For what it's worth - Rohloff rumour

[il padrone]

What I reckon too, Danneaux, thanks.


Yes the Rohloff was designed to work for beach riding, in sand and salt air, but not actually in the saltwater. This = a step too far.


I'm reminded of one ferry trip we took over to French Island.... on a hydrofoil that was licenced to carry ten passengers !! Really just a glorified speed boat. On the way back from the island the hydrofoil was punching into (through) a short steep 2m chop. With green water washing through the spokes of our bikes, including our tandem, lashed on the bow pulpit   I was so disheartened by the results of this that I did not even do anything to the bike for a week, then I stripped off the whole drivetrain (due for replacement anyway) and trashed it. New drivetrain, and I went scrupulously over the whole bike, removing and lubing all bolts, derailleurs, brakes etc and applying Killrust to any steel bolts. In the end, apart from bolts with an aged patina, the bike came out of it really quite OK, all things considered.

[Andre Jute]

Yah, I'm with Dan. In the harvest season, I repay the farmers and their wives who've been patient with my bike in their lanes by not holding up the harvesters dashing about. You can often see me standing knee-deep in the ditch, holding my bike above my head, or supporting it on the very edge of the road.

I reckon a Rohloff isn't sealed in the normal automobile sense of sealed shafts. That would make it far too heavy. And breathing holes, like you say, Pete. The whole business is too dicey for me to contemplate submerging a Rohloff, or a SON, or the electric motor now on my bike in the place of the SON.

And, man, at the present rate of riding, I probably won't live long enough to run in another Rohloff gearbox. I just got mine to where I want it, smooth as slicing through butter.

[mickeg]

The problem in soft sand is if your tires start to dig in, you can find yourself decelerating from jogging speed to zero speed in less than a second in the deep soft sand. 

I used my Nomad Mk II for four days of vehicle supported mountain biking a few weeks ago on the White Rim Trail in Canyonlands National Park, Utah (USA).  For that trip I bought a suspension front fork and cheap suspension seatpost, but otherwise my Nomad was pretty much "normal".  I used Marathon Extreme 2.25 (57mm) wide tires.  Of the 10 of us on that trip, everybody else used tires of similar width although everybody else used purely mountain bike tread on their full suspension bikes.  There were several soft sand segments where we had to push our bikes thru the sand for hundreds of feet.  Overall I think my tires worked just as badly as everybody else's tires in the soft sand.

A few lessons learned on soft sand:

1.  I prefer SPD type bike shoes with cleats.  I used Shimano M324 pedals, that allowed me to uncleat my shoes and still pedal the bike using the non-cleated side of the pedal.  That saved me from several falls when I came to a sudden halt as my tires dug into the soft sand.  Several others fell when they could not uncleat fast enough.

2.  When approaching soft sand, once in it you have to keep your weight back as much as practical and let your front tire float on the sand.  I use drop bars and have more forward lean than most people on mountain bikes where they sit more upright.  Thus on my bike I had a center of gravity further forward than everyone else, which was a clear detriment.

3.  In soft sand, keeping your momentum up is quite critical, once you slow down you dig in more and are more likely to suddenly stop.

4.  I was the only one in the group with a Rohloff, everybody else had derailleur gearing.  Thus, I could shift faster at slow speeds than anyone else in the group.  But even with a Rohloff, once I was struggling in the soft sand, I did not have time to shift.  So, if I did not pick a good gear going into the soft sand, I was stuck with a bad gear until I got out of it - and too high of a gear meant a greater chance of a sudden stop.

Although the Nomad was not full suspension like everyone else's bikes and I clearly had a weight penalty, I had a great time and was glad I brought the Nomad instead of renting a bike that was more appropriate for the trail.  But on the roughest sections, it was a bit frustrating watching everyone else fly past me as their bikes soaked up the bumps better.

[NZPeterG]

Hi All,
The new 170mm Rohloff is to small for the new racing Fat Tyre Bikes! You only find 170mm rear hubs on Race Bikes with tyres up to 4" wide!
If your going to win a Snow Race then the Tyre's are going to be up to 5" wide.
The new STD in Fat Tyre's in how 190mm wide!  

How until you all get to ride a Fat Bike? wait and I can Bet you all will come back with a Big Smile   they are light and fast to ride (apart from on Sealed Roads at speed) you can ride up step's and over rocks.

Try 1st and have Fun Riding One!

Pete...

[JimK]

That's the risk for Rohloff I think. Seems like a nice match in application, a tough hub and tough tires. But the technology is not stable, the standards keep changing. Ha, reminds me of an old joke:

"Don't you folks follow any standards?"

"Sure, we follow lots of standards! We just pick for each project which standard to follow!"

 

[Andre Jute]

Rohloff has had working variant prototypes before, and announced they were headed for production. Indeed, the "lightweight" was announced so regularly, I half expect it to come around again. But each time they've clearly decided that their reputation for reliability, which the current model established and has in spades, is their chief asset. That's a much-demonstrated level-headedness when it comes to releasing new a product that may or may not be up to scratch by Rohloff standards, whatever other perceived merits it may have for cyclists who are conditioned to consider light weight to be primary.

I reckon chances are good that Rohloff decides that a Rohloff that has to be offset to work in a generation of wheels already arrived, as Pete says, isn't right for Rohloff, and that the product is quietly buried.

If so, it'll reappear when the fat bike market stabilizes at a width, the way the 29er market stabilized at a maximum width of 60mm.