aka Tom Reingold
Join Date: Jan 2009
Location: New York, NY, and High Falls, NY, USA
Posts: 40,502
Bikes: 1962 Rudge Sports, 1971 Raleigh Super Course, 1971 Raleigh Pro Track, 1974 Raleigh International, 1975 Viscount Fixie, 1982 McLean, 1996 Lemond (Ti), 2002 Burley Zydeco tandem
Mentioned: 511 Post(s)
Tagged: 0 Thread(s)
Quoted: 7348 Post(s)
I've always liked IGHs but mostly in the abstract. They promise so much, but they are so far from perfect, as these testimonies show. 3-speed hubs are reliable and easy to work with. Removing and replacing the wheel is easy, at least for me. But the gears are much too far apart for my taste, so it ends up being a 1- or 2-speed hub for me. Even 5-speed hubs have this problem for me. 8-speed and higher hubs are complex and finicky and are very hard to work on. They don't have the low maintenance advantages that 5-speed and 3-speed hubs have.
Derailleurs are light and cheap by comparison, and it's easy to customize gearing.