Hi. Looking at buying a 2nd bike for my wife. It’s around 4y old and has a nexus hub.

I’ve found a vid which you take it out of its shell and soak it in oil once a year. Is that about it when it comes to maintenance?

Do they need adjusting like normal gears?

I assume it has horizontal dropouts like a single speed so it can’t be converted to normal gears in the future?

To setup the gears there is a measurement from the end of the outer to bolt the cable nut/stop, and an adjuster/coloured dots to fine tune.

If the bike has a mech hanger it can be converted to normal gears but the hubs are excellent.

Servicing is correct although the correct oil is pretty pricy, I serviced my Alfine after several years riding in mud and through rivers and it looked brand new inside.

Servicing is correct although the correct oil is pretty pricy

Use ATF fluid from Halfords, under £10 for a litre bottle.
Oil can be reused, just filter out any bits of left after the service.

ajanton
Use ATF fluid from Halfords, under £10 for a litre bottle.

For those who may be wondering why.

A Nexus is an epicyclic gearbox, as is an automatic car gearbox, so logically ATF should do the job.

I’m not sure how its viscosity compares with Shimano’s version, but enough people are using ATF and no problems have been noted AFAIK.

I’d use any reasonably low viscosity gear oil.

BTW refined whale oil used to be highly regarded for S-A epicyclic hubs. It’s a bit hard to get these days… 🙂

Thanks folks. Just picked up a used Genesis Smithfield in almost new conditions. The hub gear change has a freaky super smooth feeling. So not gonna touch it till next summer.

Now just to replace those extreme sweep back bars. How are they even a thing.

I’ve owned a couple of alfine hubs and the most recent for about 4 years. I only did the ATF fluid service every 2 years and that’s with a bike ridden in all conditions. Even then the hub internals were clean And no obvious need to service.
I wouldn’t sweat the service too much they’re well sealed and designed to be low maintenancE.