Originally Posted by
corrado33
Shimano recommends getting the hub serviced after (I believe) 1000 miles. I may be wrong. The service isn't hard, per se. It's basically removing the dust covers, removing a snap ring, then pulling the entire hub out of the shell. (Nothing is spring loaded to go flying across your shop fortunately.) Clean that off and soak it in some ATF (or shimano's lube if you feel like being spendy) and then put it back together. (Oh and grease the bearings with grease... yes two separate lubes for one hub.)
Hard? Not for someone who knows how to work on bikes. No harder than servicing bearings.
I DO really like the idea of tapping an oil port into the hub though... I may have to do that next spring when I service it again.
I thought at least most of them would have that. And to be honest, I guess this 1000 miles is for the perfectionists, in the sense that it will probably take 30.000 miles without any maintenance before it starts to malfunction because it's closed and there will be still oil in it. I'm limited by my perspective here, I can't remember ever having owned a new bike or in another way ever expecting or maintaining perfection. Now I've a 40 year old one with an SA 3 with oil port, but to be honest I didn't bother changing the oil yet, as it sounds and feels nice and I wouldn't surprise me if the previous owner never bothered either.
Originally Posted by
noglider
@
Stadjer, I didn't say high maintenance. That's different from finicky and very hard to work on. I don't know how representative the stories of tricky cable adjustment and re-installation are, and I haven't used an 8-speed hub. Maybe most people don't have these troubles.
Being able to shift while stopped or coasting is a big plus when commuting, and it's worth giving up the ability to shift while applying a lot of power. This is one thing I love about IGHs. And some people may not know, you can shift while applying a small amount of power.
I don't know if that's wise though. Even the good old SA3 is a bit too complicated for me to remember how it works, I did understand it once, but remembering requires a bit more. But I've heard about very tiny parts suffering from shifting under power, maybe you should check that in the mechanics forum or the English 3-speed topic in C&V, there are a lot of people there who know their SA3's better than me. I prefer trying to get the timing spot on. An oil port makes maintenance a lot less tricky of course, because you can just leave it as it is. That's what I prefer, not because I don't want to get my hands dirty, but because it's a lot of fiddly work and not very rewarding, because the chain case gets a bit less tight everytime you have to take it apart to get to the wheel.
My bike was designed to oil the gears trought the oil port and the chain by unbottening the case, then one link in the chain is visible, and you oil it and turn, and then you button it up. Very easy but the drawback is that when you have to take the wheel out, it won't all get back together again as tight as it was. You have to adjust the tensioners, it's very difficult to judge whether the wheel alignes with the frame perfectly, then you have to readjust the amount of play on the bearings because it tends to change with unscrewing the axle, and this is really important and fiddly because there just one right amount of play, a tiny bit off and you have too much drag or too much wear. The cable adjustment on a SA3 is relatively easy but still something that takes a few attemps and corrections. So basically it's really easy to maintain but hard to repair and take the wheel out. It thought all IGH would have kept the easy to maintain part.
When I had a derailleur on my commuter and forgot to shift down before a traffic light, I just pulled the lever, lifted the rear wheel and turned the pedal and it was in first. A lot less comfortable of course, but I do understand that sports cyclists intuitively don't like interrupting the power. Someone mentioned with derailleurs it's easier to adjust the gear ratios to your personal preference, that's true of course. But you can also adjust your muscles to the gears, just by riding it regularly.
Originally Posted by
Steely Dan
in retrospect, the afline 8 was overkill for my needs, i really don't have much use for 8 speeds for commuting in this unrelentingly flat city. if i had to do it all over again, i'd probably go with one of those bombproof SA 3 speed hubs that everyone speaks so highly of.
You really need to climb a steep hill and go down to 3rd become too light, if the wind is so strong it does that, it's probably wise to stay inside anyway.