Monday, February 13, 2012

So far we’ve had very mild winter temperatures. This weekend, however, we had a cold blast that came down from Canada and dropped our temperatures to below freezing. I think yesterday’s high was around 31 and Saturday was a little bit colder. Thus, I left my bike outside rather than in the comfort of my garage to try an experiment.




This morning (temp 25 degrees) I rode it after it sat outside the whole weekend and it shifted fine. I had a prior problem with the Nexus 7 that seemed to not shift during prolonged subfreezing temperatures. For the Nexus 7, the indicator showed that I had downshifted or upshifted, but the gear inside the hub did not move. I can only attribute this to subfreezing temperatures since it shifted fine when things warmed up. Maybe the Nexus 7 uses a more liquid-type grease in there (?). So count this as an advantage for the Nexus Alfine.


I realize that our cold temperatures are laughable to some of you in colder climes, but there you go. Maybe if average temps are the in the teens or single digits, it could affect the Alfine, but we haven’t gotten those this year. And, I don’t know if I would have any desire to ride in that kind of weather, lol.