Thorn Cycles Forum
Community => Rohloff Internal Hub Gears => Topic started by: Donerol on June 21, 2026, 03:57:19 PM
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Fairly recently I bought a s/h Paul Hewitt with a Rohloff, internal mech, with cables routed along the top tube. The shifter was quite stiff at the time, and is now unusable. The hub cables move all right when I unclip them, but if I then pull on the cables to the shifter I can hardly move them at all. Do I need to buy a whole new shifter? When I bought the bike I fitted new (genuine Rohloff) cables to the shifter and things worked fine, but now I can’t use the bike at all.
I have used a Thorn Raven for a good ten years without any problems - it’s so old that it has the triangular shifter. These days however I find it too heavy to hang it up by the back wheel as required by some Scotrail trains. The Hewitt is much lighter and easier, so obviously I want to sort the problem.
Hope someone can help - thanks!
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I've had this. it's been a problem with the cables in the shifter being out of the grooves, or the nipples not property sat in their indents*. You should be able to push the cables part out, as if you were changing them, to examine, if there's any roughness, change them. If not, a smear of grease, push.pull back into place and see if that helps. If the pulley itself has become chewed up, they're replaceable, at least for the light version of the shifter. It's been a few years since I changed one, can't remember how it stripped down, but I'm sure it was straightforward.
https://www.sjscycles.co.uk/hub-spares/rohloff-cable-pulley-for-twistshifter-light-8194/
* I know people have had success with other makes of cables, but my experience has been that not all cables sit as neatly in these indents as the Rohloff specific ones or the SRAM ones SJS recommend.
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Thanks - I’ll have a look tomorrow when I’ve got a bit more time. I did use new, genuine Rohloff cables so I hope I haven’t done something daft that has chewed things up! I’ll let you know how I get on.