A Rohloff beater?

[Pale Rider]

A Norwegian company is about to begin production of a new gear hub.

Looks like it's clearly aimed at the premium Rohloff market.

Fourteen sequential gears, and a slightly wider range than a Rohloff.

Shifting appears to be hydraulic, but like Rohloff, indexing is internal for low maintenance and simple disconnection of the shifter to remove the wheel.

The Kindernay hub is bolted to a detachable cage which means it can be simply swapped into a different wheel - provided that wheel is also laced with a cage.

Axle fitting is more versatile than a Rohloff, looks like you can get stub axle and hollow versions.

Price could be sticking point.

The earlybird offer is 10,000kr - about £1,000.

Full price is 15,000kr - about £1,500.

That's either a bit or a lot more than a Rohloff.

I reckon it will be a hard ask to persuade the £1,000 hub buyer to spend his money on a new and untried product, when the alternative is widely regarded as fully developed and bombproof.

http://www.kindernay.com/products/

 

[glasgowcyclist]

I like everything but the price. I'm out!

 

[srw]

The Rohloff gear range is wide enough for me. I'm struggling to see what competitive advantage this new hub might have. More to go wrong with the hydraulic shifters and more expensive. I've never felt the need to change wheels on my Thorns and if I do, it's relatively simple to get a wheel builder to give me a new rim.

I presume the advantage is that whereas now if you want to have two bikes with Rohloff gears you need to buy two Rohloff hubs (or else swap the wheels over - which only works if they're the same size) this new system would mean you can just swap the innards from one wheel to another.

Which is nice, but hardly a game changer. And the idea of a hydraulic shifter fills me with horror. I can just about see why someone might want a hydraulic brake for the modulation, but bowden cable is just about the perfect tech for gear changing - easy to fix, well-understood, reliable. The Rohloff's push-me-pull-you twin cable system is in many ways the perfection of that system.

 

[tyred]

1. Buy old Sturmey hub for a tenner.
2. Accept you may have to walk sometimes
3. Go on cycle tour of a lifetime with the money you saved.

 

[Bonefish Blues]

It's new.

It's shiny.

It's chunky and looks very "engineered".

It's a good idea to have a separate cage, but not really seeing the exact point.

I'll be interested to see how the early adopters get on with it