seeker333

It depends on your crankset, to achieve recommended 54mm chainline. If you have a properly setup mtb triple crankset, fit the Rohloff to the outer ring to get closest to 54mm.

I thought you bought a Rohloff Speedhub 5 years ago...

fietsbob

+1) Owners hand book suggests the outer chain ring on triples ,

I have mine with a chainguard on the outer, 38t chainring on the inner ,

M730 crank on a 127.5 BB. long spindle..

rifraf

Thank you for the extensive post outlining your thoughts.
I don't think for mixed terrain touring/bikepacking, its a "big issue" and I'm not picking from your post that you think the Rohloff is a dud.
I have things I dislike about the Rohloff like its weight at the rear wheel, its noise coasting in 8 to 14 amongst others but they tend to pale when I consider how long I go without adjustment or cleaning which I detest as I find it hard enough to find motivation for riding, let alone maintenance.
I love that its been fit and forget compared to my last derailleur setup and despite it not being the magic carpet ride one might expect from such an outlay of investment, I'm overall happy in its ownership.

GamblerGORD53

rifraf
I think your problem is not enough miles breakin. 4000 now? I hear plenty noisy hubs on CF bikes lately.
Mine gets better all the time. Only 7th gear is a drag for me. Pushing the bike, the pedals hardly move in most gears now.
My bike was 120 to 130 lbs. Hub weight ? LOL Anyway my SA drum dyno up front balances it out.

rifraf

I knew there was something I wasn't remembering.
The damn cranks/pedals rotating when I trying to push up hills.
Having a short span of attention I always end up with bruised ankles/calves from this as something in the view is bound to distract me until I rapidly come back down to earth having caught my lower legs on the pedals.
I could teach French to the French on such occasions and the language is loud and blue.
No proplems with 7th for me.
I can feel the humm from the hub in this gear but I know better than to associate it with drag having utilised other hub gears that somewhat buzz.
I've never been sensitive enough to feel any of my dynohubs being draggy either.
I honestly couldn't tell if they are on or off unlike some claim to and tend to simply leave the lights on all the time if I'm not charging my phone or garmin.

fietsbob

Might be that hollow CF frame amplifying what noises are heard I dont hear from the Aluminum or Steel bikes.

Aero CF disc wheels make a real racket just rolling down the road.

Tourist in MSN

I paid a bit over $1,050 for my Rohloff, I bought it on the internet from a major bike parts seller, shipped from Germany. In the USA the distribution channel appears to have a lot of extraneous costs add in to it. And mine is not a stripped down version, I bought a couple higher cost options, otherwise I could have gotten one for less than a thousand $ USD.

I like my Rohloff for off road mountain biking. That said, I am NOT a mountain biker. But I have on a couple occasions taken the fenders and solid fork off my expedition bike and fitted a suspension fork and suspension seatpost to it to play around on mountain bike trails. My expedition bike uses drop bars which is not ideal since the Rohloff shifter is a twist grip shifter designed for flat bars - thus I have to take one hand off the drop bars to shift it, something I would not have to do if I had a flat bar mountain bike. There are other options to fix this issue of taking the hand off the bars to shif, but I do not plan to make any hardware changes.

So, now that the disclaimer is made that I am not a mountain biker and am not riding a mountain bike, I find that the Rohloff is great for mountain biking.

I twist the shifter and it shifts as fast as I can twist it. I always back off on my pedal pressure when I shift, so it usually shifts quite smoothly. For comparison, when I am at low speed on one of my derailleur bikes the low speed means that it might take a significant part of a second for the chain to wrap half way around the cassette to complete a shift in back, thus I find that the derailleur bike will shift slower when at low speed. And shifting the front, you can't push hard on the pedals and expect to your front derailleur to make a down shift either. So, the argument that you have to back off on pedal pressure to down shift from 8 to 7 is not really an issue. And do not overlook the advantage of one shifter doing it all, instead of having to try to figure out what your next shift should be - front or rear shifter. If I was trying to do some of the mountain biking that I have done with a triple front and eight or more speeds in back, I would have at times made some bad choices and not gotten the gears that I wanted. It does not really matter what gear I am in with the Rohloff, if I twist the shifter for a down shift it will down shift to 88 percent of the gear that I was in with one gear change, two gears about 77 percent of where I was and three shifts about 68 percent of where I was. That is because the gears on the Rohloff are almost perfectly spaced apart from each other, and it is easy to down shift one or two or three shifts with a simple twist of the shifter.

If you want the ultimate light weight Carbon or Titanium mountain bike, the Rohloff is probably not for you. But I really would rather have the Rohloff for mountain biking than the derailleur drive trains on one of my other bikes. And since my expedition bike frame was built to handle a load without failing, it is a heavy bike so I do not really notice the weight of the Rohloff.

My bike set up for riding White Rim trail in Canyonlands.



My bike setup for riding Maah Daah Hey trail in North Dakota.



I also like being able to use different chainrings for different gear ranges, for pavement riding I run a higher gear range than mountain biking. But if you are only doing mountain biking with the bike, then that is not an issue for you. I am using the same bike for mountain biking that I am also using for pavement.

bmike

Please re read my threads in MTBR and my post here. It's not about the shift, but the engagement. 2 different things.

mdilthey

Can't find either! Can you elaborate on the engagement issue?

bmike

I elaborated below.

mdilthey

Sorry.. below what?

bmike

https://www.bikeforums.net/touring/10...l#post18224838

mdilthey

Ok, ok. Cool. I have no idea how I missed that, but it answers all of my questions thanks!

bmike

this is the kind of riding i have trouble with the rohloff... ratcheting up and over things..

standing on top looking down the boulder:
G0085692 by Mike, on Flickr

up:
G0085838 by Mike, on Flickr

down:

G0086060 by Mike, on Flickr

another part of the 'trail' (i haven't cleaned this yet, this year. been about 4 years since the last time i cleared it, before cracking my chin open just being me coming through another rock garden...)
MRP Stage, Surly Krampus, Dirt Wizards on WTB Scraper by Mike, on Flickr

fietsbob

That aint touring you got lost from the MTB forum.

bmike

My favorite type of riding is mixed terrain. Gravel, pavement (I try to minimize it), forest roads, double track, and single track.
The reason I popped in here is I was the one quoted as having trouble with my Rohloff.
I don't have trouble with it 'touring'. I do have trouble with it ratcheting up and over and around rocks and roots. I do some of that when 'touring' - but riding my loaded Krampus is very different than riding my stripped down Krampus. I had hoped for 1 drive train for the bike - but it seems like I'll have 3 - Rohloff, single speed, and 1x5 on the Ss hub.

bmike

So, about that Rohloff... I swapped wheels (and bars, setup with my shifter and a second set of brake levers) for a little 3 day tour in get ADKs... ~88 miles - I covered ~28 miles of pavement, ~14 miles of single track (which I pushed / walked / bushwhacked about 6 miles of that due to trail conditions averaging 1 mph or less) and the rest was forest road that went from smooth and hardpack to sandy and soft to muddy and rocky. I think I did 8 creek crossings, pulled dozens of sticks out of my chain / wheel... and overall glad I was running the Rohloff wheelset, instead of a derailler wheel. Worked flawlessly, even when my zippers, chain, hydro hose, and chain was frozen in the morning (it took just a couple of pedal strokes to break it loose - but a rear derailer would have been toast).

IMG_5070 by Mike, on Flickr

IMG_5078 by Mike, on Flickr

IMG_5067 by Mike, on Flickr

Frosted by Mike, on Flickr

Tourist in MSN

The last photo - that saddle looks really cold to sit on.

Thanks for posting.

mdilthey

Just awesome looking, must have been so much fun.

I had a frozen bike like that once, on the side of a creek in Colorado during a tour two years ago. It was super interesting... my bike at the time had a disc brake in the front and a rim brake in the back, and frost on the rim kept me from braking in the rear for about 30 miles. I ran the brake a lot in that time to try and warm things up.

My chain froze, but it ran just fine after a few pedal strokes. The derailleur, too. It wasn't crippling, even though both were completely white with ice. Definitely a feather in the cap of the Rohloff as it's well-suited to this, but not necessarily a black mark for a derailleur.

When you look at the places people have been, and the things people have done using derailleurs, it's hard to make the argument that they "can't" do certain things. They do, on a daily basis, thousands of times all over the world, perform admirably in the worst conditions imaginable and failures are not catastrophic or especially common. There isn't a $1,500 bar for entry to biking in extreme conditions.

bmike

I never said there was.
You seem to be really antagonistic lately... not sure if its just the web interference... or just you.

But I've schwacked all over the place on my Fargo and Pugsley and I opted to not deal with a derailler on this build.
I've never claimed one was superior or inferior... in fact, in some cases, a hub with tight engagement and a derailler (or single speed) would be superior (I wouldn't want a Rohloff for technical single track riding... as mentioned previously in this thread...)

Here's a shot of the Krampus from this weekend:

IMG_5018 by Mike, on Flickr


Same spot I took my Pugsley:
IMAG1476 by Mike, on Flickr

Difference... my front derailler froze on the Pugsley trip (shifter too... I remedied the derailler by pissing on it, got it to move / wiggle - but the shifter was toast).

I took to running this on my Fargo:
IMG_9382 by Mike, on Flickr

Kept the frozen snot off the front derailler and the cables... which would also freeze up.

mud-bb by Mike, on Flickr

My point about being glad I had the Rohloff on the bike was that I pulled many many sticks and twigs and brush out of the rear of the bike. I did that first 7 mile single track section (with half schwacking) in the dark. I would have tweaked or tore off my derailer several times over. Maybe you are more careful, but pushing a loaded bike through creeks, over deadfall, onto boulders, etc... I was glad I had a simple chainline and no dangly bits.

But, YMMV, and the bike you have is the bike you tour on, and you make your miles however makes you happy.
If I didn't have the Rohloff I would be considering my SS / dingle speed setup again for this type of riding.
Just my preference...

The cool thing about bikes and traveling by bike is that there are about a zillion ways to do it...

mdilthey

No antagonism meant! It's the web, and my poor wording, and my evangelism for simplicity...

When I started on this forum years ago, some of the hivemind made it seem like you needed four ortliebs to tour. The idea that the bike is a meter for how serious you are, or where you can go. Occasionally I get strong-worded when a thread points in that direction, and Rohlff threads do that sometimes. Your posts never imply that, and quoting you at the onset was my curiosity, not an attack. Your opinion on the rolhoff means a lot more to me than some because I know you're capable of speaking objectively, as you have with many other components and bikes

Sorry for getting so impassioned for the parallelogram no offense meant at all.

SparkyGA

I am not sure why somebody would complain about the Rohloff beings slow to engage in any sort of riding. If anything, it's probably one of the fasting shifting systems on the market. Once your use to shifting on it and the hub has some decent milage on it, it's about 1/8th of second or so to shift between any gears, including the dreaded 7th to 8th gear...

bmike

Engagement is different than shifting speed, as I've written about below.
Did you read the thread?

SparkyGA

I meant engagement speed.... My bad

Tourist in MSN

I really could not see the issue. So, I took another look at your post, as follows:

So, I looked closer at mine and turned the crank some. (At this time, I have a 44/16 chainring to cog ratio, probably higher than yours which makes a difference for this analysis.) I found that high range (gears 8-14), it takes very little crank movement to get the pawls to engage. But in low range (gears 1-7) there is much more noticeable movement in the crank before the pawl engages.

Most of my riding is in gears 8 or above. I very rarely start out from a stop in gears 7 or below. Thus, I never noticed this. At stop lights or when waiting at stop signs I almost always start out in gear 8.

And even if I had noticed it in gears 7 or below, it probably would not be an issue for my riding style because I use cleated shoes most of the time. I cleat in my right foot while stopped, use my foot to position the crank where I want it (which may include lifting the pedal with the foot) and if it was too far down in the cycle I would simply lift my foot for one or two more pawl clicks to get it where I want it.

For off road riding, I often use the platform side of my M324 or A530 pedals (these pedals have one side SPD, other side platform) and that is when I would notice it, but I probably have 10 to 20 miles of SPD cleat use for each mile of off-road platform pedal use. Thus, it would rarely be noticeable to me with my type of riding.

So, this clearly is a case of differences in riding style, types of pedals used (cleats vs platform), and types of terrain commonly ridden on.