Can’t really see the point. Surely shimano will be coming out with hydraulic levers next year? This probably won’t even be in the shops by then!

Looks amazing to me. Appears to address all the issues that hub gears have.
Only thing that would put me off would be the twist-grip shifter. Although a trigger might get pretty annoying anyway when changing up or down through all those gears.

Why the cage at the back?

To take up the slack in the chain during the suspension movement

Lots more pics and words (in german) here:

Leistungsmesser für alle ab Werk?: Mess-Technik für eine Handvoll Euro

Since the hub is so large in diameter a 2-cross pattern is fine.

Sprockets are the same on both versions of the Alfine.

Great – thanks

None of the videos on the Dirt website show up on my iPhone (so I assume they don’t work on iPad either). They need to sort that out, it’s annoying and as someone said above they are shutting out a big percentage of users these days.

That top 10 is crazy! Exciting stuff. Anything could happen on sunday I reccon… I’ve picked Gee for the win this time but it really could be anybody. Bring it on!

I’m not sure I understand the problem exactly… but does this help?

http://www.homebrewedcomponents.com/store.php/products/shimano-m985-lightweight-bash-ring

I had my bike marked by the Met Police recently, and when the guy saw the Datatag sticker he said it was a total waste of time because the police hardly have any of the scanners and they don’t bother using them anyway.

However, the “permanent” marking job they did was also a total waste of time as it washed off the next time I cleaned my bike…

If I had seen at TV program like that when I was a kid I think my head would have exploded. Awesome stuff.

And actually those calculations show you lose just over 3 from both ends, not 2

I disagree. It’s two and a half from the bottom, and almost exactly two from the top.

What I’d be interested in is if anyone sells 10 speed rear shifters as single unit rather than as pairs

Yep, Chain Reaction Cycles do for one.

Let us know how you get on with it!

The shimano 11-36 cassettes have the following sprockets on them:
11,13,15,17,19,21,24,28,32,36
(should help with your calculations)

slightly off topic, but….If you are running single up front and 10 speed at the back, how does it affect the wear on cogs/chain due to increased angles, or is it a sacrifice worth doing for the simplicity and less components to buy/wear/replace?

I would guess that pretty much everyone out there is happy to use the full spread of the cassette when in their middle ring. In general it’s only in the big or small front rings that people don’t use the whole of the cassette. So 1’d say you’re getting no more wear on the cassette than when using a triple ring setup. The chainring is of course getting more wear in a 1×10 setup though.

How do you figure that?

Assuming the 27-speed setup you are running is a shimano 11-34 at the rear and 22/32/44 at the front…

Your big ring is giving you the following ratios:
1.29, 1.47, 1.69, 1.91, 2.2, 2.59, 2.93, 3.38, 4

and your granny ring is giving you the following ratios:
0.65, 0.73, 0.85, 0.96, 1.1, 1.29, 1.47, 1.69, 2

If you are running a 11-36 shimano 10-speed cassette with a 32t chainring then you get the following ratios:
0.89, 1, 1.14, 1.33, 1.52, 1.68, 1.88, 2.13, 2.46, 2.91

Look at the highest gear that the 1×10 setup gives you compared to the highest gears on the big-ring, and the lowest gear compared to the lowest gears on the granny ring. You can see you’re only losing approximately two at either end.

I have not done it yet but plan to when current parts wear out.

If you get an 11-36 10-speed cassette and run it with a 32t chainring then you’ll basically be sacrificing the top two gears and the bottom two gears from your 27-speed setup. If you can live without those then go for it.

@simons_nicolai-uk – so it sounds like Shimano are honouring the warranty on the Alfine 11 if people break them. Do you know if they are asking any questions regarding the use of the hub prior to failure and the gearing ratios used?

I think the “correct” size for you would be large. However you could probably get away with a medium.
I’d email Charge and ask them what they think – they are very helpful and always reply to enquires.

I bought one when they first came out, still love it just as much now as I did the day I got it. Can’t imagine ever getting rid of it, for me it’s the perfect ‘do everything’ bike.

Needles was very unlucky and had a puncture right at the top in his race run.

In case anyone else has the same issue, I have found two shops in London that can do this job; Condor Cycles and Bikefix.
Cost seems to be the same everywhere – £25
However Condor currently have a 1 month lead time on any workshop bookings (!)

A helicoil is made of coiled wire (like a spring). It works by expanding when something is threaded into it which is what keeps it in place. It’s not an ideal solution for something which takes a lot of side load, like a pedal.
The proper solution is to use a solid threaded insert, as per in this article here:
http://thegoldenwrench.blogspot.com/2010/12/repairing-stripped-pedal-thread.html

Thanks for the replies.
Don’t want to fit a helicoil – want to do a proper repair with a new insert.

I’d go for one of these:

http://forums.mtbr.com/showthread.php?t=408510

Should have spent the money re-pointing your wall instead

You can drill it out and thread it to a larger size and then use a pedal insert to take it back down to the correct size.
The pedal inserts are available from framebuilding suppliers and are only a few pounds, however the taps to thread the new size will be expensive, so unless you know someone who has them it will definitely be cheaper to just replace the crank.
I’d be pretty amazed if you can find a bike shop that will do this for you – most will just tell you to buy a new one, which is fairly good advice.

I also think Dan Atherton might turn out to be a real bargain… though not for the first round of course!

I’m currently lying third at the moment… if only Needles hadn’t crashed!! 🙂

I have joined – bring it on!

Thanks for the advice all. You are probably right it’s a bad idea. I still want to share the wheel between bikes though so maybe I should be thinking about getting a different frame for my commuter which is 26″ wheel specific…

Want to have an Alfine 11 hub on my mtb and also my commuter, but can’t afford to buy two so was thinking about using the same rear wheel on both and swapping it over at weekends.

Yeah, I guess the BB would end up a bit low… could keep a 700c wheel up front I guess to minimise that. Although that would look even more odd.

Can somebody explain this new integrated hub thing for me

Don’t think anyone knows the answers to those questions yet.
I would hope that the cassette/freehub is able to be disassembled so you could replace just the sprocket parts when they wear out… we shall see I suppose.

How you can commute in a big city without riding up the inside of traffic is beyond me. Far more dangerous to ride down the middle of the road with traffic on both sides in my opinion.

Thanks for the ideas.
I meant to say enywhere in england and wales – scotland is too far. Also cornwall is too far really.
That sleeps12 site does not have any availability on the weekend I have in mind.
Any other ideas?

Apparently 10 speed shifters pull a different amount of cable to 9 speed ones, so have to be used with 10 speed derailleurs.

I think it’s the max size that is important. they just give 11 as the min size as that’s traditionally the smallest available size.

Most shimano freehubs are interchangeable so it will most likely fit an XT hub. Cannot find the freehub body listed anywhere online as a spare part but it should be available to order as their other freehub bodies are.
So would be fairly easy to get 9 speed up and running on an mtb.
10 speed would be more difficult because of the casette… would be a great little project though if you had access to some machine tools. I’m sure it wouldn’t be that hard to make a mutant 10 speed cassette…