The creator of this topic puts in his hub a 9 years old oil ?!?
So why Rolhoff recommends to change oil on 5000 kms or on every year even with 0 kilometers ?
How it is fine to put 9 years old oil then (on 0 kilometers) ?
Either this is not good practice, or Rohloff are too conservative in their oil change recommendations. Which of both it is ?
Hi, McLeod. I'm Andre Jute, the creator of this thread. I'm sorry we're having this misunderstanding. I'm a novelist, so I don't try for the brutal clarity of the engineers, like George (mickeg). But I think we can enlighten your confusion with a few facts that are all beyond dispute by experienced Rohloff owners and riders and mechanics.
1. Rohloff tells you plainly in the manual and on their site that you
must change the oil in your Rohloff gearbox every 5000km/3000m or every year, whichever comes first. If you're on tour, they will be understanding of a
limited overrun. However, Rohloff is so serious about the oil changes, even in a year in which the box covered, as you say, 0km, that they will take away your very valuable warranty if you do not perform these routine services. That's not all. Rohloff is famous for not charging customers even beyond the guarantee period as long as they have not abused the gearbox by, among other possible abuses, failing to change the oil.
2. The Rohloff manual states that the box holds 25ml of oil, and this is the amount of all seasons oil that beginners should insert after the cleaning oil is drained. However, OEMs (bicycle manufacturers who fit Rohloff as original equipment, such as Thorn) are well aware of three other facts:
2.1 Your Rohloff, everyone's Rohloff, left the factory with 12ml of oil clinging to the gears, and can safely be run on this amount for the first year. So, so some people conclude that 12ml is a safe minimum to aim for.
2.2 But the question is, how will you measure exactly 12ml, absolutely no less. Most of us, and certainly not the people who sell bikes and will have to replace a very expensive gearbox if they screw it up by being cheap about a couple of millilitres of oil, just aren't going to take the chance. So 14ml just grew to be accepted by most people as a safe amount of new oil to put in every year or 3000m/5000km, whichever comes first.
2.3 Rohloff will not penalise you under -- again -- the very valuable if unspoken extended warranty that in practice they give you if you regularly put in 14ml rather than 25ml.
3. Rohloff continuously develops the two oils, the cleaning oil (which is also the ultra-cold winter oil) and the all seasons oil (which is the one most of us would normally use). But the fact that they sell these oils in volumes up to one litre (which is 40 services!) to the retail trade for selling on to individual customers, rather than supplying these large cans of oil exclusively to the Rohloff service trade, tells you Rohloff isn't worried that the oil will somehow over time lose its potency even over a period measured in decades. So it doesn't matter that I'm using an oil kit that I bought in bulk nine years ago. The important information is that the Rohloff was regularly serviced once a year (I never rode it more than 5000km in any year). Actually I bought ten kits, and serviced the box twice in the first year, once after a few hundred kilometres to get the bits of metal knocked off the teeth out, plus another time to re-establish the regular routine of servicing the bike in January, an easy date to remember.
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I have no idea where the 8ml amount mentioned above came from, nor any interest in finding out whether it is a realistic service amount. It's enough for me that 14ml, easy to measure, is adequately more than the 12ml factory minimum to give me a margin of safety. It's not that I can't afford another Rohloff box, though it is an expensive item, it is that my Rohloff is just nicely run-in to where it changes almost as smoothly as Shimano's Nexus Premium (a landmark for me), and the Rohloff's noise floor, always very low, has dropped permanently below ambient noise on the quiet country lanes where I ride, so this
particular Rohloff box is precious to me. (If you think that's being over-finicky, read on this forum Danneaux the Moderator's persistent questioning on the subject of noise before he bought a Rohloff. Those are all questions I would have asked before I bought a Rohloff, if only I knew who to ask...)
You're right. Rohloff is over-conservative in their servicing demands, but with a box so expensive do you really want to save a few pennies every year on oil? The actual reason for private owners, as distinct from bicycle workshops like Dave's at Thorn, to put in 14ml or some near-volume like 15 or 16ml, is to prevent misting-out of oil, and oil drips via the breather hole, and thus to save on cleaning-up. If you have the EXT klickbox, Rohloff is wildly over-conservative in demanding that it be serviced every 500km -- that's right, 500, not 5000. I ran an experiment in which I determined that, if you fill the EXT klickbox to the brim with a superior quality of grease, for a low-miles rider like me, servicing it at the time of the oil change is more than adequate. I went up to 2500km between services of the EXT klickbox and the grease wasn't even discoloured, never mind dirty or thin. German cover-your-assery is a wondrous, maybe even unique example of cost-accounting creating unnecessary expense.
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Don't hesitate to ask for clarification of anything you don't understand, or any further questions. If I do not know the answer, someone else will.
