Scudders

Heyup,

I've got a naturally aspirated bike with Shimano Alfine 8 Hub gears and having some difficulty correctly indexing them. all the web help I have managed to find all suggest using the barrel adjust on the shifter which would be suuurweeeet if I had a barrel adjuster on the shifter. this shifter does not use barrel adjusters.

The gears are functioning fine apart from being unable to access the full range of gears.

Seems the trick is to align the two yellow indicator marks once the hub has been downshifted into 4th gear (these are aligned but in 5th gear)

I was hoping there would be a way I could index on the hub alternatively a way I could index with some-kind of adjustment to the shifter.

I've had a tinker with the shifter and haven't had any joy and before I start playing with the hub I wanted to ask for help because I know zero technical details about hub gears.

Unable to post images of the shifter or the hub sorry.

Any suggestion or shared knowledge will be greatly appreciated.

Andrew R Stewart 

Fine adjustments to the clamping of the cable are the way to adjust the "indexing" when no barrel adjuster exists in the system. A good example of bad cost savings Get yourself an inline adjuster. Cut the casing and splice in the inline adjuster, removing enough casing to compensate for the small amount of inside length of that in line adjuster or the inner cable might become too short. But while you're doing this consider replacing the inner cable for a fresh and not repeatedly clamped one. Andy

Scudders

Thanks AndrewI found your answer helpful, it looks like I have an inline adjuster further down the bike. Which is helpful. Unfortunately there isn't enough scope in the adjuster to give the necessary amount of cable. I'll sleep on it but I think I'm going to have to replace the cable which is a bit annoying since this is a new bike from a shop.

Iride01 

New bikes usually have a warranty. Is the shop open or does it have a mobile service? Call them and see, even if the shop is closed for walk-in retail, they may be allowing drop offs for maintenance and such.

Andrew R Stewart 

Before you replace the cable try this trick as practice. When tightening the cable anchor bolt one typically pulls the cable taut, sometimes with pliers. However when this isn't tight enough the trick is to slightly push the hub's gear cable "spool" (I forget the term on an IGH) into it's travel a tad then tighten the bolt. This preloads the cable tension. Too much and end up having to loosen the tension. Just right and your good to go, not enough and you use the cable adjuster to fine tune the tension. Practice on the cable that will be replaced so that wear/clamping deformation is also gotten rid of with the cable and you'll have a better feel for how much preload works best when the fresh cable is installed.

You can always install a second inline adjuster to increase the total tension range ability.

Does the bike have full length casing? (It is assumable that it does from your description but we know what assumptions do to us, don't we?) If so then the casing could be getting gritty/worn WRT cable friction. Full length casing set ups are generally more sensitive to casing friction being so much more casing to drag the cable through.

Did you indicate the age of this bike? A post about warranty was made. Generally cable friction with use isn't considered a manufacture's warranty item, perhaps a shop's "customer good will" one. Andy

Chuckles1

You could use the high limit screw to move the cage before clamping cable and likely get it right after a few tries. Reset the limit screw once indexing is good.

Scudders

Ended up changing the cable today and was really straight forward - and fixed my bike.

Threaded the cable
places the shifter into position 8
Measured 145mm from the end of the final part of the outer casing and attached the fixing bolt at that point to the inner cable.
attached the fixing bolt back to the pulley on the hub

Gears were perfectly indexed and left plenty of scope on the inline barrel adjuster for any more tensioning that may occur over time.

Thanks all for your help with this issue,

Andrew R Stewart 

And thank you for the follow up post. Andy