If your implication is that you're cool-headed and unfased, your rapid-fire responses in the last page or so belies a little bit of defensiveness.

Since you seem to think your IGH can do no wrong, let's talk about actual measured drawbacks:

1. Less Efficiency

Bernhard Rolhoff himself found IGH's to be 2% less efficient than derailleurs. (Source)

2. More Expensive

I have about 10,000 miles on my rear Shimano XT Derailleur. Since nothing is visibly wrong with it, I can expect many thousands more. Say you get your 56,000 miles out of your hub, you'll still be far behind in cost/mile. My derailleur costs about $100, so I can go through 15 derailleurs (150,000+ miles) before spending as much as you.

That implies either of us are riding that often. In reality, I'll probably go through three to five derailleurs in the lifetime of my touring versus your one Rolhoff. That means I've spent one third of what you have.

3. Still Needs Maintenance

As I confirmed from my own experience, which was also backed up by other derailleur users like cyccommute, derailleurs are set-and-forget. I haven't made an adjustment in years. Your IGH still needs to be overhauled, oiled, flushed, and otherwise maintained. On top of that, your chain still needs maintenance and replacing, exactly the same as a chain in a derailleur system.

4. Flange Failures

Hub flanges on Rolhoffs also have the potential for failure. Here's what Robin Thorn has to say about it: "Such failures are either due to crash damage or an undetectable small flaw in the alloy billet. Rohloff use aerospace alloys but even Boeings occasionally drop out of the sky. The only way to be really certain that you never have a component failure is to never buy a component and never fly, drive a car, descend stairs or boil a kettle."

Again, I'm not trying to say derailleurs are better, just that everything CAN fail and derailleurs are easily replaced.



But don't take my word for it...

Here's an account from a Rolhoff user, Helen Lloyd, who rode from the UK to Cape Town using a Rolhoff. The whole thing is worth a read, but I'll highlight the important bits for you.

"Up until the 15,000km mark I would have unreservedly said that I made the right choice with a Rohloff bike. Maintenance has been limited to 2 hub oil changes and occasional cleaning of the bike and oiling of the chain. Periodically I have had to adjust the EBB to tighten the chain, but this is easy to do.

By 16,000km however, it became apparent that I would have to remove links in the chain as I had used up all the play in the bottom bracket. Also I would need to replace a worn sprocket and the chain (the front chain ring also now needs replacing). At the same time, the rubber twist-shift gear changer seized up. Being in Africa, finding a bike mechanic with even the basic tools can be hard. I also started to notice a wobble in the rear wheel (worn hub cap bearings). This all added up to quite a lot of work. If in Europe, I would simply have gone to a repair shop and left it in their capable hands. Instead, I had to get help from a bike forum, read the instructions manual and sweat a lot over trying to remove and adjust parts.

(see previous blog post for more details)

All of this was rather unexpected. For example, I had asked SJS for advice on what spare parts to take, but they thought I would get to Cape Town on the one chain and didn’t think I’d need to reverse or replace the sprocket. I therefore didn’t even have a sprocket removal tool with me and had to have it sent out.

The parts I am expecting to have to replace – the internal hub mech and also the cables – are so far ok. I have spares and although may struggle with the replacement since I haven’t done it before, am prepared to do it (I even downloaded the video and instructions onto my laptop before I left).

The worry with the wobbling wheel was that I was at the time unable to stop for long due to expiring visas. But I will not do more damage by cycling on it and so can continue until a more appropriate time to stop for a couple of weeks to send the wheel for repair if it gets worse. So not a problem for now.

I think I probably underestimated the maintenance that would be required on such a long trip, even with a Rohloff hub. Would a derailleur system have been better? That is hard for me to say. But the one advantage would have been that local bike mechanics would know the system and finding replacement parts would have been relatively easy (rather than having to get parts shipped from the UK)."

16,000km is about 10K miles. So, you may be due for a hub failure pretty soon..