Rohloff Rollout

A quick warning to all of our readers, this post is heavy in "techno-babble", so if you are not interested equipminent information you might not want to read on.

Lauren has enjoyed her early experiences with the Rohloff.  She has found it simple, effective and best of all the chain can no longer teasingly bounce between gears to induce ride frustration.  Another inherent benefit, is the system's ability to readily adapt to different gear ranges.

Much of this post has been adapted from Sheldon Brown's adaptation of Andy Blance's "Living with a The Rohloff Speedhub".  In this post, gain ratios are expressed in gear inches or rollout, which is simply the linear inches traveled for every one full revolution of the crankset.  The lower the number the easier the gear and vise versa.  If you are having a difficult time deciphering this concept please visit Sheldon Brown's site for an explanation.

My original inclination when setting up the Speedhub was to match the high gear of a typical 27 speed mountain bike.  Since the hub gears are predominantly under-drive, the hubshell or the rim rotates less than one revolution for every revolution of the rear cog, I chose to set it up initially with a 46 tooth chainring and the stock 16 tooth cog.

In the table below the first row is the rollout of the Rohloff set up with the aforementioned gear ratio and row "b" is a common "different" gears provided by a fast touring derailleur set up 46/38/26 tooth chainrings and a cassette with a low of 32 and a high of 11 teeth.  The derailleur set up has a slightly higher gear range than the Rohloff's 524% with a range of 537%.

Rohloff gear inches compared to a "fast" derailleur touring bike

In an attempt to get a feel for the low gears needed for loaded touring, we have done a number of local mountain bike rides.  With the hub set up in this manner the low gears do not seem to be low enough.  Through some research and personal recommendations we decided to evaluate the lowest gear recommended by Rohloff, 38X16 to evaluate the difference.  Below the gear inches of the Rohloff with the aforementioned set up are compared to a more typical 27 speed mountain bike, which has a range of  618%.

Rohloff gear inches compared to a standard 27 speed mountain bike.

Removing the crank with the 46 tooth chainring

The bike with the new 38 tooth chainring ready to ride

This set up seems like it will be a better match for the type of riding that we expect to encounter. While you lose the high end gear, bjike touring is not a race and it is more important to have low gears to save your knees.  Stay tuned to hear about the result.