Read also this older post.
Rohloff Speedhub
Both of us use the Rohloff Speedhub. Main reasons were its robustness and its low maintenance. Shifting whenever you want is a blessing. There is no need to get your bicycle rolling for shifting.
After 5000 km a small maintenance action was required, i.e. oil change. We had carried the two oil change sets since Helsinki, Finland, and used them later in Jinghong, China. Changing oil was an easy task but it revealed a problem with Peter's hub. Firstly the amount of old oil that we pumped out of the hub was more or less 0 ml. Secondly fresh oil found some way out of the hub's side. The hub kept leaking. All that didn't look normal as we have Sarah's hub for comparison. Rohloff was very responsive to our emails and told us that even a complete loss of oil did not impact the hub's functioning. Well, fair enough, we can continue our trip but the hub needs some inspection when we'll be back home.
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| Leaking hub |
Peter's Gudereit LC-R has movable dropouts to adjust the chain tension. One day in Sweden we had to loosen and tighten the screws of the left dropout. Unfortunately the dropout's thread got damaged so we haven't dared to loosen the screws again ever since. Meanwhile the tension of the chain has become loose and would need some adjustment but as long as we don't have a new dropout or professional bicycle shop around it could be a hot thing. Getting this special dropout in China and Southeast Asia is probably impossible. But bicycle manufacturer Gudereit was really helpful. They sent new dropouts and screws to Peter's brother (our personal spare part supplier) in Germany who will visit us in Cambodia in December. Thank you Gudereit!
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| Dropout |
Our pedals were not new ones. We used some old and basic mountain bike pedals that we still had at home because we didn't want to use the click pedals. Every now and then we heard some crackling from our pedals. It sounded like sand inside the bearings. In Luang Prabang, Laos, it became worse. Our plan was to clean the bearings but we don't have the right tools. So we went to a "mechanic" in Luang Prabang who destroyed our pedals. We were hopeless! How should we find new pedals in Luang Prabang? The first shop had only cheap plastic pedals. The second shop was kind of a real bicycle shop with Trek mountain bikes and, luckily, offered a range of pedals. The most expensive ones were mountain bike metal pedals made by VP Components. Oh how lucky we were! We did not expect to get VP Components pedals in a city like Luang Prabang.
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| Fresh pedals for our bicycles |
Peter's Gudereit LC-R runs Schwalbe Marathon Plus tires, Sarah's Steppenwolf runs Schwalbe Marathon tires. All tires haven't worn out yet - still good enough - but we swapped the tires, front to rear and vice versa. Our feeling is that the Marathon tires wear out quicker than the Marathon Plus tires.
Puncture tally: Sarah, 2 punctures on the same day in Uzbekistan. We had picnic in the middle of a thorn field. Peter, incredibly 0 punctures.
Valve
One of the Presta valves snapped but we carry 2 spare inner tubes including two spare valves.
Magura HS-33 brake pads
After more than 6000 km the Magura HS-33 brake pads are still good for some more km. But we will have some spare ones 'delivered' to Cambodia, by our special bike part supplier :) Thanks Daniel!
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| Left: new - Right: 6000 km |
