanteau word). If you have the EXT click box, you can forget the manual's advice to grease it every 500km. Service it by pumping it full of marine-grade grease (or Teflon or your fave quality grease; copper grease is also good but dirty) when your change the gearbox oil at 5000km or once every year.

Good luck.

John Saxby

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Re: Rough friction Feeling
« Reply #23 on: July 27, 2018, 01:41:43 am »
Quote
Was it without friction feeling from  that moment you bought it?

Thanks, Cruz.  I could feel no friction/vibration from the moment I bought the Rohloff (new).

But I see that lestat, geo and Danneaux have felt some vibration. That disappeared with use, as the hub became quiter as well.

As for adjusting shifter cables:  Do you have the hub with the EXT box, or the internal shifter?  I have an internal shifter on my Raven.  If you have that, let me know and I can send you a personal message with the instructions for adjusting the cable tension.

Tbilisi!!  Wow!  I'd love to visit you there -- we could compare hub noises  :)  But it's a loooong way from Ottawa, Canada.

Cheers,  John

Cruz

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Re: Rough friction Feeling
« Reply #24 on: July 27, 2018, 12:03:30 pm »
[Remarks inspired by the exchanges above; specific advice to the OP follows]

Gear 7 was never "awful" for me either.

When I first got my Rolloff-equipped bike, I checked that everything was set-up right, much like I would blue-print a mouse-motor (for the British: a Chevrolet small-block V8) intended for competition, taking the manual minimum tolerance as my maximum.

In relation to the Rohloff my excuse is that my attitude above is very common and highly praised both in automobiles and bicycles. (And, of course, if you ride a plastic bike today, you'd better pay attention the torque settings on attachments if you don't want an expensively crushed pipe.)


However, on reading the English Rohloff manual more carefully, at first I didn't believe my eyes: I concluded the translation must be at fault. On reading the German original, I was horrified: did this guy actually attend a proper German technical university? It was absolutely amazing: the designer of a German (this is an important consideration much larger than a mere stereotype) piece of agricultural machinery of excellent reputation wanted me to run it in a loose-goosey (thank you, Sheldon!) manner. Who ever heard of running a chain with a minimum bow slack of 10mm? What sort of German engineer would admit in public, in writing, that he didn't like the firm smack of gears engaging both heard and felt on tight cables? What the devil was wrong with the man to want the axle hardly more than finger-tight so that a cyclist with hair on his chest would need a wimpish low-torque instrument in his hand, even sometimes in public! On a bike that is otherwise set up with clearances, where required, of no more than 1mm!

When I understood that these low-stress settings formed a whole, rounded attitude (the Austro-German word is gestalt), entirely opposed to my high-performance experience and belief-system, I considered revolting and doing it my way, secure in the knowledge that the majority of engineers on the cycle-engineering forum I belong to would applaud my principled stance. Then I remembered my ten-year warranty, subject to annual inspections...

So I remade the settings as they came from the factory. It was in fact just as well that I hadn't yet sent the scathing letter I had drafted to send the manufacturer of my Rohloff bike (not Thorn) because I would have looked an awful fool.

I won't say the looser settings made my Rohloff more resistant to breakage or longer-lived (clearly the designer's intention) because my Rohloff, though often heavily loaded by my painting gear as well as my altogether too corporeal temporal presence and an electric setup with a humongous high-coulomb battery plus a motor chosen for its torque, is not stressed in the same way as high-mile commuters and world tourers stress their bikes; but I have no difficulty seeing how the official setup would work in failure-proofing their gearboxes.

What I will say is that the much more tolerant settings have made my Rohloff much easier to live with. I could probably make an arguable case that the tighter setting would have run-in my Rohloff box a bit quicker; this is not a negligible matter, as a Rohloff takes thousands of kilometers to run in: mine took 6-7-8000km, so a thousand klicks off would be a considerable matter, but then again, an equally arguable case would be that the initial harsh treatment would come off the other end of the Rohloff's lifespan, and would amount to a damned sight more than a miserable thousand klicks. But I didn't find the Rohloff noisy in my most-used gear 11, and what I objected to most, the psychologically depressing sighing sound in gears 7 and 8, wasn't objected to by too many other owners, and eventually went away; what was noticeable was that with my original tight setup the Rohloff was certainly ever so slightly noisier than with the book setup. (Understand, please: my Rohloff was pretty silent from the beginning, but I used to be a music critic and at one stage designed tube amplifiers and horn speaker enclosures for a living; my ears have lifelong training to hear sounds most people don't, and I identify them as noise when most people would dismiss, without conscious thought, the slight ambient disturbance as general background "white sound".)

Specific advice for the OP follows.
I tried to adjust them. When from 8 through 14 is ok, 1-7 it does not match the digits to arrow. First gear goes to 0.5 and 7th to 6.5. When i adjusted it, than high gears does not match with arrow. 14th gear is almost on 13th.

Cruz

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Re: Rough friction Feeling
« Reply #25 on: July 27, 2018, 12:39:48 pm »
Quote
Was it without friction feeling from  that moment you bought it?

Thanks, Cruz.  I could feel no friction/vibration from the moment I bought the Rohloff (new).

But I see that lestat, geo and Danneaux have felt some vibration. That disappeared with use, as the hub became quiter as well.

As for adjusting shifter cables:  Do you have the hub with the EXT box, or the internal shifter?  I have an internal shifter on my Raven.  If you have that, let me know and I can send you a personal message with the instructions for adjusting the cable tension.

Tbilisi!!  Wow!  I'd love to visit you there -- we could compare hub noises  :)  But it's a loooong way from Ottawa, Canada.

Cheers,  John
It is internal John. Will be glad for helping. I tried to adjust them equal, but really did not understand what is problem. as i wrote up there "When from 8 through 14 is ok, 1-7 it does not match the digits to arrow. First gear goes to 0.5 and 7th to 6.5. When i adjusted it, than high gears does not match with arrow. 14th gear is almost on 13th." but there are indexed points in the hub so it does not matter how digits matches to arrow on shifter yes? or the shifter is with indexed steps?

Cruz

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Re: Rough friction Feeling
« Reply #26 on: July 27, 2018, 01:40:33 pm »
Tbilisi!!  Wow!  I'd love to visit you there -- we could compare hub noises  :)  But it's a loooong way from Ottawa, Canada.

Cheers,  John
Here come a lot of velotourists from foreign countries. Also to see other post soviet countries there.

John Saxby

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Re: Rough friction Feeling
« Reply #27 on: July 28, 2018, 02:49:14 am »
Thanks, Cruz.  I am away from my bike and my manual just now -- will send a message on Tuesday when I get home.

I like to have my shifter a little bit loose.  I have set it so that the pointer on the shifter is about one-third of the way past the number of the gear, thus: 1.3, 2.3, etc.  If it's 1.5, 2.5, etc., that seems to be OK too.

Cheers,  John

Andre Jute

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Re: Rough friction Feeling
« Reply #28 on: July 28, 2018, 06:28:09 am »
I tried to adjust them. When from 8 through 14 is ok, 1-7 it does not match the digits to arrow. First gear goes to 0.5 and 7th to 6.5. When i adjusted it, than high gears does not match with arrow. 14th gear is almost on 13th.

This is quite normal. George (mickeg) did tell you that his bike has almost a full number division play, and I did say, in the next post to the one you quote, that my brake cables are looser still. The system is not indexed to the rotary controller in any way, so loose cables make no difference. All the precision you expect is inside the hub. As long as the gears change and the cable is not too tight, the whereabouts of the pointer in relation to its gear (within reason) makes no difference whatsoever.

You'll get along with the Rohloff a lot better if you cease to think of it in terms of a lightweight roadbike's jewel-like precision in the transmission. Instead think of it as a piece of sturdy machinery built with precise tolerances only where it really, really matters (and can be covered up without adding grotesquely to the weight), and elsewhere specified to survive muddy, grating, grinding offroad riding, where precision engineering is actually hostile to long life. The Rohloff is a touring bike gearbox only by the accident of Utopia being the first manufacturer to specify it; it was originally designed as a mud-plugger.

Until John Saxby sends you his detailed instructions, you can leave it as is, and no harm will ensue.

By the way, congratulations on the quality of your English.

Cruz

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Re: Rough friction Feeling
« Reply #29 on: July 28, 2018, 07:08:37 am »
Thanks, Cruz.  I am away from my bike and my manual just now -- will send a message on Tuesday when I get home.

I like to have my shifter a little bit loose.  I have set it so that the pointer on the shifter is about one-third of the way past the number of the gear, thus: 1.3, 2.3, etc.  If it's 1.5, 2.5, etc., that seems to be OK too.

Cheers,  John
Thank you John. Will wait for it.