Latest generation Alfine 8spd

[ian peacock]

My winter bike has a first generation Alfine 8 spd hub, operated by a Jtek H/bar end lever. After many winters, it works well. The drawback is, in the event of a puncture, wheel removal and replacement is faff at the best of times, and very awkward and time consuming with cold fingers in winter.
So, is the latest incarnation more user-friendly, and will it work with my existing lever?
My current way of dealing with the issue is to use Marathon Plus tyres with the inner-tubes ready filled with slime ( which was a mistake because, when they need a top up of air, the slime goes every where and then clogs the valve.

[tenbikes]

^^^operator error.
Place valve at approx 5-7 o'clock overnight / for an hour. Slim drains out of valve.
Carefully rotate wheel / valve to 2-10 o'clock to inflate.

I do this with all 16 wheels which are set up tubeless. Never had a valve clog.

[Sum]

The Alfine 8 (A8) hub comes in slightly different flavours. The modern SG-S7000/7001 series A8s shift the opposite way to the older SG-S500/501 series A8s and they use different cassette joints and shifters. Having both old and new I can say that the amount of faffage during wheel removal remains the same.

Edit: I'm not sure if you can use your existing Jtek shifter or not. The Jtek website offers only the one shifter for Alfine & Nexus hubs, and Brucey seemed to think the SL-S500 and SL-S7000-8 shifters may be interchangeable, so maybe you can.

[ian peacock]

Thanks for that, Sum, very helpful. "Faffage" is an excellent word. I have decided to abandon hub gears and convert my winter bike to derailleurs. I have some Campag 10 spd levers in my spares box, so, thanks to an invaluable post from Chris Juden, I shall use them with a Shimano GRX mechanism. Chris is much missed as the technical advisor to the CTC magazine (which I have been reading since it was "The CTC Gazette).

[Carlton green]

Thanks for that, Sum, very helpful. "Faffage" is an excellent word. I have decided to abandon hub gears and convert my winter bike to derailleurs. I have some Campag 10 spd levers in my spares box, so, thanks to an invaluable post from Chris Juden, I shall use them with a Shimano GRX mechanism. Chris is much missed as the technical advisor to the CTC magazine (which I have been reading since it was "The CTC Gazette).

That’s one direction to go in and I’m not dissimilarly minded.

I love hub gears but what the Shimano 8 hub gears appear (to me) to offer are products that are overly challenging to fit, repair and maintain. My own route forward from an obsolete hub gear (SRAM P5) led me to the SA AW and I’m not unhappy with the result - it does what I need, but it wouldn’t suit everyone. I also (positively) considered reverting back to a single chainwheel, long arm derailleur and wide range freewheel. That arrangement - and dished wheel - would be a bit more maintenance than a hub gear but at least the maintenance is relatively easy and so is parts supply. (Edit. And if a slightly smaller gear range will suffice then in my experience a short arm derailleur set-up picks up less muck than a long arm and is generally more robust.)

Though the adopted solution might take a bit of finding the simplest solutions are very often the best - sometimes a solution is thoughtfully simplified from something more complex. I believe that it was Einstein who said: “Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler. Any intelligent fool can makes things bigger and more complex … it takes a touch of genius and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.”

[PH]

Edit: I'm not sure if you can use your existing Jtek shifter or not. The Jtek website offers only the one shifter for Alfine & Nexus hubs, and Brucey seemed to think the SL-S500 and SL-S7000-8 shifters may be interchangeable, so maybe you can.

I don't know about the Jtec shifter, but I ran an Alfine with the incorrect Shimano trigger shifter for a couple of years hard use, no issues apart from the numbers being the wrong way round.
Wheel removal - There's certainly a knack, and I certainly don't have it! It either unclips instantly, or I have to wrestle with it... I know someone who does have that knack, it might have just come with practice, their wheel is in and out several times a week for care transporting. Whatever, they can always unhook it in a second, no tools no sticking something in the hole... not only do that do it with ease, they can't understand why anyone else can't.

[Sum]

I don't know about the Jtec shifter, but I ran an Alfine with the incorrect Shimano trigger shifter for a couple of years hard use, no issues apart from the numbers being the wrong way round.

That's good to know PH. I wasn't sure about it as I vaguely recalled someone posting about having the 'wrong' A8 shifter installed by a bike shop and took it back to be replaced, but I couldn't remember if they had an issue with the shifting or not.

I couldn't find their post at the time (mostly because I was searching only for SL-S500 and not also SL-S503) but I've found it now, plus another post from Brucey that's relevant. I've included all the links below along with your helpful post for future reference; It's handy to have the details together in case the subject of mixing top-normal and low-normal Alfine 8 hubs and shifters comes up again:-
viewtopic.php?p=1717479#p1717479
viewtopic.php?p=1451895#p1451895
viewtopic.php?p=1338129#p1338129
viewtopic.php?p=920824#p920824

The only issue I can see appears to be that the the gear indicator will read back-to-front and the marking on the shifter for the gear setting point (normally 4th gear) will be wrong. In the case of the latter I assume that tuning the gears, i.e. the alignment of the yellow marks on the cassette joint, can be done when the shifter 'reads' 5th gear rather than 4th gear?

Edit: changed 6th gear to 5th gear.

[PH]

The only issue I can see appears to be that the the gear indicator will read back-to-front and the marking on the shifter for the gear setting point (normally 4th gear) will be wrong.

Yes, that's all there is to note, I'd ignore the indicator when adjusting and just count the gears from top or bottom. But after a few hundred miles you'll have got used to ignoring the indicator anyway, if you ever bothered in the first place.

[hemo]

My Road rat I built with an alfine 8 and for any punture issues I simply fit a Gaadi tube and carry a spare so I don't have to faff with the alfine.

[Cyclewala]

As alluded to above, I’m also of the view that Alfine wheel removal isn’t a big issue. Sure there is one, possible two, extra steps to get the wheel out, but this may add approx 30 extra seconds. There is of course the need to carry a spanner, but that isn’t that arduous when carrying other commuting clobber.

Besides, good picture resistance tyres should minimise wheel removal.