Originally Posted by
diesel_dad
All I can say is -- ride a bike with an Alfine before making any changes. It is really heavy and the range is limited. Not a bad product but not something I would not like to ride for thousands of anything.
I have a Surly LHT with a typical derailleur setup and a Steelwool Tweed with an Alfine. If I have a long distance to go -- I would take the LHT with the derailleur any day of the week.
Actually, at first I have commuter with nexus-8 habs, and I have no problem to cycle up to 100km per day on it.
And I already converted my old touring into alfine setup, day ago.
If you really check weight of everything you can remove from bike with this conversion (old wheels with hubs/sprockets, both derailleurs, both shifters/cables, old crank-set, and few brackets, and screws, which usually forgotten when people compare weight, plus bottle-dynamo in my case) with weight of new complete package (new wheels with alfine hubs, new crank-set, cable, shifter, all screws etc) difference isn't really huge. About half kilo (and would be even less if I would go for Shimano wheels).
I can't say that now this new-old touring better than it used to be during it's glory days (which was really some time ago), but it is definitely good bike and I like it. I did 80 kilometers to test it, and I definitely enjoyed riding this bike.