Forums

Folding Bikes - Schlumph drive with an Alfine 8 speed

Bikeforums.net is a forum about nothing but bikes. Our community can help you find information about hard-to-find and localized information like bicycle tours, specialties like where in your area to have your recumbent bike serviced, or what are the best bicycle tires and seats for the activities you use your bike for.

PDA

View Full Version : Schlumph drive with an Alfine 8 speed

wahoonc

01-03-11, 05:53 PM

BruceMetras

01-03-11, 07:17 PM

Anybody running this combination? Are you using a mountain drive or speed drive? What are the cogs and the gear range?

I am working on a new build and am trying to get my head around the numbers...:roflmao2:

Aaron :)

I ran that combo on my Jetstream XP.. I used the Speed Drive (165% overdrive) .. the numbers are easy.. just figure your gear inches for the Alfine with a single chain ring.. then... for a Speed Drive, multiply said figures by 1.65 .. for a High Speed Drive (250% over drive) multiply figures by 2.5 .. for a Mountain Drive (250% under drive) divide figures by 2.5 .. happy trails!

http://i181.photobucket.com/albums/x301/bmetras/jetstream.jpg

Abneycat

01-03-11, 07:30 PM

You can play around with it in the Sheldon Brown gear calculator if you figure out your chainring size, increase / reduce it by the ratio of the Schlumpf you want, and then input that number as the second chainring :)

I quite like the numbers that come out using a 2:1 ratio (44t chainring, 22t sprocket) into the Alfine with a speed drive and a 20x1.75" tire. Low of 19.7, high of 98.7. Pretty good for touring! You could tweak it towards speed, get some silly high gear inches, and still have respectably low hill climbing gears if you wanted.

The mountain drive reduces the ratio pretty severely, so unless you ran a huge chainring and a very small sprocket, i'd personally think that the reduced gear drive would be very hard on your internal gear hub. I'm not sure what the maximum input ratio on the Alfine 8 is unfortunately, but if you theoretically used a 52t chainring and a 16t sprocket, the input ratio on the reduced drive mode of the Schlumpf would still be 1.3:1, which is quite brutal. Some people exceed the input ratios on these hubs all the time, I think it depends on the user and the use. Plus, your lowest low gears would be around 13" on a 20x1.75" tire, which seems lower than what is typically really even useful. So overall, I personally think the mountain drive isn't too great in this case.

fietsbob

01-03-11, 08:05 PM

It's not an Alfine 8, but an AW3 sturmey archer, on my Brompton, 15t cog
Run a 54t ring on the MD crank, effectively a 21.6t low gear

theres a calculator thru their site http://www.schlumpf.ch/hp/berechnungen/engl_berechnen_nabenschaltung_inch.htm

low gear high range,is followed by high gear in low range.
in my case .. 6 ratios .. 17 to 77"

Probably as Alfine has a bunch of reduction gears,
best to set up the external drive for low gear,
and then use the SD for overdrive.

Rohloff says use the overdrive type as they are 10 reduction ratios already.
so I'd think the Alfine would last longer if not over-torqued.