base2 

He says: "Ouch!"

Ok. So a Vegan and a Crossfit guy come in to my gym. You know how I know? They both told me.

Ok...So in that light, but on a more serious note:

Onwards to IGH's. Why is it that the first rule of IGH club is to evangalize about the glorious Rolhoff?

If they are so highly regarded, what makes them so rare in relation to standard derailleur bikes?

Why are there so few offerings from the big name makers, Fuji, Specialized, Trek, etc...?

There has to be a reason. Is it simply the cost?

Is it tarriffs?
International trade agreements?
Utility cycling is just a tough-sell?
Frame factories relationships with Shimano/SRAM/and to a lesser degree Campy?

What is the state of IGH's on the bike shop display floor in your area? Is an IGH (or even weirder, a Pinion or Nuvinci) bike even available for test rides?

Genuinely curious. IGH's seem to be a novelty & I'm not so sure it ought to be so. What is the missing piece of the puzzle preventing widespread ubiquitous adoption of IGH's in your market?

Rick

The Rohloff hub is manufactured by a family owned business in Germany and they source parts from about 50 companies to make it. It costs more money than many of the bicycle manufactures bicycle models. For that extra money you get some benefits. I have owned a Rohloff equipped bicycle with the Gates carbon drive belt for over 5 years. I do not miss the chain or derailleurs. The reduction in maintenance is extreme. Hassle free shifting moving or sitting still. I purchased a Co-Motion Pangea Rohloff. The bicycle shop that I purchased it from weighed a Pangea stock with the derailleurs and one with the Rohloff and the Rohloff weight was 15oz heavier. If your a weight weenie than this might bother you. Industry tried to get Rohloff to make a less expensive version of the hub at one point. They decided not to lower the quality for more sales. The Rohloff hub is of the highest quality available.

TiHabanero

Roloff hubs are expensive. That is why they are not spec'd by the big price point companies. I have never liked the weight penalty being concentrated at the rear wheel, but they do work very well.

Rick

Have you ever rode a bicycle equipped with a Rohloff hub. It is a minuscule amount of weight and when equipped with a belt you get rid of the chain and derailleurs and all the maintenance, cleaning and adjusting of those parts. It is much more durable and reliable than a derailleur system. Serious world explorers use the Rohloff hub.

Reynolds 

I think that may be because the Rohloff is expensive, yet it's not used in pro racing and so doesn't appeal to wannabe racers or poseurs who spend big $$ in bikes. Commuters can have an IGH, not top quality like the Rohloff but quite acceptable, for much less money.

Gresp15C

I'm too busy evangelizing the Sturmey Archer AW.

My view is that as nice as IGH's are, conventional derailleur systems work pretty darn well, and keep working better. Also, adding gears to a derailleur bike doesn't change the basic concept of how they work, whereas every added gear on an IGH requires a new design with exponentially rising complexity.

That's why I think the AW is the sweet spot. If you need a bit of boost to get up the occasional hill with a fully loaded bike, while remaining simple and weatherproof, having just one or two extra gears is enough. If you want a huge range of closely spaced gears, derailleurs work well enough that the motivation to improve the bike any further at great expense just isn't there.

The majority of people think that $300 is expensive for a bike. The higher end components may benefit from bike makers getting volume discounts from the full range parts manufacturers.

Rick

Sturmey Archer started in 1902 with the invention of the first 3 speed IGH. The first derailleur, a two speed came out in 1905. My grandmother used a sink and a hand ringer clear into the 1970s instead of a modern washing machine with one of them electric motors. It does what it was designed to do and works better than any derailleur. They are produced by a small family business that insists on not cheapening there product. Less than one % of people who are into bicycling even know about the Rohloff hub. Industry is tooled up for average. Other than a few niche bicycle shops you are not going to find a serious touring or commuting bicycle with anything other than a derailleur. I like the Rohloff and am going to purchase another hub in the near future.

MikeyMK

I'd like wider gearing. It's spoilt by the ratios being too close for me.

I have three Sturmey 3-speed bikes and in every case the hub is only ever switched from 1-3 and back. One of my hubs has a 4-speed cassette on it, giving it 12-speeds, but the hub is far nicer to use so the cassette is just a rarely selected final drive whilst i use the hub most often - still as a 2-speed.

carlos danger

so a guy walks into a bar. he quickly finds out his bar is a **** bar. completely unergonomic for a human being. he has a "compact bar".

Luckily bar-man has some sense of ergonomics and has capacity to think for himself. so he quickly finds out what the theoretically "ideal" bar would have to look like.

guy walks out with a nitto dirt drop bar. the rm014 bar. the best, most ergonomic bar in history of humanity.
it tilts outwards. it flares outwards. the best bar. too bad most people are simply too stupid to understand how good a bar such as this is.
bar-man continues his use of the supreme bar until the end of time. and the prince married the princess and everybody lived long and happily ever after.
https://www.benscycle.com/nitto-rm01...14_870/product

you will need at 3cm higher stem and a 3cm longer stem for this to match you existing setup. but in reality this does not replace existing setups at all.

You basically set this bar up (the drops) in the middle of your hoods/drops. and then your'e done. there are no hoods anymore, you cant use them, its only the drops. and they are very very good!

DrDyno

I have a "Road Bike" with an Alfine 8-speed hub. As far as I can ascertain, it was only made for one year, 2009. It's a Dynamic Synergy and, I have not seen another. The gear shifting is extremely smooth and the eight speeds offer me all the range I need, with a right-side brake lever shifter (just like my Ultegra equipped bike). It's been serviced with Shimano parts and grease once that I know of and has been remarkably reliable. The only problem I ever had was with the original "Versa-8" shifter, which is probably unique to this layout. I replaced it with an Alfine-8 Micro Shifter and it has worked trouble free ever since.

indyfabz

Two guys walk into a bar. The third one ducks.

BobG

Adolf Hitler, Charles Manson and a bicyclist walk into a bar. "Hey!" shouts the bartender. "You can't bring that bike in here!"

Now, let's continue the discussion on the IGH...

base2 

Some of you guys are pretty funny.

I sort of figured cost & pro-peleton adoption are the most likely reasons. Pro-peletons must shift under load & that nth of an instant and watt or 2 can be game changing, in that application. That and their budget for disposable products of the latest competetive innovation probably inspiress a lot of product purchases for the mighty derailleur makers.

It's good some IGH's are available, but as alluded to earlier, the difficulty of quality manufacture probably cuts in to margins & that makes for a high bar for entry in to the market. Thus few on the LBS shop floor for people to encounter to begin with.

Stamped cassettes that are easy & cheap to produce, that have a low bar to entry, and need regular replacement probably makes a lot more business sense.

Like the car manufacturers...A giant pick-up costs $15000 to produce but sells for $45000. For $30000 profit. A coup costs 11000 to produce, but sells for $18000 for $6000 profit...It's no wonder manufacturers spend big money trying to drum up sales and convince people they "need" the $30,000 profit margin product to haul that boat they don't own up that mountain they don't live near.

The parallel with 8,9,10,11 & now 12 (!) speed cassettes and $150 derailleurs ought to be obvious.

Thanks guys. Ya'll helped me think through an issue and confirmed a few of my initial thoughts on the matter.

livedarklions

I'm old enough to remember when IGH was the cheap gearing.

HTupolev

Higher cost of entry, less configurable, heavier, more drivetrain friction, reduced ability to shift under load.

Derailleurs first went into production in the mid-1890s, as did hub gears.

joelcool

I have a IGH, a Priority 8 with fenders and disc brakes, and I use it for the rain or very slow social rides. I prefer my derailleur equipped bike not because it has a derailleur, but because it's lighter and much more fun to ride.

Love the bar jokes.

Rick

[QUOTEI sort of figured cost & pro-peleton adoption are the most likely reasons. Pro-peletons must shift under load & that nth of an instant and watt or 2 can be game changing, in that application. That and their budget for disposable products of the latest competetive innovation probably inspiress a lot of product purchases for the mighty derailleur makers.][/QUOTE] Derailleurs do not shift under load. They complete the shift when there is enough pressure of of the drive train to make the shift. Not to long ago when someone missed a shift the derailleur would be damaged or destroyed and the hanger needed repairing. Manufactures engineered around this by allowing the bicyclist to make the selection at the shifter while the derailleur does not make the move until there is less pressure on the drive train. The Rohloff shifts faster, those small gears inside the hub have less distance to travel than a conventional drive train. You say it has more friction. Is your drive train spotless 24/7? Is your drive train perfectly inline in every gear? It cost more money. I can forget to shift and while stopped shift into any gear. I can ride up and down a rocky canyon and not worry about bending a derailleur. I have a belt and don't want or have no need to adjust drive train parts. Just like my car I can hop on my bicycle and just ride the hell out of it. Time is money and I spend less time on maintaining my bicycle. I could go on but have you ridden or own a Rohloff equipped bicycle? I have and I own one and have no intention of riding anything else. I had my eye on the Rohloff hub since around 2000. I only saw one of them locked in a bicycle rack before ordering mine. Even the mechanic at the shop I purchased mine through had some negative things to say about it. You can expect that kind of a reaction from a roadie.

Notso_fastLane

I'm going to see how my velo does through the nasty winter road conditions here. The drive train is very well protected (fully enclosed, pretty much), but if it turns into a lot of maintenance, a Rohloff will likely be my first major upgrade.

~1 lb extra on a 70 lb velomobile won't even be noticed. I just have really low gears for spinning up the hills at 3 mph.

tyrion

One issue is the shifter don't fit into the conventional scheme of things, especially unusual with drop bars.

Kedosto

Yep. Give me a drop bar shifter that doesn't look or function like something I cobbled together in my own garage and I'd be a lot more interested.

Here's what I want...
Drop bar "brifters"
IGH (doesn't have to be Rohloff but must be quality)
Hydro disc brakes
Belt drive

I'm waiting, cash in hand.


-Kedosto

Rick

I currently use the Rohloff left handed shifter with Crazy bars from Velo Orange. Here are more drop bar shifters

base2 

Gebla.

GEBLA

tcs

The Crypto-Dynamic two-speed planetary gearset was a sensation at the 1882 cycle show at Albert Hall.

base2 

Discounting the derailleur stuff you are wrong about. Yes, I do own a Rolhoff.

My question is why aren't they more popular in the market? Then there are a bunch of questions why that is so. Maybe from that we can form a hypothesis, test it. Then get a working theory about the lack of market penetration of what seems the ideal product.

I also own 2 Nexus 7's. They're great as well.

BTW: Fixed your quote syntax error.

308jerry

I'd buy the giant pick up, because somewhere somebody lost a thousand bucks on that coup........ Very nice point for sure, though. 😎