...this is the reply from SJS:
["]Rohloff offer what is described as a 'revision'. This entails fitment (on an exchange basis) of factory reconditioned internals, new bearings, seals, gaskets and bolts plus fresh oil of course. This is guaranteed for a period of 2 years.["]
I don't like that free-floating parenthetical "on an exchange basis". Does it mean that Rohloff will (A) exchange some worn components inside your own gearbox for new, or (B) simply take another rebuilt set of internals off the shelf and put them in your shell (which at least preserves the continuity of the serial number) so that what you get back is perhaps someone else's preloved components, with an equal risk of getting some nevermind's pretrashed components or even simply more worn than your own components but not to the extent of replacement? I wouldn't fancy B at all; too uncertain.
Another question which needs answering is whether any of the moving, mating parts, like the gears, are being replaced, and consequently the unlucky owner will have to go through the running-in process of the Rohloff again, which in such a long-lived mechanism is northwards of 5000m/8000km, depending on how refined you want your Rohloff to be.
On the whole, I think your decision, Matt, not to mess with what ain't broken, is the right one.
A couple of years before 2010 the subject of the longevity of a Rohloff hub gearbox arose when the the first few permanent bicycle tourers reached 200,000km, and not too long afterwards the quarter-million. Herr Rohloff himself, at a summer meeting of Utopia owners, said that he wasn't making any forecasts of what his gearbox's service life would be. A toolmaker at Boeing told me that I needn't fear buying a Rohloff because it's a German engineering masterpiece which starts being run in when a Shimano Nexus lies itself down to die.* Seems to me that your Rohloff box is hardly run in.
*The mean time before failure of the Shimano box is said to be 50,000km, though Nexus boxes soldiering on to well over 100k are not uncommon in The Netherlands where they are the prime commuter boxes. But a quarter-million klicks, with a definitive end not in sight, puts a Rohloff box in a different class altogether.
