- Getting the wheel out was a worry given its not quick release and its held in by 15mm bolts. However, it came out alot easier than I thought. Its a case of putting it in the easiest gear so the cable is at its slackest. You then undo the bolts, release the outer of the cable from the carrier and then by turning the cable carrier, you release the cable from it. Its alot easier to do in the flesh than it sounds when explaining it. I've put a sludge self sealing inner tube in the wheel which will hopefully mean I won't have to take the wheel out much for punctures.
- Changing gear is pretty smooth. On flats, going downhill or when stationary, the chages are inaudible and very smooth. Under a bit of pressure, it can be heard and takes a revolution of the cranks to go in. Initial impressions are good and indexing is very easy to do to compensate for any cable stretch. I have noticed a slight delay going from gear 5 to 4, but that will hopefully get better once I've run it in.
- Its heavy! Coming from single speeding, its was bound to feel heavy when lifted but I honestly didn't notice the extra weight when riding. I didn't release notice it when lifting the rear over obstacles like kerbs, but we'll see in the long run.
- The shifter is big and a bit cumbersome and it doesn't fit well with my Hope X2 brake lever. Thats more the brake levers fault than the shifter, but I think it will take some fine tuning of the position of the lever and shifter to get it right.
So after one ride only things look positive. Its very strange riding with gears again after 2.5 years of ss. I need to avoid going up hills in too easy a gear now, when I can easilly get up stuff in a sligthly harder gear as I did ss. That was mainly on the road yesterday but it will be nice to have easier gears so I can spin a bit up hill when I need to. It will also be easy to go back to the ss setup if needs be as all I'd need to do is take out the Alfine wheel and take the shifter off.
A full report after a month or so will follow.
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