rohloff assembly video
Fantastic stuff.
Archive for rohloff
Surly Big Dummy — completed!
The family hauler is complete.
The build:
Frame/fork: 18″ Surly Big Dummy
Headset: Chris King (now on its 4th frame.)
Wheels: Rohloff XC disc/Phil Wood disc to Mavic X717
Tires: Schwalbe Fat Frank
Cranks: White Industries
BB: Phil Wood
Pedals: Wellgo MG-1
Bars: On-One Mary
Grips: Ergon GP1
Stem: Deda Newton
Brakes: Formula K24 Oro hydraulic disc, 203mm front, 160mm rear.
Seatpost: Thomson
Saddle: Selle Italia Flite
The bike rides fabulously now that it’s fully set up, braking is strong and progressive, even under heavy load. The Rohloff is perfect — you end up shifting the bike more like a truck (lots of small shifts as you accelerate) rather than shifting infrequently. The ability to up/downshift at a stop is essential, and hugely helpful for getting started with heavy loads.
I’ve carried my wife and son on the back deck with no issues, handling or otherwise… really great. I’m looking to perhaps modify the deck (something longer with tiedown anchor points) and the side bags (I don’t like the mesh ends on the bags, would prefer something with a flap as well) but otherwise it’s pretty damn great…
the cargo bike
So, in a fit of “this-seems-like-a-great-idea-for-the-family” I built up a Surly Big Dummy longtail bike as the NYC version of the family truckster. Thus far I have hauled:
3.5 cases of beer and a 10lb bag of catfood.
full frame box and my son’s push-bike.
my wife and son.
my Hollands’ light touring bike and 30lbs of bike parts.
This should be a hell of a lot of fun.
Co-Motion Nor’Wester Rohloff
Love the paint.
the co-motion in motion.
Finally, FINALLY finished… after months of trying to figure out how best to put together this project, the Rohloff Speedhub/14 based Co-Motion Nor’wester is built! The Rohloff really is something else…
de rosa professional pista, revisited.
De Rosa Professional pista, originally uploaded by sashae.
Fully built up and rolling again. None the worse the wear.
westminster, scorchers, titanium.
My friend Matthew and I attended this past weekend’s Westminster, MD swap meet, getting up before sunrise on Sunday to get the jump on various other collectors, bike nerds, and 2-wheeled deviants. It was a fine swap, with huge attendance in the Carroll County Agricultural Center (half the room was taken up by a rodeo ring with bleachers surrounding) filled with a decent selection of interesting parts both old and new, as well as some fine bargains. I managed to steal away with a couple of exciting small bits — a Campagnolo 15mm “peanut butter” 15mm wrench for $3, a Campagnolo dog-leg saddle wrench for $2, and most excitingly a full Rohloff/Phil Wood wheelset setup with shifter and cabling at a screaming bargain — a setup that should provide me with an excellent set of Rohloff wheels without breaking the bank.
The hardest part about setting up the Rohloff is not the parts, but rather deciding “what kind of bike would this best go on.” Of late, I’ve been particularly fascinated from both an aesthetic and functional standpoint by “scorcher” and “porteur” type bikes — bikes that are set up in a more upright fashion that a standard road bike, but take relatively narrow tires and most likely have mounts for fenders, racks or the like. Kogswell makes a brilliant Porteur/Randonneur frame that fits the bill quite well, and Velo Orange deliver a fine frame (made here in NYC by Johnny Coast) as well. Somewhat terrifyingly, though, I’ve been engaged by titanium frames, in the same mold. The recent NAHBS show had beautiful bikes galore — track frames, randonneuring bikes, tandems and what have you. In years past I’ve particularly admired the work of the titanium builders out there — Roark, Merlin, etc. Sadly, I wasn’t able to make it out this year, but one picture in particular really did it for me.
Oh, my. Moots has made a frame called the Comooter that takes a Rohloff (!), has fender mounts (!!), and even has a generator hub in the front (!!!) with flat bars! Aiee! Sadly, Moots’ cost about a billion dollars (give or take a million) and thus is out of my budget for the forseeable future, lest I want to get a divorce. Sid’s Bikes here in NYC had the Comooter but without the Rohloff, but in this guise it totally makes sense.
Non-corrosive, strong metal, no paint to chip, custom built to fit the Paragon Machine Works dropouts that fit the Rohloff perfectly without the use of a chain tensioner… it’s like a dream. Ah, well.
This bike is aesthetically a bit more pleasing to me in terms of shape (I don’t love the bowed top tube of the Comooter) but follows the same lines — 35mm cyclocross tires, upright bars, etc. This is actually a Merlin track frame converted by Tam Pham into an homage to the 1993 Ibis Scorcher, a bike well ahead of its time — witness the review from Bicycle Guide in 1993 where the reviewer has to explain the difficulties of riding a fixed wheel bike. It’s interesting to me how everything old (the Scorcher was modelled after a late 1800s racing bike) can be new again — the Comooter looks like a highly advanced Raleigh 3 speed. Then again, I suppose I’m riding fixed wheel bikes now, too…
rohloff speedhub 500/14.
I have of late been incredibly fascinated by the Rohloff Speedhub 500/14, perhaps the most technically advanced bit of bicycle gear out there. It is a 14 speed, internally geared hub, much along the lines of the Raleigh 3 speed man folks remember from their youth. The difference is, the Rohloff is a completely sealed, evenly spaced internal hub, with 13.6% gain between each gear. The service life of the hub is apparently near unlimited — there are stories of these hubs being ridden almost to 100,000 kilometers without repair. The only external pieces of the hub are the cog (steel, and reversible for even wear prior to replacement), the tension arm (which holds the hub in place in the frame) and the shifter itself, which is a simple twist grip that simply pulls cables up-and-down — all of the logic for the shifting is in the hub itself, not in the shifter.
This makes for, obviously, an incredibly durable and reliable setup — this rider toured India and Sichuan riding an On-One 29er frame with a Rohloff hub, and as always, Sheldon Brown has a fantastic page with information from Andy Blance (touring bike builder Thorn Raven’s designer.) Andy also has put together useful pages on changing the Speedhub’s oil, explaining Rohloff gear cables, and reversing the sprocket on a Rohloff hub.
Sadly, outside of Sheldon’s efforts, the Rohloff is hardly known in the US — they only employ one person here, and seem convinced that only hardcore mountain riders would want one (explaining why the Speedhub’s shifter doesn’t fit on standard drop bars, a situation somewhat remedied by solutions from titanium builder Rewel Bikes, Ohio builder HubBub, and German company Norwid, all of whom offer variations on stem/bar extensions to allow mounting of the shifter to drop bars.
In Europe, however, it’s a totally different story. The hub is widely available, including in a couple of rather delicious looking commuter options from Cannondale, the special production G-Star, and the regular production Bad Boy Rohloff. It’s unfortunate that the US is stuck with very so-so internal hub offerings from Shimano rather than a performance hub like this, as I imagine many commuters/tourers would be quite intrigued by the hub. I am actually working on a project to put together my Co-Motion Nor’Wester with a Rohloff, but I’m somewhat torn as a derailleur setup is so much more familiar, and the compromises involving drop bars aren’t 100% satisfying. We shall see as we get towards sunnier weather though. I have a distinct urge to ride from NYC out to the small town where my Aunt and Uncle live over the Delaware River in Pennsylvania. Seems like a nice ride.
