New Alfine 8-speed 2015 SG-S7000

[nippynoo]

Please post if you've got any info on this new Shimano 8-speed hub..

Its a new design.. supposed to be many improvements over outgoing Alfine 8.. Available in 2 weeks..
http://www.rosebikes.com/article/shimano-alfine-sg-s7000-8-speed-gear-hub/aid:742113

[rofan]

today my first ride with the new A8 SG-S7000-8.
Shifting is very smooth: up with very few force, down with pretty more force. Hard work for the thumb.
I do not exactly know whether it is harder than with the old A8 SG-S501, because there I use the grip shift and not the rapidfire .
Another disadvantage of the rapidfire shift lever (also for the old A8) is just one gear per click, not up to 2 like A11

[nippynoo]

today my first ride with the new A8 SG-S7000-8.
Shifting is very smooth: up with very few force, down with pretty more force. Hard work for the thumb.
I do not exactly know whether it is harder than with the old A8 SG-S501, because there I use the grip shift and not the rapidfire .
Another disadvantage of the rapidfire shift lever (also for the old A8) is just one gear per click, not up to 2 like A11

Hows your thumb - is shifting getting any easier?
I'm looking forward to test riding one soon as I can find one in a shop.What bike is yours on?

[Anura]

I have an Alfine on my Charge Grater but it will not be new one. I wondered if you knew if there was anything on line which showed how to remove rear wheel as I can only find a you tube thing and I wanted more a handbook that I could maybe print out. You tube not handy in you're in garage on on road. I have gone through steps in principle but not had to do it in reality so I'd like to study some diagrams.

[rofan]

Hows your thumb - is shifting getting any easier?

power at the Cassette Joint seems to be nearly the same S501 S7000

I'm looking forward to test riding one soon as I can find one in a shop.What bike is yours on?

Built by myself.
I am really satisfied, very few shifting issues. To compare, I should assemble again the wheel with S501, but not very keen on it.
Shifting seems to be a bit better than with my SG-8R25

[boblo]

Sorry slight hijack... I have the previous Alfine 8 in a Day One. Occasionally (once or twice per ~50 mile ride) the hub slips very slightly and then reengages. It doesn't seem to affect a particular gear. I adjusted a little tension from the cable which reduced the problem l but this then stopped top gear from properly engaging. I started with correctly aligned yellow marks and newish cable. The bike is a couple of years old but has only done ~1000 Miles. I'm wondering if an ATF dip is due along with a new cable.

Any ideas please?

[Brucey]

Skips of the sort that you have found can be caused by several things;

1) if the hub bearings are not adjusted correctly this can cause trouble
2) if water has got inside the hub it can cause trouble
3) if the grease has dried out it can cause trouble
4) If the cable or cassette joint is even slighty draggy then the shift movements won't always be perfect.
5) if the hub has been badly made then the gear selection will be bad in some gears regardless of cable adjustment.

Shimano recommend that you have your hub serviced more often than once every two years, and many of the possible causes of trouble are not dependant on mileage anyway, so yeah, time for a little TLC.

BTW I've said this before but one of the main things that is wrong with the whole Nexus/Alfine range is the lubrication scheme. The idea that the specified grease (both in type and quantity) is going to last well is simply ridiculous, and the oil scheme also has its problems too. In the UK weather, trouble of some kind is almost inevitable, and once it manifests itself (some maintenance interval doubtless having been skipped...) the hub is often already damaged.

If you look at the N7 hub you can see that they have been making it for nearly 20 years now. In fairness the latest internals fit the earliest hubshells (a good thing) but in that time they have been through many different RH seal designs. So many I have lost count. In fact that has been the major design variation as far as I can tell. The hubs still let the water in and fail though....It is pretty much the same story with the N8/A8 range but there they have experimented with different clutches so that you can't swap internals into different shells in the same way as with N7 models.

So I'm not holding my breath when it comes to this latest version of the N8/A8 hub. Sure you can make these hubs work reliably, but it takes a little effort (as well as a different lube and a lube port, probably) rather than a combination of blind faith and systematic neglect.

cheers

[Brucey]

I've just spent a few minutes looking at the EV techdoc for the SG-S7000; of about 50 line items, only ten or eleven of them (some of which are duplicates anyway) are 'new' for this hub. The rest of it is the same as the outgoing SG-S501 model. The changes appear to be primarily concerned with reversing the shift action.

The older Nexus and Alfine 8 speed models have within them a little known feature; a kind of shift servo action. If the main shift sleeve won't move (eg during an upshift in the older models of hub) this does two things; first it loads up the shift control springs and second it engages a sprag clutch with the main driver. The effect of the second thing is that the shift action becomes powered by the pedalling action. I guess all this will have to have been revised in some interesting way for the new hub.

If there is a compelling advantage to the new system those with oily fingernails may be interested to know that I think it may be possible to convert to a new specification shift action just by buying a new axle unit, cassette joint and (maybe) shifter.

BTW rumours that this may be a full oil bath hub appear to be unfounded; although oil dipping is inferred, there is no lube port in the hubshell and the parts listing for this hub includes grease, just like the outgoing model.

cheers

[boblo]

Ah thanks for your reply Brucey. The hub has never seen water so unlikely to be that and I'm pretty sure the bearing adjustment is good (it's certainly not too loose...) but I'll check it. I can't do anything about a badly made hub at this stage so I'll change the cable, check the cassette joint and service the hub. Am I correct in thinking 'service' is limited to dunking the guts in expensive oil or cheap ATF?

[Brucey]

An oil service is easy enough to do but if you are keen you can do a lot more. You can fairly easily strip the left side of the internals once you have them out of the hubshell; it is simply a question of removing a spring clip and then the bulk of the gears in the hub slide off the axle in one big lump. Once you have done this you can get a view of both the two speed clutch (engaged in gears 5-8) and the sun pinion locking pawls.

If you get slipping in specific gears you can inspect the pawls and clutches accordingly. It only takes a tiny piece of debris in a sun pinion centre and this will inhibit the pawl engagement in some gears. Slack hub bearings cause the planetary gear assy to rotate eccentrically and this can help sun locking pawls to squirm out of engagement esp in gears 2,3,4,6,7,8.

Yesterday I repaired a faulty SG-S501 hub which slipped in 5th gear (and only 5th gear) no matter what. Others have reported this fault but I had not seen this variant in the flesh myself. This fault is symptomatic of a poor shift on the two-speed clutch; poor adjustment can lead to clutch damage and if it is going to slip it is most likely to slip in 5th once it is damaged. This fault wasn't quite like that though; in the hub I repaired, the 2s clutch (which was undamaged) had a poor shift. It's shift was badly mistimed vs the pawl lifts and also mistimed vs the gear 4 timing mark. I think this hub was badly made because I ended up grinding parts of the selector mechanism to a new shape (amongst other things) and after that it performed faultlessly.

cheers

[rofan]

I've just spent a few minutes looking at the EV techdoc for the SG-S7000; of about 50 line items, only ten or eleven of them (some of which are duplicates anyway) are 'new' for this hub. The rest of it is the same as the outgoing SG-S501 model.

It takes 10 sec to have a look at the "A - same part- S501" column
whereas it seems not to be complete (10; 37)

[rofan]

Occasionally (once or twice per ~50 mile ride) the hub slips very slightly and then reengages. It doesn't seem to affect a particular gear.

For me this is no bad news, for me it would be ok
Even my new A8_7000 and my Rohloff have switching problems of this frequency.
Imo switching problems can also be caused outside the hub, by the person who is shifting.
With my first A11 I had 10probs/100km. Now, reducing the pedal force when shifting and NOT hesitating to shift (don `t leave thumb or fingers on the shifting levers with pressure) switching is ok .
Nevertheless maintainance is important.

[boblo]

Ah OK, I wondered about this. I had one incident yesterday in 50 miles and thought it might have been down to a slightly less than positive shift by me. I'm using Versa shifters BTW. Do others get misshifts and if so, at what sort of frequency?

I think I'll do an ATF dip and resetup just to ensure the old grease isn't drying out and getting a bit draggy. Thanks for the help chaps (and apologies again for the hijack).

[jaknudsen]

Hi! Does anyone know whether the SG-S7000 will work with Versa VRS-8 shifters? The action would be reversed, of course, but that should not be an issue per se.

[Brucey]

working from memory, the N8/A8 hubs can use a nominal short-short-short-long-short-short-short cable pull arrangement, which ought to work fine if it is simply reversed; you still get a long pull between 4 and 5 just the same.

However the N8/A8 shifters I have examined (which do not include the versa one to date) actually have a long-short-short-long-short-short-longish cable pull pattern. The logic may be that at the extreme gears it doesn't matter if the cable is hauled up to a stop or if it goes completely slack in gears 8 and 1 respectively; however the same logic may not apply in a hub with a reversed shift pattern, depending on how they have dealt with the revised shift sleeve in the hub.

[edit; this page http://www.peterverdone.com/wiki/index.php?title=Alfine_8spd_internal_hub has some measurements of an 'old' alfine 8 shifter pull. These tally pretty well with my own but the 7-8 pull is shown as 'short'. In the text the suggestion is that even cable pulls of 5.38mm will shift this hub. Unfortunately this simply won't work, the long cable pull between 4 and 5 is absolutely necessary. Whether there is much leeway re the 1-2 and 7-8 pulls is unclear.]

cheers