Alfine 8 failure – help please!

Had my Alfine 8 for a couple of weeks after buying as part of a secondhand bike. Done about 150km on it so far, and this morning after a couple of loud graunching noises, the whole thing has seized up. Only 1st gear works, anything else the wheel won’t even freewheel without making some pretty dreadful noises.

I need this bike to get to work so need to get it sorted by Monday. From what it sounds like, the internals are probably now in bits so is a new hub likely the only way forward? Or has anyone else experienced this and managed to get it working again?

Cheers,

Alfine stripdown

There’s lots more info on that site. Worth a read if you like epicyclic gears.

From the sound of it you have a hub that’s been ridden a lot with the cables maladjusted. Apart from immersion in salt water it’s about the only way to break them.

Hmm. The bike was in generally excellent condition and I don’t think it’s been particularly neglected. Cables looked fine when first bought – the two yellow dots underneath aligned in when in 4th. Think I’ll need to buy a new one for next week but might dismantle this one when I have some time.

Cheers,

I would certainly try doing what you can, and that’s to set the tension up again.

If you have access to a stand, pop it up there and see what happens if you disengage the cable and select gears by turning the rotating cable hanger by hand.

Might it just be the cabling?

I’ll give that a try later on, but the fact that the wheel wouldn’t even freewheel suggests to me that something has got jammed inside – it’s not like the hub is expected to go stiff when it’s half way between gears?

Mine did this at the start of a family holiday cycling the Coast and Castles route. My solution was to buy a cheap 26″ back wheel and cassette and run it single speed with the Alfine wheel strapped to the trailer! I sold the broken hub to someone off here who was game to try and fix it so it may be possible. My feeling was that although the hub gears work well and are reliable, if/when they fail there’s not much you can do in the field to get them going again. Rohlofs may be a different matter….

it’s not like the hub is expected to go stiff when it’s half way between gears?

You are, of course, correct. However – it’s an easy thing to try.

Good luck.

Here’s the thread of me selling mine.

http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/29er-wheel-with-broken-alfine-hub-anyone

The purchaser seems to be on here still and has an email in profile? Worth a shot perhaps?

if you are in deep doodoo you can borrow my alfine 8 rear wheel – its on a 26″ 717 rim. and a 160mm disk. i’m in essex but will be going to lands end for a charity event at the weekend if that helps.

Thanks for the offer Jamie – I have found a s/h one on a 29er rim to buy so hopefully I’ll be running again by Monday! Will take the broken one apart at some point and then decide whether to try and repair or sell for parts.

Cheers,

Cables looked fine when first bought – the two yellow dots underneath aligned in when in 4th.

Alinging the dots on mine made the gears slip, it was the window lines that needed aligning, and for some reason that was a little different. I had been using dots as the window was hidden under a layer of mud.

image from MTBR
http://forums.mtbr.com/internal-gear-hubs/alfine-8-slipping-gear-5-a-898053.html

Update. Opened it up (easier than expected, using this and this). I knew something was wrong when the innards didn’t just clunk out after the big plastic thing came off. I had to hammer on the non-drive-side axle with a hammer to gradually force the internal mechanism out. Very brown, dirty, and one of the races of rollers is in bits. I hope the roller bearing can be replaced reasonably easily, but I’m not so sure whether the outer race (i.e. the hub shell) will have suffered much.

So much for external appearances!

Pics

Oh my god that is a total mess!! I feel your pain there, at least you’ve managed to source a new wheel in time. When I opened mine after a good 2-3 years of service it was spotless inside, no water ingress at all. I’m not bragging, just thought it might be useful for you to know!

Actually I think the broken bit is the roller clutch, not a bearing. Seems a few other folk have had them fail, and it doesn’t seem like they’re easy to get hold of spares 🙁

That’s pretty much a dead gear insert! I service a lot of Nexus/Alfine hubs and one in that condition isn’t going to be rescued.
Time for a new hub as judging by the conditions of that, the bearing surfaces in the hub will be shot too meaning that even with a new insert it’ll never run smoothly.

Bummer. I was thinking the £70 for a new carrier might be just about justified if I can strip, grease and clean the rest of it. The drive side gubbins seems in decent condition, and the big ball carrier is only £2.99. Do you think it’d be possible to assess the inside of the hub just by looking at it, or is the wear/damage not going to be visible to the naked eye?

Looks like rust. Ridden on salty roads perchance?

The sealing on these hubs is rather variable. I suspect it’s down to tolerances and care at time of assembly.

Definitely water ingress into that hub. However it was the fracture of the roller cage that led to seizure, and this can happen without water getting in.

Quite a common failure point on the Alfine 8s – the roller clutch on the carrier unit. I think shimano have addressed this as for about the last year new SG-S501 units come with the rollers mounted in a black plastic cage, rather than the (perhaps more brittle?) white cage that you can see in bits in your hub.

If available (the SG-S501 has been superseded) you could get a complete new hub from Rosebikes or elsewhere – from Rose that comes with shifter, cassette joint, sprocket, cable etc, so at least you’ll have some spares. Personally I’d give the hub shell a really good clean and wipe out, then assess the bearing surfaces on drive side (the rim of the shell) and non drive side (more like a standard hub cup/cone). There are also more polished surfaces inside the shell that the roller clutches come into contact with. If all those surfaces look OK and non pitted then you are likely to be OK with an internals swap with the new hub from Rose. If not, or you can’t source the 501 hub, I’m afraid it looks like new hub and wheel build time SG-S7000 is the new model – 180 euros on Rose, plus the wheel build costs.

I use the official grease for the bearings and internals

http://www.petracycles.co.uk/internal-gear-hub-grease-100-g/

I always follow this tip to grease under the “Right hand dust cap B” for improving sealing on new hubs/internals – again using the above grease, though any will likely do there. Follow step 2 on this link, easy to do before installing the sprocket on a new hub.

http://www.hubstripping.com/shimano-alfine/shimano-nexus-internal-gear-hub-maintenance.jpg

The carrier unit seems to be fairly easily available for about £70 – it makes up about half the internals. Shame the clutch roller isn’t available on it’s own though. I’ve stripped the internal down a bit further and aside from brown dirt everywhere it’s not looking too bad. The inside of the hub shell all seems fine.

The carrier part no is Y-36W98030, aka SG-8R35 and seems to be common to the Nexus 8 hub as well. Part 4 in this sheet.

Here

and here