A quick note to readers that are not framiliar with Rohloff hubs, the indexing is in the hub and not in the shifter. They have two cables, both normally slack, you pull on one cable to upshift and pull on the other to downshift. I believe the Pinion system is the same. It can look like it is complicated to remove the rear wheel, but it is actually quite easy and quick.
Originally Posted by
Kelly I
RE- stiff twist grip shifter. I toured over Thanksgiving with a man who had a Rohloff bike with a stiff shifter. It was bad enough that Hank called (Rohloff? Cycle Monkey?) and was told that there should be one continuous length of housing to the shifter. Once Hank made that change, the shifting was much easier.
My husband has a belt drive Rohloff. I looked at the housing. It's two pieces and he has never complained about stiff shifting. ...
Rohloff has two cable systems. One option is for inner cable to be visible for a short distance from the rear hub, and there is an internal cable that is complicated to replace that is inside the hub. That version has quick disconnects on both cables for wheel removal. The other version is the EX Box version, that is what I have. With that version you can't see the inner cable, the housing runs all the way from shifter to the hub. In the photo you can see both cables under the non-drive side chainstay, there is a lot of dust caked on the cables and hub gear mechanism, but the moving parts are all enclosed so that dust does not impair anything. You can see how much dust would get inside the outer housing if there was a cable stop down there.
In the photo, I was pretending my bike was a mountain bike, thus no rack or fenders.
My Rohloff bike has continuous outer housing, but it has that for the brakes too. They specifically cite that in their marketing literature as being better in dusty and muddy conditions, that way it is less likely to get dust and dirt inside an outer housing. The bike was built for use on difficult terrain.
One of my derailleur bikes had very stiff shifting, I eventually figured out that a lot of dust had gotten into the cable outer housing where the housing ended at the downtube cable stops.