NuVinci N360 rear hub 32 hole silver

So far so good, I will change the sprocket to a slightly bigger (perhaps 22T) and then it will be perfect. Smooth riding :o)

I bought the Shimano 11 speed Alfine after buying a Cube Hooper with the 8 speed hub Alfine. I bought the Alfine 11 the year it came out. I was excited to get it. I needed more gear ratio since the 300% range on the 8 speed was not enough for where I live.

At first I loved the hub Alfine with the 407% range. I road the 11 speed hub for just over a year and put close to 12.000 km on it commuting 66 km a day to work and back. I wanted a hub because of my commute through sand and dirt and I wanted low maintenance. First the second gear stopped working and then it started making all sorts of noise in other gears. I had already seen numerous post on the internet about warranty problems with the hub and people getting replacements. I am a mechanical engineer and judging from my experience and its design (see videos in youtube), the hub is just not robust enough, ad least for the use I put on it.

I replaced the Alfine 11 with a Nuvinci N360 CVT (360% range) hub in June and I love it. It is a little heavier than the Alfine, and there could be more losses. The Nuvinci is very simple to understand and has many fewer components and fine components at that to go bad. Just watch the youtube videos of both hubs and decide which one is simpler. As an engineer, the decision is a very simple one. The Alfine just has too many parts to fail and it must be adjusted perfectly to shift. The Nuvinci is always in a "gear" and can't slip from gear to gear. I can only make a full report on the Nuvinci N360 after I put 10.000 km on it, but as of now I see no reason to buy the Shimano Alfine 11 or 8 with the super robustness and no maintenance of the Nuvinci N360 hub.
________________________________________________________________________________
1 year review

With the Nuvinci N360 hub, I say Shimano can kiss their hub business goodbye. Nuvinci is the hands down winner.
I have had a Nuvinci 360 CVT (continuously variable transmission) on my commuter bike since July 2012. I love it. I replaced my Shimano Alfine 11, which I had bought at the beginning of 2012 with it. The bike, a Cube Hooper, originally came with the Alfine 8 speed hub. The Alfine 11 had 12,000 km and it was on its death bed. It turned out the several hundred dollars I put in the Alfine was money thrown down the drain.

I am a mechanical engineer by training. The Nuvinci design, with the planetary balls, is much more robust than the Shimano hubs with their numerous complicated and small parts. The simplicity of the Nuvinci system makes it inherently more reliable than the overly complex Shimano Alfine hubs. The Nuvinci is maintenance free, whereas the Alfine has an interval for oil changes of every 5000 km. The Nuvinci shifter is a "grip shift" type and is also very simple in comparison to the complicated Shimano Rapid Fire shifters.

I have the impression there are more internal losses with my Nuvinci than the Shimano Alfine 11. Nuvinci won't publish the efficiency numbers, so my guess they know it is less efficient, and don't want to talk about it. If it were more efficient, they would be bragging about it. My times to work got a little longer with the Nuvinci.

I would not take the Nuvinci on a long tour, or the Shimano Alfine for that matter. The internal hubs are heavier and are less efficient than my traditional derailleur system on my trekking bike. You are limited by the gear range of 360%. The Shimano Alfine 11 has a range of 409%. A Trekking bike with a 22/50 front and a 13/34 rear would have a gear range of 590%. If I follow the Nuvinci guidelines on gearing (front to back ratio), I can't get it as low as say a 27 speed trekking bike. I would never think of touring with bags using it due to the poor low end ratios (if you follow their guidelines).

The Nuvinci N360 does have its niche, where it tops anything else in my opinion, and that to me is the commuter market. There you want something robust and maintenance free. Compared to a derailleur system, there is a lot less to keep clean; one gear instead of 8 or 9.

Shifting under load is easy and fun when accelerating. You can slowly turn the grip shift as you accelerate keeping your cadence and peddle pressure fairly constant all the time. You can also downshift about 3/4th of the range at lights too. There are no internal springs to pull the cable back, like on the Shimano hubs. It uses two cables. Whether you shift up or down there is always tension pulling on a cable. This means the system is insensitive to friction buildup in the cable housings. I have ridden in below freezing temperatures have not noticed any increased friction or issues with the traction fluid in the hub.

You are always in gear with the Nuvinci so there is no partial shifting or "gear-grinding" like with a poor shifting Shimano Alfine, when it has friction in the cable housing. I have fallen down on the pavement in an intersection once when my Alfine 11 slipped under load. In this respect the Nuvinci is more safe to ride. No matter what, you are in gear and it won't slip through. The Shimano systems can be difficult to get the gear shifting precisely set. The Nuvinci systems sets very easily.

The Nuvinci is very smooth and has a great feel during riding. I can highly recommend it for short distance, dirty applications, with relatively low slopes. There is a short 14% grade on my commute and I really have to huff and puff at a real slow cadence to get over it. I run a 28" wheel with a 39T front chain ring and 22T on the back. On the top end I can peddle down hill max at 43 km/h and then I can peddle no faster. That is what you are limited to.

Since I am not that heavy, I have though about exceeding their low end recommendation and run it with a front derailleur and two chain rings. I've really laid into the hub on steep hills and there was always traction and no slipping. I would guess the guideline is very conservative.

From an engineering basis, the Nuvinci is so simple it will be hard to kill. Watch the video below on youtube for the Shimano Alfine 11, it is a mechanical engineer's nightmare. It has numerous small parts. The more parts in any machine, the higher the probability something will go wrong. Since the Nuvinci is always in gear, there is no chance to generate chips and damage during "bad shifts" like with incremental gear systems.

If you are in the market for a hub shifting system, the Nuvinci is my hands down choice. It is generally less expensive, more robust, and maintenance free compared to the Shimano Alfine 11.

Quick & well packaged. Great price & fair postage. Super product!!
Thx!!

Having installed the NuVinci 360 hub on my '95 Black Phantom, and rode it a considerable amount of miles, I have this to say: "YES! It WILL change the world!" Yeah-yeah, so it weighs more than a comparable de-railer system; Big deal! The bike weighed 70+ pounds out of the box. (I had managed to bring that weight down to around 40 lbs by deleting a lot of obsolete junk, and replacing it with something more practical, like this hub,with disk brakes.) About that hub: It is whisper-quiet, always reliable, usable ratio, ergonomic, intelligently designed, brings the 'Platinum-pack' crowd to a state of bewilderment, and wove right into the wheel without any "Spoke calculating" hassles. I am weaving elaborate fantasies about installing one of those wireless automatic-shift features that are becoming available. I would strongly recommend this hub to anyone who rides vintage bikes. The ONLY drawback was the shifter, which is mounted on the handlebar... bad idea! But I found a way around that!

Best thing ever made for your bicycle had one know for over two years works great