yet another oil change question

[intrasight]

I changed my oil a couple days before a 100 mile ride. My riding buddy observed and commented on there being a spot of oil that formed on my wheel below the hub every time I stopped for any amount of time. This was my first oil change. Did it myself and had no problems. But I don't know if I should be concerned with this leaking of oil. I assume that they only way to gauge the degree of leakage would be to perform another oil change and carefully measure what comes out. Should I be concerned enough to do so?

[TheShipwright]

I'm new to Rohloffs so not an expert, I pondered this recently when my 2nd hand hub was leaking small amounts of oil.   I spoke to Dave at SJS and he said he wouldn't be overly concerned about oil leaking.
I never went into amounts as my hub needed a service, which was why I was speaking to him.
I suppose long term you just need to make sure the hub doesn't run out oil so maybe increased top ups?

Is it worth completely cleaning the hub externally to establish where the leak is coming from?
In my case 95% of the leakage was caused by the disc flange gasket and I think I remember that someone else on here mentioned that they tightened the torx bits on their disc flange and their leak went away.

Good luck

[intrasight]

It could certainly benefit from a good cleaning. Thanks for that suggestion.

[mickeg]

The inaccuracies of draining the oil to measure how much you lost is likely not worth the effort, especially at the price of Rohloff oil.  And if you got a number, you have nothing to compare that number to so would that number actually mean anything?

All Rohloffs are expected to slowly lose oil, but I am rapidly concluding that the difference from one hub to the next is how fast that slow loss is.  Mine appears to be more rapid than most and I plan to check some gaskets later, but it is 3.5 years old right now and I am not going to worry about it.  Most of my oil loss is on the left side, so I know where to start looking.

This recent thread had a lot of discussion on oil leakage.
http://thorncyclesforum.co.uk/index.php?topic=11971.0

I think that the current Thorn recommendation is to put in 15 ml when changing oil, not 25.  I do not know what you put in.  Putting more in means more will leak out.

One thing you might want to look at, if you were actually getting noticeable drops forming during your ride, that suggests to me that you are losing it pretty fast, is your drain screw still in the hub or did it fall out and cause the leak?  I put a small piece of tape over my screw, although the tape probably does absolutely nothing.

Dave (from the SJS shop) pointed out in a previous thread that loctite on the screw is a good idea if you re-install the old screw to reduce the potential for dissimilar metal corrosion, besides making it less likely that the screw will fall out.

[intrasight]

The first thing I checked was the drain screw - it's still there. And it's a new screw that came with the oil change kit.
My next step is a good cleaning followed by careful observation.