Hub gear servicing - Alfine 11

[103Alex1]

Just finished doing this for 1st time. Very straightforward and almost anyone could do it themselves easily. Bike is running fantastically - difference in smoothness of shifting is amazing. Could easily have done this beneficially even earlier.

There's an official kit but it's generally accepted to be way overpriced for what it is. I got a substitute kit with 50ml genuine oil for £21 delivered (including BACS payment discount) from Toni Bailey (alfine11@engineer.com). His kit is described here :

Shimano Alfine 11 SG-S700 hub oil maintenance kit (oil optional) - beats TL-S703 | eBay

You can source a single service bottle of oil (50ml) for about £11 delivered. So about £10 of it is 2 syringes, tubing and bleed nipple with its own o-ring (so no need to use the one off the service bolt). Broadly followed the official kit instructions except I turned bike upside down to save getting the stand looked out and hand-tightened the bleed nipple as this is nylon :

http://techdocs.shimano.com/media/techdocs/content/cycle/SI/Tools/SI_7080A/SI-7080A-002-ENG_v1_m56577569830746517.pdf

Used a couple of resealable food bags for old oil collection and a couple of pairs of latex gloves, along with a 3mm allen key off a mini-tool to get the oil service bolt out of the hub.



Ready to bleed :



Works best when the tubing is completely vertical



Then you inject 20-25ml and drain again (still manky enough - RHS) before filling with the green stuff (LHS).




The bleed nipple / tube is reuseable so not a repeat outlay. I'm sure you could make your own from 6mm grease nipple with a hole drilled in the middle and borrow / reuse the o-ring off the service bolt. Would save even more money but you still have to assemble the bits. For about £5 saved I can't be a*sed. Rohloff bleed nipple also fits if you have one of those or a Rohloff kit.

Usual debate about oil being a rip-off etc etc. and some people with bulk supplies of Rohloff oil testing that on other forums. Others insisting you can just use Mobil 1 transmission fluid. But warranty is void if you don't use the Shimano stuff, it's the right viscosity etc. and come on, £10-£11 every 5000km is hardly the end of the world. Whether it's overpriced or not it doesn't in my book make the hub "expensive to run". If you're a heavy user you can source genuine oil in bulk supplies for a greatly reduced price.

Was chucking it down all afternoon so didn't mind taking time to drain thoroughly and it takes about 1/2 an hour each bleed to really get the last bits to settle and come out. You're not standing over it though so no big deal.

Hope this helps if someone needs to do this at any stage and it's unfamiliar. Also to put costs of maintaining this hub into perspective a bit.

 

[Deleted member 4366]

Jeez! When I used to do my 4 speed Sturmey Archer, it was just a case of lifting the hinged cap off the oil nipple and squirting in the Three-in-one. I guess that's progress. Great write-up BTW, Alex.

 

[tillson]

How often are you supposed to carry out this procedure with the Alfine 11?

 

[103Alex1]

How often are you supposed to carry out this procedure with the Alfine 11?

After 1st 1,000km /620miles and then after every 5,000km / 3100 miles or 2 years (whichever is sooner).

The 1st one is important as it gets rid of all the guff from running in the hub.

 

[Scimitar]

There's an official kit but it's generally accepted to be way overpriced for what it is. I got a substitute kit with 50ml genuine oil for £21 delivered (including BACS payment discount) from Toni Bailey (alfine11@engineer.com). His kit is described here :

Shimano Alfine 11 SG-S700 hub oil maintenance kit (oil optional) - beats TL-S703 | eBay

You can source a single service bottle of oil (50ml) for about £11 delivered.

What! How 098462647 Much!
The precious juice must be extracted from the baobab tree on the third Thursday in May, every alternate year, by specially selected veiled priestesses.
Jings; given the base oil is tuppence and any additives are tuppence, I'd spit in their eyes before I'd pay the rip-off artists that kind of money.

 

[Deleted member 4366]

Yes, it works out at about £1000 gallon. A nice little earner for someone decanting from a 40 gallon drum into a 50ml bottle.

 

[103Alex1]

It's like anything in very small quantities though, isn't it. If I wanted a gallon ......

I'm far more interested in saving the labour charge a local bike shop would throw into the pot ... and probably cut corners on the drain job. A gear service and wheel truing would usually cost about £100 on average. Had my wheel trued very recently and that's only about £10. So by my reckoning I've saved about £70 time cost mark-up after buying the parts for something that's a complete doddle. Plus I know the job's been done carefully and thoroughly - because it's my bike and I want it done as best it can be.

I couldn't give a monkeys about someone making a few quid for storing stock, decanting and dispatching. I don't particularly want to store stocks of something I'm going to use once a year or two. But it literally pains me to hand over that much money for what is in effect the simplest of tasks.

 

[RobF]

Looks like I'm getting the same kit, although my friendly bike mechanic is going to do it and he already has Shimano hub oil.

As Alex says, it's pennies to the point of irrelevance over the life of the bike.

The first oil change is worth doing, although I expect many owners don't bother.

I'm not so bothered about doing another one in two years.

 

[Deleted member 4366]

It's like anything in very small quantities though, isn't it. If I wanted a gallon ......

I'm far more interested in saving the labour charge a local bike shop would throw into the pot ... and probably cut corners on the drain job. A gear service and wheel truing would usually cost about £100 on average. Had my wheel trued very recently and that's only about £10. So by my reckoning I've saved about £70 time cost mark-up after buying the parts for something that's a complete doddle. Plus I know the job's been done carefully and thoroughly - because it's my bike and I want it done as best it can be.

I couldn't give a monkeys about someone making a few quid for storing stock, decanting and dispatching. I don't particularly want to store stocks of something I'm going to use once a year or two. But it literally pains me to hand over that much money for what is in effect the simplest of tasks.

Good point, Well presented.

 

[tillson]

Does anyone know what type of oil this, "Shimano Gear Oil" actually is? I remember that Magura used to claim that their, "Royal Blood" hydraulic fluid was actually distilled from the precious pancreatic secretions of the Giant Panda. And this is why they had no other option but to charge their customers an eye watering amount of money for a few millilitres of this elixir of the bicycle brake world. They simply had no other option. That was until somebody rumbled them and discovered that it was just plain ol' mineral oil with some food colouring in it. Now the price has dropped into a similar bracket as the mineral oils which are available from places like Halfords.

I suspect that Shimano are, "at it" too.

 

[103Alex1]

Does anyone know what type of oil this, "Shimano Gear Oil" actually is? I remember that Magura used to claim that their, "Royal Blood" hydraulic fluid was actually distilled from the precious pancreatic secretions of the Giant Panda. And this is why they had no other option but to charge their customers an eye watering amount of money for a few millilitres of this elixir of the bicycle brake world. They simply had no other option. That was until somebody rumbled them and discovered that it was just plain ol' mineral oil with some food colouring in it. Now the price has dropped into a similar bracket as the mineral oils which are available from places like Halfords.

I suspect that Shimano are, "at it" too.

No doubt. But it's more of an issue for people with 8sp Nexus/Alfine hubs where they have to take the innards out and dip in a litre of oil. That quantity retails at more like £90 but can be used again and again so it's only really economic for bike shops with a volume of bikes to stock. That's where the real carve-up lies !

SG-S700 oil is only for Alfine 11 and is thinner than the stuff used on the 8sp hubs. I'll bet it's the same stuff as Rohloff oil or near as. I'll also bet there will be a load of bike shops treat the Alfine 11 the same as the Nexus/Aline 8 and carry out the same procedure in the same oil.... "because they already have it"

 

[Deleted member 4366]

I think I'd be tempted to just use a good quality motorbike synthetic oil. Is it fairly thin?

 

[103Alex1]

I think I'd be tempted to just use a good quality motorbike synthetic oil. Is it fairly thin?

Yes it's fairly thin as oils go but obviously clingy. A few people seem to use 75 weight semi-synthetic gearbox oil (or 10W-40 Castrol MTX etc.) .... but one of the guys using that reporting also changing it every 500km (rather than every 5000km !) so that sounds like a false economy in the end. Perhaps it's because he was getting more leakage than is normal ! The hub warranty is 2 years and I personally wouldn't risk it over that period for the sake of a tenner. If anything else went wrong you'd likely be automatically warranty-voided if they were able to show substitute oil used - an easy 'opt out' handed on a plate. After that, however ...

In terms of a strategy of not changing at all after the 1st change I don't think that would be such a good idea. There are occasions where there will inevitably be minor gradual oil leakage from the hub over a period of time/use (you definitely mustn't store bikes leaning to drive side or on their sides chain down due to the hub design for example). Seems air expansion after bringing bike in from the cold can also lead to some very small losses. The main oil loss problems seem to have been from when hubs have been disassembled and damage done to seals on reassembly, or damage done to the fill port cap/seal (with reports, surprise surprise, of bikes coming back from bike shops with this damage). Equally not a good idea to over-fill them as it seems they will just shed the excess oil.

So some form of oil change every year or two seems to be a 'must' if you want the bike to run properly and last a long time. Gets the level right again and gets rid of some suspended muck