Thorn Cycles Forum
Community => Rohloff Internal Hub Gears => Topic started by: Andyb1 on February 06, 2024, 08:59:26 PM
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Just in the process of doing my first Rohloff oil change, on a one year old gearbox, and I am surprised by how black the old oil is compared with the new. It looks like well used oil from a diesel engine! Or a graphite oil. Do they use a black oil with new gearboxes or is this change to blackness usual?
Thanks in advance.
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In my experience the used Rohloff oil looks filthy with the first few flushes having a noticeable metallic glint.
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On all of mine I did the first oil change at 2000km. I recall it was still pretty black even after that distance.
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I just did my Rohloff oil change. This is probably about the tenth time. The old oil is black, but it has always been black. So, I wonder if the oil color is even indicative of the degree of dirtiness inside the hub. Could the black color just be due to the admixture of the two different types of oil, i.e. cleaning oil and lubrication oil? Or could the oil be tinted by some of the nylon components inside the hub?
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I agree with the others, it looks quite used.
I did my first oil change earlier than specified.
Since Rohloff has such an exceptional reputation for long life, I would not worry about how bad it looks. My point is that if you have any urge to change oil more often than suggested, I would not bother with that.
If you were unaware, earlier on this forum someone noted that Rohloff has reduced their suggested amount of lube oil in oil changes, thus new bottles of lube oil may look surprisingly low on volume, but the cleaning oil volume remains the same as the past.
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Thanks for the replies, good to know ‘they are all like that’.
I used the new oil volume and will keep to just a yearly oil change.
I did the job over 2 days so any remaining oil could drip out.
For the volume, the oil is not cheap!
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I think the first two oil changes I did, I bought the kits of small bottles, syringe, etc.
But then I bought the 250ml size bottles several years ago.
Although they say to change it yearly, some years I did not bother to change it if I only did a few hundred miles in a year. And I have been using 15ml of oil, not 25m. Thus, I have several more years of supply from those larger bottles. Most of my miles are on derailleur bikes. If I do not take a trip with my Nomad, very few miles are ridden in that year.
But unfortunately, if you buy the 250ml bottles now, the lube oil bottle will probably be half empty now.
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Could the black color just be due to the admixture of the two different types of oil, i.e. cleaning oil and lubrication oil?
I don't think the extracted oil is blackened by a chemical reaction between the all-seasons running oil and the low-temperature cleaning oil as you posit. During the Chinese pandemic one year I rode less than a 100km because the mask steamed up my spectacles every two seconds. When I changed the oil after many months of not riding the bike, it was, if not clear, so slightly greyish that it was relatively transparent.
What I do think possible is that a reaction between the oil and the aluminium of the hub, plus pressure and a little heat between gears, could be responsible for blackening the oil, or more particularly the microscopic ground-off bits from the gears in the oil. If you've ever operated a car with an aluminium engine block, you'll have seen what I'm talking about. Also, I don't know precisely how much nylon there is in the Rohloff, but when my first front-wheel electric motor, bought as an experiment to learn about building electrified bikes, was trashed after about 3500km, the three nylon gears inside were blackened around the teeth.
I too do Andy's thing, and let the syringe hang down under the Rohloff overnight to extract the maximum amount of dirty oil.
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Usually there isn't much old oil left in the hub to come out, are you trying to drain it? I tried once without much success, enough to dirty the tube but none made it to the syringe. If we're talking about what comes out with the flushing oil, it the bit left clinging to the parts and the dregs, it won't take much to turn the flushing oil black. I do a double flush and the second one comes out only slightly cleaner, anyone with deep pockets could see how many flushes it takes before it comes out clear. When I did the hub on my folder in January it'd only done 800 miles since the last change, it still came out looking dirty.
I was going to say that it's always come out black, which is true, but then I remembered that Rohloff oil was originally black before you put it in.
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...When I did the hub on my folder in January it'd only done 800 miles since the last change, it still came out looking dirty.
I was going to say that it's always come out black, which is true, but then I remembered that Rohloff oil was originally black before you put it in.
My lube oil and cleaning oil are not quite clear, some color but not black. I have the 250ml bottles, but it looks like now the 250ml lube oil bottle is 125ml instead. The old stock pair of 250ml bottles must be gone.
https://www.sjscycles.co.uk/tools/rohloff-all-seasons-cleaning-oil-speedhub-oil-twin-pack-2-x-250-ml-bottle-for-speedhub-50014-8409/
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...When I did the hub on my folder in January it'd only done 800 miles since the last change, it still came out looking dirty.
I was going to say that it's always come out black, which is true, but then I remembered that Rohloff oil was originally black before you put it in.
My lube oil and cleaning oil are not quite clear, some color but not black. I have the 250ml bottles, but it looks like now the 250ml lube oil bottle is 125ml instead. The old stock pair of 250ml bottles must be gone.
https://www.sjscycles.co.uk/tools/rohloff-all-seasons-cleaning-oil-speedhub-oil-twin-pack-2-x-250-ml-bottle-for-speedhub-50014-8409/
Originals looked like this
(https://www.tnc-hamburg.com/TNC-Shop/images/product_images/info_images/28275_0_Rohloff_Oil_of_Speedhub_250ml.jpg)
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I have the 250ml bottles, but it looks like now the 250ml lube oil bottle is 125ml instead. The old stock pair of 250ml bottles must be gone.
At SJS, it's now the same ratio of 1:0.5 for the 3 sets (single oil change, 250/125, and 1 litre/0.5 litre).
With 3 Rohloff-equipped bikes I got the old 1 litre set.
I use more cleaning oil than lube oil for the Rohloffs, but as I also use the lube oil (but not the cleaning oil) in Sturmey-Archer hubs that more or less evens up consumption.
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Originals looked like this
(https://www.tnc-hamburg.com/TNC-Shop/images/product_images/info_images/28275_0_Rohloff_Oil_of_Speedhub_250ml.jpg)
I do not think I have seen lube oil that dark when it was new before. I think I bought my 250ml bottles in 2015 or 2016. Bought the hub in late winter, 2013.
Mine looks more like the SJS photos. Their big bottle photo at:
https://www.sjscycles.co.uk/tools/rohloff-all-seasons-cleaning-oil-speedhub-oil-twin-pack-2-x-1-litre-bottles-for-speedhub-50014-8406/
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That’s a useful picture. The original oil was indeed very black. I was surprised when I got a new batch how much it has changed. At the time I wondered if it had altered in some way during the 15 years it lasted me but the pic from PH confirms that was not the case. My 18 year old hub is now leaking quite a lot and is about to go to Somerset for some TLC. Just want to see out the worst of February first as the RST is my commuter.
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That’s a useful picture. The original oil was indeed very black. I was surprised when I got a new batch how much it has changed. At the time I wondered if it had altered in some way during the 15 years it lasted me but the pic from PH confirms that was not the case. My 18 year old hub is now leaking quite a lot and is about to go to Somerset for some TLC. Just want to see out the worst of February first as the RST is my commuter.
Interesting points. Thanks.
My hub is 12+ years old. No leaks yet. Any idea why yours is leaking?
What repairs do you think SJS will carry out?
Matt
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Rohloff has said that any hub can be expected to sweat some oil, and the hub is adequately lubricated by less than the indicated replacement volume, so leaks are not necessarily a sign of a problem.
Oil can also leak through the interface to the external gear mech, which is held in place by screws and paper gaskets. I installed this part myself when upgrading from the internal gear mech. Since I have noticed a slightly higher amount of leaked oil since then, I intend to eventually turn to the local authorized Rohloff service provider and have them redo the process.
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That’s a useful picture. The original oil was indeed very black. I was surprised when I got a new batch how much it has changed. At the time I wondered if it had altered in some way during the 15 years it lasted me but the pic from PH confirms that was not the case. My 18 year old hub is now leaking quite a lot and is about to go to Somerset for some TLC. Just want to see out the worst of February first as the RST is my commuter.
Interesting points. Thanks.
My hub is 12+ years old. No leaks yet. Any idea why yours is leaking?
What repairs do you think SJS will carry out?
I’m used to the misting and drip via the skewer or occasional around the inner cable mechanism but recently even a slight lean and the oil leaves a pool on the floor or on the wheel rim. I did a careful oil change to check I’d not messed up the last one, changed all the paper gaskets and checked the bolts. It seems to even come through the shell where the large gasket is. My best guess is the seals need replacing. While it is there I’ll have a new rim fitted, the css carbide has worn off and it’s not braking well even with softer compound blocks. Still not bad for the vintage!
Matt
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That’s a useful picture. The original oil was indeed very black. ...
Ok, they must have changed the formula over a year ago. I bought my hub in early 2013, and I think mine came out of the factory only a few months before it reached my hands.
Perhaps it also had some graphite in the oil back then, that would have added black to the color?
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...recently even a slight lean and the oil leaves a pool on the floor or on the wheel rim.
My oldest hub is also leaking, I assume from the main bearing seal, it's been doing it for a few years and I keep meaning to get it sorted, I've just done more oil changes if the miles warrant it and hope there's always enough oil clinging to the parts that need it. At one time you could buy the kit and do it yourself, I don't know why they stopped selling that, it seems a straightforward job, though there are those can mess anything up.
While it is there I’ll have a new rim fitted, the css carbide has worn off and it’s not braking well even with softer compound blocks. Still not bad for the vintage!
My last carbide rim is on the front of my Mercury, I'm hoping it'll outlast me! What's it look like when the carbide wears off? I'd assumed it went all the way through. Still 18 years is a good run for any rim. My Raven went through it's first in under two, can't remember what that was, Sun 18 sounds familiar.
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That’s a useful picture. The original oil was indeed very black. ...
Ok, they must have changed the formula over a year ago. I bought my hub in early 2013, and I think mine came out of the factory only a few months before it reached my hands.
Perhaps it also had some graphite in the oil back then, that would have added black to the color?
Rohloff oil is a fixed, same formulation, only as long as any batch lasts. Every time a new batch is made, the formulation changes on hand of what is available and presumably also on hand of developing information flowing from dealers and hubs returned to factory, plus from riders. This isn't unique to Rohloff: even big name motor oils from major vertically integrated brands (meaning they find, extract and refine their own oil and are thus in detailed control of the mixture in the retail can) is subject to creeping development on the pattern and for the same reasons as Rohloff. I don't know a great deal about oil chemistry but I do remember an Atlas Copco general manager once telling me that the sulphur content of oils from a particular region was higher than anywhere else in the world. If Shell and Mobil etc cannot guarantee the exact, precise same oil from year to year at the point of sale, it follows that Rohloff cannot either. But why should they want to? The oils available to them are not likely to be a retrograde; quite the opposite, they are likely to be better at any step, though probably also more expensive.
On the difference in colour between the cleaning oil and the all-seasons oil straight from the bottle: Heavy crude is black because of the way it is formed from plant matter by time and pressure. At each successive stage of refinement it gets thinner and greyer, until it is very thin and clear. I suspect that both the Rohloff oils would be described by an engineer as "light machine oils" but the cleaning/low temperature oil is lighter because it so thin from further refining than the darker all-seasons oil, each further stage of refinement removing more impurities and therefore becoming more translucent.
Rohloff itself has told us something about their oil, specifically in the warning not to put any old automobile or other non-Rohloff oil in their hub: they need to specify it so that it works with Rohloff's weight-saving filter scheme.
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Usually there isn't much old oil left in the hub to come out, are you trying to drain it? I tried once without much success, enough to dirty the tube but none made it to the syringe.
After a 20 mile ride I removed the plug, put a little plastic container between the spokes and left it to drain, occasionally turning the wheel a little either way and also leaning the bike sideways. Got quite a lot out, not far off 125ml. Then flushed it. Seemed better to add flushing oil once I had got as much oil out as possible,
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After a 20 mile ride I removed the plug, put a little plastic container between the spokes and left it to drain, occasionally turning the wheel a little either way and also leaning the bike sideways. Got quite a lot out, not far off 125ml. Then flushed it. Seemed better to add flushing oil once I had got as much oil out as possible,
I assume you meant 25ml, not 125.
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That’s a useful picture. The original oil was indeed very black. ...
Ok, they must have changed the formula over a year ago. I bought my hub in early 2013, and I think mine came out of the factory only a few months before it reached my hands.
Perhaps it also had some graphite in the oil back then, that would have added black to the color?
Rohloff oil is a fixed, same formulation, only as long as any batch lasts. Every time a new batch is made, the formulation changes on hand of what is available and presumably also on hand of developing information flowing from dealers and hubs returned to factory, plus from riders. This isn't unique to Rohloff: even big name motor oils from major vertically integrated brands (meaning they find, extract and refine their own oil and are thus in detailed control of the mixture in the retail can) is subject to creeping development on the pattern and for the same reasons as Rohloff. I don't know a great deal about oil chemistry but I do remember an Atlas Copco general manager once telling me that the sulphur content of oils from a particular region was higher than anywhere else in the world. If Shell and Mobil etc cannot guarantee the exact, precise same oil from year to year at the point of sale, it follows that Rohloff cannot either. But why should they want to? The oils available to them are not likely to be a retrograde; quite the opposite, they are likely to be better at any step, though probably also more expensive.
On the difference in colour between the cleaning oil and the all-seasons oil straight from the bottle: Heavy crude is black because of the way it is formed from plant matter by time and pressure. At each successive stage of refinement it gets thinner and greyer, until it is very thin and clear. I suspect that both the Rohloff oils would be described by an engineer as "light machine oils" but the cleaning/low temperature oil is lighter because it so thin from further refining than the darker all-seasons oil, each further stage of refinement removing more impurities and therefore becoming more translucent.
Rohloff itself has told us something about their oil, specifically in the warning not to put any old automobile or other non-Rohloff oil in their hub: they need to specify it so that it works with Rohloff's weight-saving filter scheme.
I was under the impression that the oil is synthetic and hence not varying in composition. Color could be from additives.
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After a 20 mile ride I removed the plug, put a little plastic container between the spokes and left it to drain, occasionally turning the wheel a little either way and also leaning the bike sideways. Got quite a lot out, not far off 125ml. Then flushed it. Seemed better to add flushing oil once I had got as much oil out as possible,
I assume you meant 25ml, not 125.
That's a nice tip. Small plastic container between the spokes and tipping / leaning the bike.
I usually leave the syringe tube attached over night to drain onto tissues.
I'll try your tip next oil change.
Thanks
Matt
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After a 20 mile ride I removed the plug, put a little plastic container between the spokes and left it to drain, occasionally turning the wheel a little either way and also leaning the bike sideways. Got quite a lot out, not far off 125ml. Then flushed it. Seemed better to add flushing oil once I had got as much oil out as possible,
I assume you meant 25ml, not 125.
No, I meant 12.5ml.
It was difficult knowing exactly what volume came out as a little spilled, but when I later poured the drained oil into the empty little bottle that the new oil had come in there was around 10ml. The hub is 1 year old, does not leak, so I guess 12.5ml of oil was originally in it?
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I’m assuming that the 10ml you got out was before you flushed so didn’t include cleaning oil. If your hub is a year old then it predates last October when Rohloff announced it was acceptable to halve the amount of new oil that should be put into the hub, at the recommended service intervals, to 12.5ml. Therefore I imagine that the hub would have had 25ml rather than 12.5ml put in after manufacture and before sale to you a year ago. . Rohloff say that about 12ml of oil will always stick to the components inside the hub so on that basis the 10ml you extracted sounds ok to me.
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I was under the impression that the oil is synthetic and hence not varying in composition. Color could be from additives.
Synthetic or organic, generally speaking all oils have some additives, so your point would apply in both cases. It's a very good point though, because the other thing obvious to me is that Rohloff wants to keep control of the oil put into their hubs precisely so that they can first discover that the filters in the hub will not be destroyed by either the native "extras" in the oil or the additives the oil company chemists used to make the oil and its derivatives potable for modern machinery, and even human application.* That was the import of my remark about relative amounts of sulphur in oils sourced from different parts of the globe.
* In having some kind of a growth cut off the back of my hand, I discovered something amazing about one oil by-product, Vaseline. The surgeon insisted I put Vaseline on the three inch long scar sewn up on the back of my hand. To my amazement it worked, in that together with the Mohs stitching (praised by the nurse who took out the stitches, who previously worked in cosmetic surgery) it has caused the scar to become entirely invisible. Vaseline by smell seems related to the kerosene I burn in the heating boiler, but I've now replaced my lifelong skin cream, Johnson's Baby Lotion, with Vaseline. All the same, I'm not about to try Vaseline as a packing for the EXT box on my Rohloff...
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Rohloff’s FAQ (https://www.rohloff.de/en/service/handbook/faqs) has, it turns out, an explanation for why the oil that comes out is always black. It does not indicate that the internals were dirty:
The oil extracted during the oil change procedure is typically a dark anthracite color. The majority of internal SPEDHUB components are heat-treated. This process creates a dark surface on these components which the minimal "polishing" effect of normal operation, then removes and transfers to the oil. This is also the reason used SPEEDHUB oil can appear to "sparkle" in the light.
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Rohloff’s FAQ (https://www.rohloff.de/en/service/handbook/faqs) has, it turns out, an explanation for why the oil that comes out is always black. It does not indicate that the internals were dirty:
The oil extracted during the oil change procedure is typically a dark anthracite color. The majority of internal SPEDHUB components are heat-treated. This process creates a dark surface on these components which the minimal "polishing" effect of normal operation, then removes and transfers to the oil. This is also the reason used SPEEDHUB oil can appear to "sparkle" in the light.
Thanks for this which is very interesting.
I've done an oil change today at 11k miles where the oil had a hint of sparkle. I'm sure, however, that the first few oil changes contained small sparkly particles.
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I've done an oil change today at 11k miles where the oil had a hint of sparkle. I'm sure, however, that the first few oil changes contained small sparkly particles.
The difference in "sparkle" is the difference between gears in a new gearbox knocking off relatively larger pieces (though still pretty small) from each other as they settle into mutual harmony, and much smaller pieces worn off by grinding two pieces of metal together with tiny particles in progressively more dirty oil, plus the detritus of inter-metal (steel and aluminium) corrosion.
When I was a student, I trashed my Porsche racing in the storm gutters beside a section of the road in what was then still Southern Rhodesia. I had to be in class Monday morning at 0800 hours over a thousand miles away, because I'd tangled with the Comtesse de Reville over some curious lacunae in her textbook (in a book on markets, she didn't even mention Karl Marx) and she had announced I'd better not cut any classes to play polo or race cars or speedboats or sailing yachts or any other sporting "frivolity" or she'd get me rusticated (sent down, expelled). At an auction for used car salesmen, I bought the only car I had enough cash for, an ex-highway police pursuit Jaguar Mk II with 250,000 miles on the clock. I paid £50. It saw me appear for class Monday morning at 0755 in Stellenbosch. I actually set some records with and raced this car, and then used it as a tow car for my racing cars. When I next passed through Rhodesia, I told the police commissioner, seated across from me at dinner in Government House, about this marvellous Jaguar. The next day he took me to see the wizard of longevity, the chief mechanic of the colony's police force. This old-time time-served master craftsman showed me his secret: they never switched off that car's engine. It was operated by three shifts around the clock, 24/7/365. Every 3000 miles they changed the oil with the engine idling, pouring in new oil at the top while draining old oil from the bottom, until the oil running out came out clean. I don't quite know how you would do the same with a Rohloff without spraying oil everywhere, but the 3000 mile oil service cycle for that miraculous Jaguar (and all their other pursuit cars) sounds very much like the Rohloff suggestion of an oil change at 3000 miles -- a proven, validated precautionary measure.