Rohloff installation

The Rohloff Speedhub is a German-designed and built gearbox built into a rear hub.

This hub has fourteen (14) evenly-spaced gears and the gear-range of a mountain-bike (MTB) (526%) with no gear-overlap.

The design is so innovative that the shifting needs no adjustment. A double-pull cable system pulls a shifting mechanism that is built into the hub. The shifter does nothing but pull cables. [This in contrast to standard shifters that pull a cable and then have a detente or stop that also decides when it should stop.) In the case of the Rohloff, the hub itself decides when it should shift into gear and does it. Because no synchronization is needed between the shifter's detente and the hub's shift, all that is needed for shifting is to make sure that enough cable can be pulled.

An oil bath lubricates the internals of the Rohloff gearbox. From a maintenance point of view, this keeps everything quite sealed and eliminates almost all maintenance. At the same time, you have one maintenance item with the Rohloff that is uncommon with bicycles: periodically, you need to change the oil. Fortunately, this is quite easy.

At AlphaBENT, we have been making bikes and installing Rohloff gearing systems since they have ever existed. We have customers who have abused their Rohloff Speedhubs, done off-road touring, and travelled across the planet. We have seen failures in shifting cables, but never the internals of the hub.

These are durable, long-lasting machines.