This page should help you understand what range of gears are available if you fit a Rohloff internal gear hub (IGH) to your bike.
To compare gear ratios between different transmissions systems it’s useful to look at the lowest and highest ‘gear inches’ achievable by each system. In the table below, if we take the first row as an example, this means we have a 50T cog at front with a 20T cog at the back. In the easiest (or lowest) gear, gear 1 on the Rohloff, we have a gear inch value of 19. This means the bicycle will travel 19 inches with one pedal revolution. The biggest gear (gear 14 on the Rohloff) will give us a gear inch value of 100.
The bottom 2 rows in the table give us some example gear range values for a traditional ‘compact double’ and a ‘triple’ gear set up. You can see what the highest and lowest values are and compare those with the values for the Rohloff setup.
Front cog/sprocket | Rear cog/sprocket | Lowest gear inch | Highest gear inch |
---|---|---|---|
50T | 20T | 19 | 100 |
50T | 19T | 20 | 105 |
55T | 20T | 21 | 110 |
55T | 19T | 22 | 115 |
Example data from traditional derailleur transmissions | |||
50/34 | 12-28 | 33 | 113 |
50/39/30 | 12-28 | 29 | 113 |