Hi All!
I have both Rohloff and ancient derailleur drivetrains among the bicycles I own. I like both, for several reasons. My 5- and 6-speed freewheels and chainrings are thick and robust and long-lived, and my half-step and granny gearing setups give me an easy shift sequence and adequate highs and lows for the places I use them most. My 7-sp half-step setup worked equally well. It had the option of friction or indexed shifting in the rear lever and it stayed in indexed mode most of the time. It was also convenient and long-lived. The same can be said for my tandem I captain, where indexed 6-speed at the rear is welcome on a long bike where it can sometimes be hard to hear what's going on in the Engine Room way back past the Rear Admiral.
Old derailleur drivetrains aren't like modern derailleur drivetrains. There's much to be said on the good side for new, but I not only don't mind friction shifting, I take some joy in the skills I've acquired to shift smoothly. Indexing is convenient, but not really necessary with fewer than 7 cogs. I can't shift under power, but on the other hand, I don't need to. The momentary pause in power application has by this time become so ingrained, I needed no adaptation when I got the Rohloff which requires the same momentary pause.
The old derailleur setups have proven so reliable, I almost can't remember the last time I missed a shift. Being thick and wide, they don't clog, they really don't need much cleaning thanks to my full coverage mudguards and generous front mudflaps, and I oil them once every several (long, 300-400km/day) rides. Parts last almost forever, partly because my half-step gearing is setup so my most-used gears have almost no chain deflection, wear is distributed evenly across the gear combinations, and there's a lot of wear surface. My chainrings are still looking good on a couple of my most used bikes at tens of thousands of kilometers. I do replace chains often, long before their wear limits are reached. Life with the Old Bikes is still Very Good indeed.
My complaint about more modern (i.e. 9-sp plus) derailleur drivetrains is -- as a high-mileage cyclist -- they don't last very long in my use even with the greater and more frequent care I've found they require. I can and do wear through a set of chainrings, a whole cassette, and chain in a half-summer's use (600-mile/960km weeks aren't unusual in High Season) and be well on my way through the replacement set by Fall. The narrower, profiled teeth and chain to match are thin and wear more quickly and this is costly. Because cogsets are riveted together in cassettes, separate cogs aren't available and if one wears unduly, the lot has to be tossed. The profiled teeth don't take kindly to reprofiling with a die-grinder. Also, I find I don't care so much for the crossover gearing that is necessitated by so many cogs at the rear.
I still love my old (derailleur) bikes and can't imagine selling them when they've so many remaining years of life left in them. I'll continue to reprofile the gear teeth with a high-speed die-grinder when they start to hook, and then retemper them. They should be good for awhile yet. When parts are no longer available, then I'll likely switch from freewheels to now equally obsolete 7-speed cassettes on freehubs, though it will mean spreading the rear stays.
Several years on, the appeal to me of the Rohloff is to be found not in how different it is from my old derailleur setups, but in how similar. My Nomad's 36x17 setup almost perfectly duplicates the half-step and granny gearing on my most-used, 31 year-old rando-touring bike. That bike has 13 usable gear combinations out of 15; the Rohloff offers 14. It just lops off two uselessly high top gears that are there to pad out the middle range of my freewheel, and adds two most welcome lower gears. Shifting is as easy, but no moreso except for being able to shift while stationary. Chainline is as straight as that for my most-used derailleur gears. So far, the Rohloff drivetrain seems the most likely successor to my old derailleur drivetrains and is working as well. I expect it will last a long time, and that is important to me, someone who keeps my bikes for many years.
Running with drop handlebars, I find the Rohloff shifter mounted on a Thorn Accessory T-bar to be no more or less convenient than my preferred downtube shifters or bar-end shifters on the derailleur bikes.
One area where I see a clear advantage is for my use cross-country and on single-track. Having no rear derailleur to hang down and catch sticks is a decided benefit, and there's no possibility of chainsuck, which is also welcome. Instead of repacking my hub and freewheel, both are taken care of by periodic oil changes. Cleanup is much quicker and easier because I don't have to floss between cogs. I am -- truly! -- a Happy Camper with my Rohloff expedition bike, but still delighted with my old derailleur bikes. There's certainly room for both in my stable.
Cheerfully,
Dan.
