Winter Cycling - IGH vs. cassette

I'm putting together (or possibly just buying) a new commuting bike. I'm hoping to get the best of both worlds: A drop-bar touring bike for summer commuting (riding cross-town and back to buy a @#$ servo means you want a reasonably fast bike) on which I can slap some big studded tires for winter riding.

Option 1 is to go buy a Kona Dew Drop and put some drop bar extensions on it. This is a lame compromise and requires a semi-upright riding position (past experience dictates that the longer the top tube, the less sore I get) but I can get one rigged up with discs for a whopping $550.

Option 2 is to use some of the parts (Nashbar CF cyclocross fork, Avid BB7 brake, older Shimano 105 crankset, and old bars) that I already bought with a Nashbar touring frame, a heavy-duty touring wheelset, MTB cassette, MTB derailleurs, some Tiagra brifters, and a rear cantilever brake. This seems like an ideal solution, except that every time I see a winter bike it's usually severely rusted, likely due to the insane amount of road salt.

Option 3 is the same as Option 2 except with a Shimano Nexus 8-speed IGH and a chainglider. This seems like a nice solution - no muss, no fuss, extreme resistance to salt and grit, and relatively inexpensive - aside from the wide gear spacing and reduced efficiency.

Any thoughts?

Rusty winter bikes aren't the result of salt per se, but rather, insufficient washing, care and maintenance. If you have reasonable facilities and you can take reasonable care of your bike, rust doesn't have to be a problem.

You don't have to strip it down, detail it and all that. I get by with just rinsing mine daily, and lubing the chain a couple of times a week. That's the most maintenance it can expect for three months. Except for the rear BB7 caliper, which needed major TLC this spring, my bike is none the worse for wear after two winters. Although it's an aluminum frame, keep in mind that aluminum does corrode (we just don't call it "rust"), and it corrodes faster with salt, just like steel does.

The wide gear spacing is a deal-killer for me and IGHs. I love the combination of a triple on the front and close-ratio cassettes on the rear. When the going gets tough, you can never have a low enough gears. Spinning high cadence helps keep things upright and in control. Mashing at extremely low speeds in the snow and on ice causes control issues. I can spin through things that make mashers hop off and walk.

This is why an IGH would never work for me, attractive as they are from a maintenance (or more precisely, a lack of maintenance) standpoint.

Cassette/derailleur systems can ice-up, but I've found it happens only in certain, specific conditions, and even then, only on bikes with wide-ratio cassettes. The riders find one gear and stick with it, since there's a penalty for shifting, (instantly way too easy, or instantly way too hard). I'm shifting all the time and that keeps the cassette clear.

So I would also avoid the MTB cassette you mention too. Wide-ratio=bad IMHO, whether it's a cassette or and IGH.

Rusty winter bikes aren't the result of salt per se, but rather, insufficient washing, care and maintenance. If you have reasonable facilities and you can take reasonable care of your bike, rust doesn't have to be a problem.


How do you rinse off a bike when it's -10 degrees celsius? I'm curious about this - I really don't have a heated place to do it.



Cassette/derailleur systems can ice-up, but I've found it happens only in certain, specific conditions, and even then, only on bikes with wide-ratio cassettes. The riders find one gear and stick with it, since there's a penalty for shifting, (instantly way too easy, or instantly way too hard). I'm shifting all the time and that keeps the cassette clear.

So I would also avoid the MTB cassette you mention too. Wide-ratio=bad IMHO, whether it's a cassette or and IGH.

AFAIK, MTB cassettes are generally much heavier and much more durable than their road counterparts, and the current 9-speed cassettes are pretty close. They're also noticeably cheaper.

There's also the issue of needing a road derailleur, as opposed to the tougher MTB derailleurs spec'd to most touring bikes.

Don't be fooled into thinking that IGHs are impervious to the weather. I only have a little bit of experience here, so you may take my opinion with a grain of salt if you will.

There's a Nexus 8 hub sitting on a bench at work that's been waiting on $200 worth of replacement parts for a month. The winter rusted out its pawls and large bearing ring, but you can't buy those parts individually so a replacement for half of the hub's internals is coming. On the other hand, I rode a 5-speed, friction-shifting bike through a slushy, salty Ottawa winter with no maintenance at all and it worked fine, apart from one day it froze in 1st gear. That drivetrain is also ruined, but because I didn't even oil it or clean it after the snow was gone.

Whenever an internally-geared bike comes into the shop I'm usually the one who gets saddled with the job, and something I haven't really noticed people bringing up about them is how much of a pain it is to maintain them when you finally do. A large part of that is because bikes with IGHs tend to have a lot of other stuff converging on the rear axle (drum brakes, generators, axle-mounted rack & fender struts, etc.) that make even a flat tire into a major job.

IGHs are lovely when they're working and they aren't easily fouled, plus any lower efficiency than a derailleur drivetrain is probably going to disappear by the time you've packed your chain and your jockey wheels with winter sludge. But when something does go wrong it tends to cause a lot of trouble. Derailleur drivetrains are exposed, thus problems are easy to diagnose, parts are readily available anywhere and repairs can be made very quickly.
An IGH can corrode insidiously, and because the modern ones are designed to be maintenance free (grease-lubricated from the factory) there's very little in way realm of preventive maintenance and cleaning that you can do. If you later find out the hub is damaged, you can end up waiting a very long time for expensive parts.

I'm not saying that a pricey MTB group will hold up better, I don't know that and I'm sure lots of people use IGHs during the winter without major problems, but I'd say the playing field is at least level if you bother to wipe the slush off you gears fairly often and use plenty of oil, which I didnt.

I rode a 1x9 CrossCheck with W106 tires for a few winters. Set up with a 34 t chain ring and 11-34 cassette with LX RD, had Albatross handlebars for control in slop. It worked great- even when covered with ice, snow, mud, slush etc. While I might have wanted to rinse the bike off, cold temp prevented that- I think that keeping the bike cold is better than bringing it in then back out. All I ever really did was wipe off the drive train and lower parts with an old vetegale brush and spray the drive chain with some WD40. Then the crosscheck morphed to a road bike for my teenage son and I got an itch for IGH. Went to LBS to work up a quote for a surly 1x1 frame with SA-3 hub; left with a Jamis 3 commuter with a regular non-red band nexus hub and my snow tires mounted. The nexus worked and shifted well thru the winter, even when temp was well below zero or in slush/slop etc. One day I rode home in freezing rain- the whole bike was plastered with an ice coat- the nexus was working just fine. The stock fenders were a pain to adjust under the 35 mm snow tires- barely fit; they did their job keeping stuff off the drive train and rider. Hard to find fault with the nexus. Well except it is in the shop now- waiting for parts. Newer nexus hubs are suppose to be better sealed.
Both set ups worked fine- so i think it is rider or bike frame style that would drive the decision. My lesson for the future - use fenders. those fenders kept a huge amount os slop off of bike, drivetrain and rider.

I'm curious which hub you're looking at. The original Nexus 8 hubs were horrible, draggy and leaky, while the recent 8R36 Nexus and Alfine 501 hubs are supposed to be *much* better.

Many users actually remove the grease after 400 miles and use oil instead. Shimano provides an oil-dipping kit for a huge sum of money, but most folks use regular motor oil. Some even install a bung and flood the bottom part of the hub with oil.

That said, I think I'll stick with a standard setup until I can go for a belt drive. Maybe I'll figure out some way to build a shroud for the entire drivetrain. :)

How do you rinse off a bike when it's -10 degrees celsius? I'm curious about this - I really don't have a heated place to do it.

I mostly get through the winter without ever washing the bike with a standard RD, and I mostly use this one hybrid bike year round. While minimizing the maintenance, I have practically eliminated the rust problems, see my posts in

LPS products (http://www.bikeforums.net/showthread.php?t=509320)

Otherwise, just as a side remark pertaining to the exemplary temperature you chose, -10 C rarely poses problems for bike maintenance - most problems occur around 0 C.