Originally Posted by
Jipe
I
For me, the Birdy City with its cheap and limited Nexus 8 is a very bad choice. I wonder why at his price, R&M doesn't install an Alfine 11 hub on the Birdy City instead of the low end Nexus 8 ?
I agree. While the Alfine 11 is more than double the cost of the Nexus 8 this difference is a relatively small proportion of the total bike cost. I briefly considered putting an Alfine 11 onto a Birdy City but quickly crossed off that option because I knew that it wouldn't have the gearing range I wanted (I've got another bike with the Alfine 11 which is waiting to be re-homed).
Originally Posted by
Huggable
I see. Come think of it, there's hardly any hills here in Singapore, hence generally 7-speeds onwards is sufficient for most of our commuting needs.
I'll be swapping out my SRAM X5 10 speed to the Rohloff hub next month, looking forward to the modification!
The standard Birdy Rohloff uses a 52T chainring and 13T sprocket (the smallest available). I'm planning to fit a 14T sprocket to get slightly lower gearing for my hills but if you don't have steep hills then you may want to investigate fitting a bigger (56T but even bigger if feasible) chain ring. Otherwise you'll never be using the bottom gears and be wanting another gear at the top end.
Note also that Rohloff hub gears improve with use but are very low maiintenance except for the oil change every year or 5000km, whichever comes first.