Did we miss the best touring rear hub ever?

[pwa]

How about my payrise analogy then?

10% rise is an addition, so your payrise would never be called a 110% payrise.

The Rohloff range is said to be 526% because the top gear is 5.26 x the bottom gear. It is actually a handy way of reckoning because if you know the bottom gear, the top gear is a very quick calculation. My own feeling, having both wide derailleur triples and a Rohloff, is that having a Rohloff is like having a wide range triple (not one with a smallest ring of 30) but with about one gear less in range. So you compromise at the top or the bottom. It is easier to compromise at the top because if you spin out you can just let gravity do the work while you take a short break. That works just fine for touring. And you have no mechs to clean and maintain, the drivetrain is ridiculously quick and easy to clean and maintain, and you can change gear while stationary if you need to. With absolutely no indexing issues.

Perhaps it is because it is what I am used to, and it has given me absolutely no problems over the years, but I will be sad when a shortage of good quality replacement parts eventually forces me to abandon Shimano 9 speed MTB hubs, which have been at the centre of my reliable touring wheels for a long time. If they were continuing to make high end 9 speed stuff, that is what I would stick with. Perhaps I should have gone on a spares binge a few years back.

[Tiberius]

The Rohloff is made for a niche market that wants a good gear range(but not an extreme range),minimal maintenance and dureability in extreme conditions ie; typically RTW expedition touring or rough stuff/MTB touring,the two aren't very different facets of cycling and don't require high end ratios,but do require low end stuff to handle climbs with a load.
Rohloff is an engineering marvel and for what it's designed for beats any deraileur system hands down.

Precisely - very well put.

I have never needed (or wanted) anything more from my Rohloff than what it already is and what it already does. I really REALLY wouldn't want a second chainring.

[mig]

i have never really understood the desire for more and more gear ratios from a rider's point of view. a well thought out set - yes. endless increases - no.

is it a common goal to pedal at a set cadence for the majority of the time and hence have a need to find a ratio that fits in with that desire? i quite like to vary my cadence during a ride. that said i may be habituated to that end riding fixed quite extensively.

whilst i understand that many here ride a) with a loaded bike and/or b) on very varied terrain and hence would have need to use the upper and lower limits of their gear range i would doubt that many riders use above 4-5 ratios for very long for most of their riding. or am i wrong in that feeling?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALNsQpCL8LY

[Brucey]

long climbs and heavy loads mean that the range of gears required becomes larger. Struggling over a short climb even though you are overgeared is one thing, but spending most of a day loaded up, slogglng up a climb that goes on for the thick end of 50km is quite another; most folk find they need gears that allow easy pedalling if they want to do that without blowing a gasket, leave alone do the same thing again on subsequent days.

So on easy terrain, shorter rides etc you might only use a fairly narrow range of gears, but other circumstances bring different requirements.

cheers

[mig]

long climbs and heavy loads mean that the range of gears required becomes larger. Struggling over a short climb even though you are overgeared is one thing, but spending most of a day loaded up, slogglng up a climb that goes on for the thick end of 50km is quite another; most folk find they need gears that allow easy pedalling if they want to do that without blowing a gasket, leave alone do the same thing again on subsequent days.

So on easy terrain, shorter rides etc you might only use a fairly narrow range of gears, but other circumstances bring different requirements.

cheers

agreed and i know this is a 'touring' hub thread but for the majority of rides, over the majority of bike types i would say 4-5 is enough.

[Brucey]

I agree you can get away with many fewer gears in many cases but the maths gets pretty brutal if you don't have a lot of power on hand, are packing more weight and expect to ride up long climbs; a kind of death by a thousand cuts. Then you have to choose between gear range and gear intervals.

A consideration of vertical speed (climb rate) against work done is quite telling;

For example a roadie with bike might weigh 75kg and can produce 400W for a minute or two, which means that a climb rate of slightly over 0.5m/s is possible, so a 60m climb can be dispensed with in a couple of minutes brisk riding. 200W will allow a climb rate over 0.25m/s which means that you can ride at about 10mph up a 5% gradient for several tens of minutes if you are reasonably fit (NB it is difficult to find a climb in the UK which would take longer than this). And you don't need many gears if your minimum speed is about 10mph, or you are prepared to vary your cadence.

However a touring rider might manage 100W tops (which only ever falls when pedalling more slowly), and be packing ~125kg, even without a lot of luggage. This gives a maximum climb rate which is less than 0.1m/s. This equates to no more than about 4mph on a 5% gradient and 2mph on a 10% gradient. You need much, much lower gears for this, and unless they are numerous, they end up being a long way apart from one another too.

BITD when most folk didn't have that many gears, only fitter riders rode every climb; everyone else got off and walked. These days they can change down and keep riding if they have lower gears.

cheers

[Tigerbiten]

How about my payrise analogy then?

10% rise is an addition, so your payrise would never be called a 110% payrise.

But your total takehome pay will be 110% of the starting amount
This is where you need to work out if your working with a total amount or an increase in the amount.
The total will always be 100% more than the increase.

If there's a 13.6% step between gears then the next gear will be 113.6% bigger in terms of gear inches than the previous one.
Same thing just expressed different ways.

Luck ........

[reohn2]

i have never really understood the desire for more and more gear ratios from a rider's point of view. a well thought out set - yes. endless increases - no.

is it a common goal to pedal at a set cadence for the majority of the time and hence have a need to find a ratio that fits in with that desire? i quite like to vary my cadence during a ride. that said i may be habituated to that end riding fixed quite extensively.

whilst i understand that many here ride a) with a loaded bike and/or b) on very varied terrain and hence would have need to use the upper and lower limits of their gear range i would doubt that many riders use above 4-5 ratios for very long for most of their riding. or am i wrong in that feeling?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALNsQpCL8LY

I'm of another persuasion that the whole idea of gearing is to help as much as it can mantain an optimum cadence within a range that is suitable to the rider's happy medium,for me personally that's around 85 to 95rpm.Of course I can pedal outside that range but not for long periods,more so when climbing.
This means I need a wide range of gears weighted to the low end(because I'm decrepit)but with not too big a gap between ratios as my old knees just don't like it.

[Tigerbiten]

It also depends on your riding style as to what speed you start to freewheel at as to how high your top gear is.
Do you like to pedal downhill at +30 mph even though it may be more aerodynamically efficient to tuck and freewheel or are you happy to freewheel at around 25 mph.
In the first case you may want a top gear of over 120" and in the second case you may be happy to top out at around 95".

Luck ..........

[mig]

i have never really understood the desire for more and more gear ratios from a rider's point of view. a well thought out set - yes. endless increases - no.

is it a common goal to pedal at a set cadence for the majority of the time and hence have a need to find a ratio that fits in with that desire? i quite like to vary my cadence during a ride. that said i may be habituated to that end riding fixed quite extensively.

whilst i understand that many here ride a) with a loaded bike and/or b) on very varied terrain and hence would have need to use the upper and lower limits of their gear range i would doubt that many riders use above 4-5 ratios for very long for most of their riding. or am i wrong in that feeling?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALNsQpCL8LY

I'm of another persuasion that the whole idea of gearing is to help as much as it can mantain an optimum cadence within a range that is suitable to the rider's happy medium,for me personally that's around 85 to 95rpm.Of course I can pedal outside that range but not for long periods,more so when climbing.
This means I need a wide range of gears weighted to the low end(because I'm decrepit)but with not too big a gap between ratios as my old knees just don't like it.

it's funny that as i really don't like small gaps between gear ratios preferring to change pedal revs to accomodate. it would be boring if we were all the same. i appreciate the circumstances for low gears though.

[Brucey]

Gearing is of course a very personal choice, but between the very dominant effect of gradient when you are loaded up, the nature of touring itself and one or two other things, it is very much preferable to have evenly spaced gears on a touring bike; not too close together, not too far apart. IME intervals of between about 12% and 15% in the 35" to 80" range seem to work very well; you can develop a really consistent rhythm to the gear changes, keeping 'in the sweet spot' rather than fighting it. So in that respect Rohloff got it about right, I'd say.

IME 'fighting it' works very much less well when spending all day in the saddle for weeks on end; you may win the odd battle this way, but you won't win the war...?

Above 80" and below about 35" (exact points will vary with rider of course) there is an argument for having wider spaced derailleur gear ratios; for example wide-spaced at the bottom end can help stop you from 'conking out' on sudden gradient changes (eg on hairpins), because one downshift can be used where two might otherwise be necessary with closer spaced gear ratios.

All personal choice of course...

cheers

[pwa]

One difference between touring and racing is that with the former it does not usually matter how long it takes you to get to the summit of a hill. So if you move from your second biggest sprocket to your biggest sprocket, and the jump is a bit too big, you can simply ease off on the effort and go a bit slower. The only things that matter are that you get to the top, and you don't wreck yourself getting there. Every big hill you get to the top of in good condition is a little victory. Nobody cares if it takes 30 seconds longer than it could have because you had a 36 sprocket when a 32 would have been optimal. So yes, a big jump to the largest sprocket isn't a big problem. It is when cycling on flatter terrain that you want more consistent jumps.

[rotavator]

One difference between touring and racing is that with the latter it does not usually matter how long it takes you to get to the summit of a hill.

I suspect you meant "former" rather than "latter"

[alexnharvey]

He had great potential but sadly a minor misunderstanding cut short his racing career.

[pwa]

One difference between touring and racing is that with the latter it does not usually matter how long it takes you to get to the summit of a hill.

I suspect you meant "former" rather than "latter"

I did