Everything I love about Rohloff hubs (and a couple of things I dont).
I think I built my first Rohloff bike more than 20 years ago. Since then, as I’m doing now with Willow Bike and previously with Shand Cycles, I’ve built hundreds and hundreds of bikes with the Rohloff internal gear hub. I would guess at least 95% of those bikes were also kitted out with Gates drive belts instead of chains. From that first bike I built and rode, I was sold. I knew that derailleur bikes with chains would now always seem a little clunky and inefficient. High-end transmissions from SRAM and Shimano, including electronic shifting, have continued to get better and better, but I’d still choose a Rohloff system with a belt over a traditional derailleur system almost every time.
I’m going to try and explain my thinking and hopefully give you some insights into why I like to spec my bikes with Rohloff hubs whenever I can. If you have specific questions, please get in touch, and I’ll do my best to help you out. I’ll start with a list of pros and cons and go into each one in a bit more detail. I don’t pretend that the Rohloff system is without issues, and I’ll explain what I think these are. But again, I’d still choose the Rohloff system almost every time.
Pros
Incredibly reliable
Almost maintenance-free
Predictable, consistent shifting
Shifting while stationary
Better Wheels
Cons
Cost
Weight
Availability of spares
Limited choice of shifters
Pros
1) Reliability. This one really is undeniable, and it’s a game-changer. The Rohloff Speedhub works. It works all the time. Every day, all day. It doesn’t matter what the conditions are, how old it is, or what bike it’s on. The Rohloff will just keep on working. Out of the hundreds of Rohloff hubs I’ve supplied over the years, I can honestly only remember one hub ever having to go to Rohloff to get looked at. I’m not silly enough to suggest that Rohloff hubs don’t, from time to time, go wrong for some people; they make around 35,000 hubs per year I think, so I would think a few end up with some sort of problem. But I would suggest that it’s negligible. The thing that you start to take for granted is that it’s consistent and it doesn’t wear and need adjusting in the same way a derailleur does. The indexing is all in the hub, so even if the cables stretch a little, it still doesn’t affect the indexed shifting. If you use a regular chain, that will stretch and need replacing at some point, but if you use a belt, you can expect to get close to 5 times as long before needing to make a change. The real benefit there is that as the belt wears, the performance doesn’t deteriorate in the same way a chain does. It just needs to be replaced in the same way a timing belt in a car would. It’s better to replace before it goes wrong than wait until it might fail. The service life of a Gates belt is around 30,000 km.
2) Maintenance. Or the lack of. There really isn’t much that you need to do to keep a Rohloff hub well-maintained. In fact, if you like to tinker with your bike, you might be a little disappointed by the Speedhub, as there really isn’t anything you can do. It’s pretty much a sealed unit, and there's nothing to fiddle with. The gears inside the hub run in an oil bath, and Rohloff suggests you flush out this oil and replace it either every year or every 5,000km. An oil change kit contains a lighter-weight ‘flushing’ oil, a syringe and the replacement oil. You simply remove a drain plug screw to let the old oil drain out, add the flushing oil and ride around the block shifting gears to clean and loosen up the oil in the hub before draining and filling again with the main oil. That’s it, it’ll take 10 minutes at most. The Rohloff Speedhub is operated by a couple of cables, and it’s a good idea to keep these running smoothly as you would with a derailleur system. There’s nothing special about these cables. But as I mentioned earlier, the indexing of the gears in the hub isn’t reliant on the correct tension of the gear cables, so although keeping the cables in good condition is good practice, it’s not as important as on a derailleur bike.
While we’re talking about cables, it’s worth mentioning that if a gear cable ever snaps, you can still shift the hub into any gear you want using an 8mm spanner. This means a broken or damaged cable won’t prevent you from getting home. Just select the gear that will work best for you and go for it.
3) Shifting Patterns. The Rohloff Speedhub has 14 gears with a 526% range. That means that the biggest gear is 5.26 times bigger than the smallest gear. To put that in perspective, a fairly standard ‘gravel’ drive-train (48/31 front, 11/34 rear) has a range of 477%. My opinion, though, is that although the wide range of gears is great, what’s better is that the jumps between the gears are consistent. I know that doesn’t sound like a big deal, but having predictable gear changing is something that you don’t know you need until you don’t have it! If I’ve been riding a Rohloff bike, then jump on a derailleur bike, I feel like for every gear shift I want to make, I need to shift at least twice to find the correct gear (especially with double or triple chainrings). Again, I know this doesn’t sound like a big deal, but it really is a great differentiator with the Rohloff hub.
4) Stationary Shifting. This one’s quite subtle, and the explanation doesn’t quite match what you actually experience when riding a Rohloff bike. There are two main things concerned with shifting that I really like that you can’t have on a derailleur bike. Firstly, you can shift when you’re not pedalling (and the bike doesn’t have to be moving), and secondly, the jumps between each gear are the same.
Shifting when you’re not pedalling or moving is something that you start to take for granted very quickly, and the inability to do this on a derailleur bike becomes frustrating equally as quickly! A couple of examples of how useful shifting without pedalling are: 1)coasting up to traffic lights in a big gear, knowing that when you come to a stop, you can just shift into a little gear before pulling away, 2)stopping/starting on a steep hill with a fully loaded touring bike and knowing you can just select the best gear. No more lifting the back wheel and pedalling with your hands! On technical off-road stuff, the ability to be able to shift up and down the gears while plucking your way through tricky terrain is just a great thing to be able to do. And when you can’t do it when you’re on a derailleur bike, you really do miss it.
5) Wheel Strength. This gets a little bit geeky, but there’s a very good argument that a Rohloff hub will build into a stronger wheel than a wheel with cassette sprockets. Because there are no sprockets, the Rohloff wheel can be built symmetrically. In a non-Rohloff wheel, the hub is offset, meaning the spokes need to be longer on one side than the other. A Rohloff wheel is symmetrical, so the spokes can be equal, the flanges of the hub (where the spokes connect to) are further apart and also taller, the spokes are shorter, all of this makes a much stronger wheel.
Cons
1) Ok, the elephant in the room. Cost. Upfront cost of the Rohloff Speedhub, if you’re just buying the hub on its own to build into a wheel, is high. I think today the RRP is somewhere around £1300. Just for the hub, shifter cables etc. 10 years ago (when the hub was a little cheaper), that cost seemed higher still, as the cost of a top-end derailleur was relatively low. Now, a high-end (XTR) Shimano rear mech is about £550, a shifter is about £185, a cassette is £400(!!!), rear hub is £265. So that’s £1400 before you start to add in cables, batteries etc. I know this is top-of-the-range electronic shifting, but I’m just making the point that things are crazy expensive these days, and the £1300 that a Rohloff drivetrain would cost isn’t insane. But the bigger point here is that the upfront cost of the Rohloff hub is pretty much a one-off cost for the rest of your cycling life! A £400 Shimano cassette is a consumable. It’s going to wear out. A Rohloff sprocket (which will also wear out) is less than £30. If you’re buying a bike that already has a Rohloff wheel, then the cost difference will be much less. I can buy hubs from Rohloff and roll them into my overall bike pricing at a competitive level. So, although I have cost as a ‘Con’ on my list, I’m really not sure in the long term that it is.
2) Weight. The weight of a Rohloff system (hub, shifter, cables etc) is a tiny bit more than 1800g. That does end up a bit heavier than most traditional derailleur systems, but not a huge amount, maybe 250g? Weight comparison is always a bit of a moving target. One bit of feedback that you do tend to see is that people seem to think that all the weight is concentrated in one place (over the rear axle) and that, for whatever reason, that’s not a great thing. I can kinda see that if you spend a lot of time with your wheels off the ground, but I suspect that for most riders, this simply isn’t an issue. I can honestly say that in 20 years of riding with Rohloff hubs, I’ve never once considered the possibility that there’s a weight penalty.
3) Spares. I’m not really too sure why I put this as a con. I was kinda struggling to add to that list! I think the downside on the spares front is just that, because the Rohloff system isn’t as widespread as derailleur systems, you’re unlikely to find spares in your local bike shop. I’m not sure how much of an issue that actually is. There are plenty of online stores that stock Rohloff parts, and your local bike shop will be able to order pretty much anything for next-day delivery. Having said all of that, I’m pretty confident that your need for spares is going to be pretty rare.
4) Shifters. The Rohloff Speedhub uses a rotary shifter to change gears. The stock shifter that comes with the Rohloff is a simple twist shifter that mounts to the bars. The gears are sequential, so you just shift from 1 to 14 in sequence. You can shift multiple gears at once. One of the best things about the Rohloff is the fact that the shifter is incredibly simple. It’s literally a rotating barrel that pulls a couple of cables. There’s nothing to go wrong, and that contributes massively to the reliability of the overall system. For flat MTB style bars or loop bars like the Jones bars or Jones clones, that simple rotary shifter works great. Things get a little trickier when it comes to drop bars. The stock rotary shifter won’t actually slide past the bends on drop bars so we need to look at an alternative solution. I use two different options for drop bars. The first one is a 3rd party shifter from Co-Motion which has been designed with a bigger inner barrel that will slide past the bends in most drop bars. It’s still a rotary shifter and works in exactly the same way as the stock shifter but is just a little bigger. The second solution is to use a split (two part) handlebar. I use the one from Van Nicholas and it works great. The bar splits in two under the stem clamp and this allows the stock Rohloff shifter to slide on. It’s a great solution. There is a third option that I don’t use very much anymore but it’s still available as a choice. It’s called the Gebla Rohbox and consists of a small ‘shiftbox’ that replaces the stock Rohloff shiftbox and pairs with a modified drop bar shifter (normally SRAM). This allows you to use the shift levers on a normal set of drop bar levers; one side moves you up a gear, and one side moves you down a gear. It’s a cool system and works well if you’re really used to drop-bar, STI style shifting and want to stick with that. My main issue with it, is that it’s introducing quite a complicated component into a system that works really well because of the simplicity. But it’s there as an option if you want it.
I’ll follow this article up with a more indepth look at the Gates CarbonDrive belt system. If you have any questions about any of this, please get in touch.