The Shimano Alfine 11 speed internal gear hub. Apparently
its pronounced Al-feen and not All-fine, the latter indicating a blatant
un-truth so the marketing department spent a few hundred thousand dollars re-branding
the pronunciation of the product - clever chaps!
Click, click, click, crunch, crunch, click, click, is that
my knees? Hmmm no, the body seems to be in working order so what can that noise
be? Oh its coming from the back of the bike, from the Alfine hub, I move up a
gear, the noise goes, I move back down a gear - no noise, all seems well again.
Crunch, click..................crunch, click..........hmm,
let's just check and see that the gears are lined up (This is a regular check).
Those little yellow dots, like two planets coming into alignment, this amuses
me somewhat since the Alfine has planetary gears. The dots line up just as they
should on the chosen gear. Continue peddling.......click! Seriously! This
happens a lot, sometimes the little yellow dots have moved out of alignment,
sometimes they haven't, bring them back under control if they have moved or
give them an accusing stare if they haven't, carry on pedalling......crunch.
I move down a gear, a miniature car crash occurs in the
Alfine hub, a few random gears throw themselves at each other and both they,
and I, am unsure just what will occur this time. Click, crunch...pedal, pedal...that's
it - phew, looks like we made it through that gear change.
I relax slightly,
trying to let the adrenaline pass before the next gear change.
Pedals are turning, I am cranking away, my foot fires down
uncontrolled, the squishy bits between my legs impact the saddle ...christ,
bloody hell, wtf! My chain just snapped! Look down, nope the chain is still
there, sat on the cogs just like it should be. I turn the cranks, the chain
goes round but I am turning air. All of the sprockets cogs and gears inside the
Alfine have just disappeared, it's the only explanation. There is just nothing
there. I move up a gear - air. I move up another gear - contact! We have drive!
I move back down two gears just to check if the space/time portal that stole my
fourth gear a moment ago has deemed fit to return it - it has. There they are,
working as they should be, almost slightly apologetic about what just happened. I carry on like nothing happened, well except
now the squishy bits between my legs hurt more than they did a moment ago.
I have a road bike with regular dérailleur gears, I have a
mountain bike with regular dérailleur gears, they both work really rather well,
I chose the Alfine hub to give me trouble free, low maintenance, low cleaning,
cycling. The promise has fallen a long way short. The little magic leprechaun
who lives within my Alfine hub is an evil little bugger. Shimano obviously ran
out of good leprechauns at some point and had to start putting evil ones in
instead, maybe he wasn't always evil, he must be pretty bored in there, I mean
his only joy is occasionally stealing my gears and using his angle grinder on
the rest of them.
Crunch crunch, click click, this alfine is a piece of shit.
Now there will be many people out there who will respond to
this with; oh well, what you're doing wrong is......I'll stop you right there -
you see the trouble is I don't care anymore. I followed the instructions - it
didn't work. I followed a few bits of 'knowledge' on the web - they didn't work
either. It's not like I haven't persevered with this thing, in 500miles I have
yet to get it to work properly. Even if it had a complete change of heart
tomorrow and promised to give me trouble free cycling from here on in, it's too
late - I just don't trust you anymore little Alfine. I'm going back to derailleur's.
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