Shimano Alfine 11 - Longer term reliability

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TonyR
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Joined: 31 Aug 2008, 12:51pm

Re: Shimano Alfine 11 - Longer term reliability

Post by TonyR »

Winfried wrote:Too bad, because everything worked fine for three months until I had to remove the wheel because of that puncture. Grrr…


It's usually fairly easy to fix a puncture with the wheel in situ.
niggle
Posts: 3435
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Location: Cornwall, near England

Re: Shimano Alfine 11 - Longer term reliability

Post by niggle »

Brucey wrote:I am 95% certain that you have unseated the cable housing/a ferrule at one end

Me too, I have done exactly this with my Nexus 8 speed. the ferrule pulled out of its seat in the shifter without me noticing and when I reconnected the inner to the hub it just sat there and in effect caused a few mm tightening of the inner cable. It is very easy to have this happen at either end whilst there is no tension on the cable holding everything in place.
townbikemark
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Re: Shimano Alfine 11 - Longer term reliability

Post by townbikemark »

niggle wrote:
Brucey wrote:I am 95% certain that you have unseated the cable housing/a ferrule at one end

Me too, I have done exactly this with my Nexus 8 speed. the ferrule pulled out of its seat in the shifter without me noticing


Yesss...is that where you find that you can only shift to 7th, you then snap the cable back into the shifter and you've got all 8 gears again?
stereotype nonconformance...unpigeonholable...

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MacBludgeon
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Re: Shimano Alfine 11 - Longer term reliability

Post by MacBludgeon »

I'd guess at cable seating being the problem, though as others have mentioned it's only the upper two yellow marks that align not the locking one.

Re the cable seating have you routed it correctly at the hub itself, I only have the A8 but with that it is possible to re-seat the cable and fail to get it over/under the correct tabs. As the length of cable from locking point to cable stop is the precise measurement that controls shifting, if it isn't seated correctly then it can easily throw you off by a couple of mm.
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Brucey
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Joined: 4 Jan 2012, 6:25pm

Re: Shimano Alfine 11 - Longer term reliability

Post by Brucey »

townbikemark wrote:
Yesss...is that where you find that you can only shift to 7th, you then snap the cable back into the shifter and you've got all 8 gears again?


-that is the one!

cheers
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Winfried
Posts: 103
Joined: 29 Sep 2014, 1:46pm
Location: Paris, France

Re: Shimano Alfine 11 - Longer term reliability

Post by Winfried »

Thanks much everyone for the great help.

Good news: Everything is well with the world again. I can change gears just fine, in the right order, seemlessly, and quietly :)

Bad news: I did two things, so don't know which did it :oops:
  • I slighly moved the cassette joint ("arm"), even though there's very little room since it's bolted to the IGH. This post* says that the Alfine 11 is very sensitive to how tight the derailler cable is. After playing with that end of the cable and switching to gear 6, I could use the cable tightener next to the shifter to align the two yellow marks, although the shifter still says gear 7. I can live with that.
  • As the Alfine 11 kept seeping oil more than usual (a common problem, as Google confirms**), I pumped out the remaing oil and pumped in some fresh oil, taking the opportunity to use some ATF oil instead since I saw that recommended in several forums as a much more reasonable alternative to Shimano's oil

Moral of the story: If you get a flat rear wheel and the Alfine 11 doesn't work as it used to, first try playing with the derailler cable.

In addition, it is indeed very important to apply the right amount of force when screwing the axle nuts back on: "It is extremely important to make sure your axle nuts are tight (30 foot-pounds each MINIMUM! [ie. 30 – 45 N·m]). Grease or heavy oil the threads prior to installing the nuts. Check the torque once in a while." ***

In addition², you do need to go easy on the pedals when changing gears, or even back-pedal a bit****. Thankfully, I knew that before buying that new bike so always paid attention

Incidently, does someone know what kind of grease to use on the two axle nuts before screwing them again?

* "An internal-gear hub also may autoshift, or slip out of gear. Cable adjustment is especially critical on newer hubs with many speeds and a short cable pull between each speed and the next. The Shimano Alfine 11-speed hub will malfunction if the cable adjustment is off by as little as 1.5 mm. [Thanks go to reader Dale Christensen for this information!].

[...] The usual cause of the problem, though, believe it or not, is the cable guide that the derailer or hub shifter cable uses to get around the bottom bracket. As you pedal the bike, the frame flexes from side to side. This causes the gear cable to get tighter and looser with every other pedal stroke.

If the bottom-bracket cable guide has too much friction, it can act as a one-way clutch, pulling the cable down from the lever, but not allowing it to retract on the opposite pedal stroke. In many cases, greasing the cable guide is all that is required."
http://sheldonbrown.com/autoshift.html

** "It is our experience that alfine 11 speed hubs seep oil out of the main seal. We now consider this normal! simply wipe off any excess and add more oil periodically. " http://www.rideyourbike.com/shimanoIGH.shtml

*** http://www.rideyourbike.com/internalgears.shtml

**** "Shifting an IGH hub is similar to a car. 'Push in the clutch' by stopping pedalling or even slightly pedalling backwards when you shift. If you shift under power you can cause the clutch to remain in the same gear until your pedal stroke has a dead spot when the clutch can move." http://www.rideyourbike.com/shimanoIGH.shtml
Brucey
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Re: Shimano Alfine 11 - Longer term reliability

Post by Brucey »

er, 'derailleur cable' ? On an IGH? :wink:

BTW you can't move the cassette joint arm on the hub more than a very tiny amount because it sits on a spline, and whatever slack there is in the spline joint should be taken out by the cable tension. The amount of slack available is enough to throw the adjustment off by a mm or so, no more than that.

What you can do easily enough is swap the NTWs side for side and then have the cassette joint sitting at a new, jaunty angle that causes troubles; another thing to look out for.

Pretty much any grease is a good idea on the track nuts. Note that in addition to pulling over with horizontal dropouts, there is a risk of twisting and loosening of the axle because of the twisting reaction load that is imposed on the axle when you are using the very high and very low gears; this means they need to be pretty tight even with vertical dropouts.

BTW don't for a moment feel tempted to ride with the marks lined up in 7th gear; not only will you be missing a gear (there will be no way to select 11th) but some of the other gears will be prone to slippage too; the cable pulls from the shifter are not quite equal and some of the gears won't be selected properly.

cheers
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Brucey~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Winfried
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Location: Paris, France

Re: Shimano Alfine 11 - Longer term reliability

Post by Winfried »

Brucey wrote:er, 'derailleur cable' ? On an IGH? :wink:


I didn't know how to call it. "The cable" should do ;-)

Brucey wrote:What you can do easily enough is swap the NTWs side for side and then have the cassette joint sitting at a new, jaunty angle that causes troubles; another thing to look out for.


What's an NTW?

Brucey wrote:Pretty much any grease is a good idea on the track nuts. Note that in addition to pulling over with horizontal dropouts, there is a risk of twisting and loosening of the axle because of the twisting reaction load that is imposed on the axle when you are using the very high and very low gears; this means they need to be pretty tight even with vertical dropouts.


Good to know.

Brucey wrote:BTW don't for a moment feel tempted to ride with the marks lined up in 7th gear; not only will you be missing a gear (there will be no way to select 11th) but some of the other gears will be prone to slippage too; the cable pulls from the shifter are not quite equal and some of the gears won't be selected properly.


What should I do, then, so the shifter again shows gear 6 with the two yellow marks lined up?
Brucey
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Re: Shimano Alfine 11 - Longer term reliability

Post by Brucey »

NTW = No Turn Washer

Assuming that the gear was set up correctly to start with, you need to correct the fault (almost certainly in the cable housing seating at one end or the other) that is now present, that wasn't there to start with.

[edit; also re the lubrication; this wont affect the cassette joint behaviour (except in cases where there is a lot of dirt in the cassette joint, causing it to bind). ATF? Don't believe everything you read on the internet! ATF is a good lubricant if you have nothing else, and it is quite good for cleaning the hub (it has a high detergent value) but it is nowhere near as good as a proper gear oil is as a lubricant; the film strength is invariably a lot lower.

If you buy the very best ATF you can (which is fully synthetic and costs about five times as much as normal) it is about as good as a very cheap gear oil.

There is also an argument that a high detergent lubricant keeps all the crud in the oil (of which there is always some rather than none) in suspension, allowing it to continue to wear the hub internals. With lower detergent lubricants the crud is more likely to sit out of the way in nooks and corners where it causes less harm.]

cheers
Last edited by Brucey on 23 Nov 2014, 11:18pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Winfried
Posts: 103
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Location: Paris, France

Re: Shimano Alfine 11 - Longer term reliability

Post by Winfried »

The cable at that end looks OK, so I guess I'll have to open the other end next to the shifter and see if something can be done to make sure the shifter does say gear 6 with the yellow marks lined up:
ninja.gear7.cable.jpg
Brucey
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Joined: 4 Jan 2012, 6:25pm

Re: Shimano Alfine 11 - Longer term reliability

Post by Brucey »

OK there is something not quite right at the cassette joint end; I can see daylight at one end of the bellows. But that may not cause the fault you have.

I can't remember offhand if there is a ferrule on both ends of the cable (or just the shifter end) but in any event the end of the cable housing should be set into it and the cable housing end (or ferrule) should be set fully into the recesses in the cassette joint and the shifter barrel adjuster respectively.

The only way you can check these things it to pull the housing out, and then check that it goes into the recess fully when it is put back in again.

If you remove the access port (#3 on the EV techdoc for the shifter) you should be able to check if the nipple on the end of the cable is seated properly; there is a small chance that it has popped out of its recess and this can also cause the symptoms you see.

If you are sure that the cable housing etc is OK (NB if it was really like that all the time then your gears could not have worked properly ever before...) then you need to reset the cable on the pinch bolt according to the SI techdoc here;

http://bike.shimano.com/media/techdocs/content/cycle/SI/Alfine/SI_37R0A/SI-37R0A-002-ENG_v1_m56577569830728103.pdf

cheers
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Winfried
Posts: 103
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Location: Paris, France

Re: Shimano Alfine 11 - Longer term reliability

Post by Winfried »

Thanks for the infos. The ferrule on the IGH side looks OK so I'll check what it looks like on the other end.

It's weird, though, that it got out of tune simply by removing the cable and putting it back.
jb
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Re: Shimano Alfine 11 - Longer term reliability

Post by jb »

Perhaps the steel bob on the other end of the cable has popped out of its niche and hooked onto something thus causing it to be pulling more cable through than it should.
Cheers
J Bro
Winfried
Posts: 103
Joined: 29 Sep 2014, 1:46pm
Location: Paris, France

Re: Shimano Alfine 11 - Longer term reliability

Post by Winfried »

Thanks for the help.

1. I found a bike wizard to whom it only took a few minutes to solve the problem by tightening the barrel adjuster hard enough to require a wrench:
ninja.barrel.adjuster.post.wizard.jpg


I wish he didn't go medieval on it like that, but now the two yellow marks are aligned when in gear six.

I guess unhooking the cable can cause the other end to move around the speed shifter, and since the Alfine seems very sensitive about the length of the cable… Another case against putting the indexing in the control lever instead of the hub à la Rohloff?

I'll move the hydraulic brake lever out of the way and open the speed shifter to take a look. I need to know how to do this anyway, for the day when I need to change the speed cable.

2. BTW, if ATF isn't good enough, what do you suggest as gear oil that's cheaper than Shimano's? FWIW, I used this ATF oil from Total (about 7€/liter):
TOTAL FLUID ATX for automatic or semi-automatic transmissions and torque converters of passenger cars, light commercial vehicles and industrial vehicles, when the manufacturer requires an ATF (Automatic Transmission Fluid) GM DEXRON® IID.


3. Incidently, it seems like tightnening the nut bolts hard with a 15mm wrench seems to prevent oil from seeping. I'll check again tomorrow after a full night in a quasi upright position (slightly to the right).

Thank you.
Last edited by Winfried on 30 Nov 2014, 7:30pm, edited 1 time in total.
Brucey
Posts: 44516
Joined: 4 Jan 2012, 6:25pm

Re: Shimano Alfine 11 - Longer term reliability

Post by Brucey »

ATF is a perfectly adequate lubricant for its intended applications, but that doesn't include bicycle hub gears. There are better lubes for that. Pretty much any EP gear oil will be a better lubricant than that.

BTW Dexron II is an obsolete spec anyway; you should be on Dexron III by now.

cheers
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