motorapido

After my first ride with my new Shimano Alfine 11 internal gear hub, all I can say is, "Hallelujah." This hub is excellent. I have it on a 39-year-old vintage sports touring steel frame, with drop bars, and I managed to buy one of the last available sets of the Versa integrated drop-bar shifters left in stock (Versa stopped making them, alas). It was simple installing the hub and aligning the dots between the hub and the shifter mechanism (cassette joint is the nomenclature for the part). The hub shifted flawlessly through all the gears over and over again during my maiden 10-mile ride. I was careful with the installation and with the cable routing and adjusting before I test rode it, and it payed off in flawless performance. Oh the joy of shifting while pedaling or not pedaling and while the bike is standing still. Smooth, buttery, precise. Perfect. Hallelujah. Now it is time to plan a few solo tours on my rejuvenated machine.

Mr IGH

I never shift any Shimano IGH hub under load, I always let up momentarily, shift, then resume pedaling. If you shift under load, your hub will die soon.

Dan Burkhart 

Well, it will take a while, but yes, shifting under load does cause wear over time. The danger with Alfine hubs is that they shift so smooth and seamlessly, even under load, that riders find it hard to resist.
The wear occurs between the shift pawls and the ratchets on the inside circumference of the sun gears. Under power, the coupled sun gear is torquing against the pawl, and shifting it out of that gear, the pawl is rubbing hard against the ratchet. When the adjacent pawl is rising to engage the next sun gear, the same wear occurs, with the added danger of chipping the pawl tooth.
This is the one part of the design I wish was more robust, but it was a trade off between robustness or smooth operation. Everybody though they wanted smooth.

fietsbob

A brief pause in pedaling lets the internal gear combinations with out gear tooth & pawl chipping resistance.

Standard transmissions, (Cars and trucks), have magnets in their drain plugs to collect all those bits of chipped gear grindings.

Wilfred Laurier

I almost organically developed a sort of stutter step with a very quick easing off the pedals when shifting, and I think my Alfine 8 is the most trouble-free piece of equipment I own.

Mr IGH

Over time? LOL, send me one, I'll break it in less than 10 minutes.

Dan Burkhart 

Maybe if you take it through the rock gardens and gnarly trails, but you would have to stomp on it pretty hard. They are not that fragile.

wroomwroomoops

Well, nice review I guess, but for me any IGH review must also mention the performance in low temperature weather (-10 to -20 C). Nexus 8 was rubbish at low temperatures, but nothing as bad as as SRAM Spectro S7. My gawd, the Spectro was just trash. After my experience with it I swore off using IGHs in my country. Maybe the Rohloff Speedhub fares better, but I cannot afford it.

motorapido

My Alfine 11 is oil lubricated. The 8 speed hubs are grease lubricated and get stiff in the cold, as you experienced. Those with the 8 speed hubs overcome that problem by bathing the internals in automatic transmission fluid. The Alfine 11 with oil lube is fine in the cold. You can find good deals on the Alfine 11. For what I paid, I can buy four for the price of one rohloff.

bikemig 

So which of the IGH hubs work well in cold weather? I don't want to pay for a Rohloff. I actually have a SRAM 7; good to know that it does not work in the cold. It doesn't get as cold in Iowa as in Finland obviously but I need something that can handle cold weather. I was thinking of a SA 3 speed hub. I have a surly 1 x 1 frame I'd like to build up as a winter commuter.

kzin

My nexus 3 worked fine down to -4F this winter.

Wilfred Laurier

My alfine 8 worked fine in the cold (Eastern Ontario, Canada cold - probably more similar to Finland than Iowa), but I believe I could feel increased drag. I did the disassembly and ATF dip (as instructed by interweb videos and articles) and I don't think there was an increase in drag when it got cold this winter.
The Alfine 11 speed is already oil-lubricated, so will likely be less affected by cold weather than the factory grease lubricated Alfine 8.

fietsbob

Rohloff ? the oil in it is a pretty Light Viscosity and it doesn't take Much of it to wet the gear surfaces..

79pmooney

Sounds like you are using the wrong oil/grease for the temperature. I'd talk to the manufacturer about what oil/grease/luibricaton they recommend for low temperatures. (It may well be they have not thought of this, but they should if they have users who ride in those conditions. (Not all that different from cars. You don't use 10W40 in Fairbanks, Alaska in the winter.)

I know that a geared hub I was close to the design process of uses a spring to slide the mechanism back to high gear. If too cold for the lubricant, that slide wouldn't happen.

Ben

wroomwroomoops

I see/saw that the Nexus 7 is quite widespread around here, so I assume it's less terrible than the Nexus 8. The best IGH for our weather seems to be the Sturmey Archer 3 speed hub. I have nothing but praise for that device, except that here in Finland it is only available with coaster brake, and I don't do coaster brakes.
If I had one of the SA 3 speed hubs with cable-activated drum brakes (i.e. NOT a coaster brake), I'd build a wheel with it tomorrow.

Oh, and also the Nexus 7 that is/was available in Finland is EXCLUSIVELY the coaster brake model. I don't understand Finns: at least 50% of them hates coaster brakes with a passion like I do, and yet, practically all bikes with IGH come with coaster brakes.

wroomwroomoops

Is the Alfine 11 compatible with the Shimano roller brakes? It needs a special spline for that.

Edit: answer is NOPE. Shimano uses exclusively disk brakes with the Alfine (8 and 11) hubs. A pity, since roller brakes on the rear wheel make a lot of sense, especially in rainy and cold climates. I have several singlespeed bikes with Shimano roller brakes and I love them. Disk brake on the front, roller brake on the rear is the perfect combo for southern Finland.