Thinking to buy a Rohloff

[mel0]

Hello guys,
I'm new on the forum and this is my first message. I've read a lot the threads and they've been really helpful. I'm almost ready to equip my bike with Rohloff but after reading few threads about problems I'm steel uncertain. I've seen that the most common problem are with oil leaking, bearing and water ingress. I ride my bike in a very wet and remote area, usually Mtb, so I'm concerning about the reliability. My shimano deore 2x10 works just fine but maintenance is time consuming and a pain considering that my bike is my only means of transport (I use it for commuting all year around no matter what and for holiday trip).
I know that nothing is perfect and even the Rohloff can fail but I'm wondering if the price really repay me back if I have to spend money and time to send the hub back to German (considering that with Brexit could be more expensive and time consuming). In addiction to that the water ingress is really concerning me, I live in England and usually I do bikepacking in the Scottish Highland and Wales where can rain for days and where there isn't even a service phone. Any advice guys?
Thanks to everyone and sorry in advance if something is not clear but I'm not English mother tongue.

[in4]

Firstly, welcome. I’m sure others will contribute shortly but:
The low maintenance, reliability and longevity of a Rohloff hub are very attractive to cyclists who ride in some of the most remote places in the world. Doing an oil change is easy and not an issue. I’ve not heard of many oil leak issues of significance. I’ve heard of slight oil seepage/ misting after long haul flights but nothing to effect performance.
Obviously you need to avoid immersing the hub in water but heavy rain and shallow surface water is not an issue.

Assuming you don’t have a Thorn bike and your current bike doesn’t have an eccentric bottom bracket: How will you tension your chain?

Hope that helps but ask away! Someone will offer good, credible advice for sure.

[mel0]

Hi in4,
many thanks for replying me. I read about the oil leak also in Rohloff manual and this shouldn't be a problem. My concern is more about heavy rain, mentioned in Rohloff manual as well if I'm not wrong, and with bearing wear that I read to happen often. My bike is a Surly Ogre with horizontal dropout.
Cheers

[PH]

There's two oil leaking possibilities, that's sometimes not understood and discussions become confusing when people don't realise they're talking about different things.
1) Oil seepage. This happens with all hubs, they're not entirely oil tight and a few ml over the period between oil changes leaks out.  That usually shows itself as a dirty oily covering of the dropouts and wipes off easily, occasionally it results in a droplet on the floor.  Best not to travel with the wheel/bike on it's side as this can increase it.  You can minimise this by using less oil, see the "Living with a Rohloff" pdf for one way of doing this (It's the method I use)
2) Oil passing worn seals. I have a hub that's doing this, it started after about 90,000 miles and I keep meaning to do something about it, though I haven't got round to it in the 15,000 miles since I noticed. It's still not a huge loss, a small puddle after being stood at the end of a long ride. There used to be a kit and tool you could buy to do it yourself, now it needs sending back to a service centre.
I ride my hubs in all weathers, try not to submerge them, when that happens I'll do an early flush and oil change as a precaution.  It takes no time and is cheap enough if you've bought the bulk containers of oils.
Last point on hub issues - If you are in the UK and buy it from a reputable UK supplier there shouldn't be any need you you to have to send it back to Germany at any time. My original hub came with a Thorn bike and has had several bits of work done on it by SJS, so when I wanted another I also bought from there.  I could have saved a few quid and bought from Germany (It was just a few and even that might not be possible now), but the peace of mind was worth more than the saving.

I put a Rohloff in an Ogre last year, it's a tank! Quite good fun to ride, but you'll know that already. It's just coming up to 5,000 miles, mostly urban and all trouble free.  I went for the TS nutted hub rather than QR as my frame has the wider 145mm spacing which also required hub spacers.   The chain tensioning isn't as straightforward as on the Thorn with an EBB, each time you do it you also have to readjust the brake mounting and the hub torque screw, it doesn't need doing often, but I wouldn't want to faff with it on tour.  Wheel removal isn't as simple either, but again not a big deal.  I'd recommend a Surly Tugnut to make sure it goes back the same each time.  If you have any Rohloff/Ogre specific questions I'd be happy to answer if I can.

Beast by Paul, on Flickr

[buffet]

Hey PH,

I have a question regarding your Rohloff-Ogre setup as I am going to transfer my Rohloff from Kona Unit to Surly ECR, which has same dropouts as the Ogre. Does the Tuggnut that you're using on the driveside serve 2 purposes - one is to make sure your wheel always goes back into the same position in the dropouts, second one - it prevents the wheel from slipping in the dropouts, right? Is it enough to just have the Tuggnut on the driveside dropout and nothing on the non-drive side?

[steve216c]

Hello Mel0,
I bought a 2nd hand Rohloff equipped bike almost 2 years ago. I have had a minor oil leak which was cured with a paper gasket. But I can truly say that it has been a great investment. I have hardly needed to do any maintenance. And what I have needed to do was supported with easy to follow videos from Rohloff and others on YouTube.
I won’t lie, some procedures are a bit different to a traditional derailleur bike, but nothing is difficult. My hub is around 21,000km old, and 11,000 are from me. But I have hardly needed to do any repairs, but just standard maintenance service once a year and the occasional dropout adjustment from chain wear as I am on sliders and not an eccentric.
If anything, the hub just gets smoother as I put on the miles.

Obviously don’t go swimming with the bike. But a Chainglider will keep most of the water from your drive train that the Scottish weather will invariably drop on you. And that alone will mean you can have extended riding without the need to clean/oil your chain regularly. Keeps your trousers oil free too.
Of course you could consider belt drive if you want to ditch traditional chain drive. There are belts that can be fitted to non belt frames. They might save some maintenance too.
All in all, I don’t need to do much for my Rohloff bike compared with my derailleur bike which needs more tinkering more regularly. I ride approx 100 miles a week ago in all weathers and my bike just works in rain, sun, sleet or snow.
Is it worth it? I think so.

[mickeg]

Do not worry about the oil leaking out of the hub.  Enough oil remains in the hub to keep it well lubricated until your next scheduled oil change.  You can wipe off any excess oil and dirt that accumulates.  I use disposable paper towels on occasion for that.

Do not worry about water leaking into the hub from rain, as long as you carry out the scheduled oil changes and do not immerse your hub in water when fording a stream or creek.  I have taken my Rohloff bike on a couple of tours that were a month long in very wet weather.  When I changed my oil later, there was no sign that any water had gotten into the hub.

Make sure that the wheel builder knows how to build up a Rohloff wheel, confirm that they read the Rohloff instructions.  For example, a standard wheel is laced for a three cross spoke pattern, but a Rohloff for your size wheel would be two cross. 

Thorn uses a 17 tooth sprocket (odd number of teeth) on the hub unless the buyer specifies otherwise.  Rohloff sells hubs with 16 tooth (even number).  If you get a hub with an even number of teeth, read this. 
https://www.sheldonbrown.com/chain-life.html

I cut a small notch in one tooth on my sprocket and one tooth on my chainring so that every time I put the chain back on the wheel, a link with outer plates goes on those notched teeth, as noted in that article.

You will need to decide what size chain ring you want, change the teeth on that and the entire gear range goes up or down.  Around home I use a 44T chainring, but when on a tour with a heavily loaded bike I use a 36T chainring.  This is on a bike with 26 inch wheels and 57mm wide tires.  I have to add or subtract four chain links to make the change.

An FYI, you are used to having taught shifter cables.  But the indexing is in the hub on a Rohloff, one cable is used to downshift and one to upshift, you need to keep those cables slack.  If you have your cables too tight you will have shifting problems.  I have about a half gear change of slack in each cable.

If you want a disc brake, budget separately for a Rohloff pattern disc.

I do not know if you use drop bars, if you do, there are different ways to mount your shifter.  I tried several locations, eventually decided on a hubbub adapter and put my shifter on the right side bar end.

[mickeg]

Are you familiar with this document?
http://www.sjscycles.com/thornpdf/ThornLivingWithARohloff_LoRes.pdf

The author was rather opinionated, but there is a lot of good information in it.  It is listed as being a 2013 version, so it pre-dates the hub reinforcing rings and pre-dates the splined sprockets.  But otherwise not much has changed.

[PH]

Do not worry about the oil leaking out of the hub.

This is what I referred to above.  What sort of oil leak should we not worry about?

[PH]

Are you familiar with this document?
http://www.sjscycles.com/thornpdf/ThornLivingWithARohloff_LoRes.pdf

The 2020 version can be fond here
http://www.sjscycles.com/thornpdf/ThornLivingWithARohloff.pdf

[PH]

Hey PH,

I have a question regarding your Rohloff-Ogre setup as I am going to transfer my Rohloff from Kona Unit to Surly ECR, which has same dropouts as the Ogre. Does the Tuggnut that you're using on the driveside serve 2 purposes - one is to make sure your wheel always goes back into the same position in the dropouts, second one - it prevents the wheel from slipping in the dropouts, right? Is it enough to just have the Tuggnut on the driveside dropout and nothing on the non-drive side?

Yes, the Tugnut can also help avoid the axle being pulled forwards, though on a nutted axle that's easier to avoid, even without anything else, than it is with a QR. I've seen people use one on each side, but not with a Rohloff.  If you have it set right, the torque bolt on the NDS will stop that side from moving forwards, though the chances of that are less likely than on the DS anyway. 
Disc brakes increase the importance of having the wheel perfectly square, if the wheel isn't right in the dropouts, the disc rotor won't be right in the calliper.

[buffet]

Thank you, PH. I will share my build here once I get it done closer to the end of the month

[mickeg]

Do not worry about the oil leaking out of the hub.

This is what I referred to above.  What sort of oil leak should we not worry about?

How many kinds are there?

Are you familiar with this document?
http://www.sjscycles.com/thornpdf/ThornLivingWithARohloff_LoRes.pdf

The 2020 version can be fond here
http://www.sjscycles.com/thornpdf/ThornLivingWithARohloff.pdf

Thanks for posting.

Why would they keep the 2013 version up when they have a 2020 version also posted?

[PH]

Do not worry about the oil leaking out of the hub.

This is what I referred to above.  What sort of oil leak should we not worry about?

How many kinds are there?

http://thorncyclesforum.co.uk/index.php?topic=14285.msg106591#msg106591

[mickeg]

Do not worry about the oil leaking out of the hub.

This is what I referred to above.  What sort of oil leak should we not worry about?

How many kinds are there?

http://thorncyclesforum.co.uk/index.php?topic=14285.msg106591#msg106591

I pasted this from page 21 from the 2013 version of the Living with a Rohloff that I listed the link for above:

With the Rohloff hub, the first thing to understand is that the
internals are not supposed to run in an “oil bath” in the strict sense of
the term. The seals required, to prevent any light oil from leaking, if the
hub was filled with oil, would cause too much friction to be acceptable
to most human engines, which produce around 300w. It would be more
accurate to say that “the internals run with oil-coated surfaces, in an
environment, which is sealed from outside contamination.”
The internals of the Rohloff hub become coated with oil. It takes 7ml of
oil to coat all the surfaces. If you put 25ml of oil into a brand new (unlubricated) hub, ran it for 3 minutes and then immediately tried to drain
the hub, you would only be able to drain out 18ml of oil.
When you change the oil, if you put the 25ml of oil, that Rohloff
suggest, into the hub there will still be 7ml of oil adhering to the
internals...which is 32ml in total. 25ml of this oil will leak out slowly, as
an oil mist and when you come to perform the next oil change in a year,
or in 5000Km, there will be very little excess oil left in the hub. There will
always be 7ml adhering to the internals.