Gravel riding with the Wolverine — Part 5
Last post ended with me experiencing some shifting troubles with the Alfine hub. So before I could really ride it, I needed to fix that.
Fixing the Alfine hub
I swapped the entire internal assembly as I found out that the old one had run completely dry and that solved 90% of the problems. Under normal load the new hub worked perfect but I still had the occasional skipping gears under high loads. Next to that, the hub made some unpleasant noise when rolling the bike backward (Shimano is very specific in it’s manual: the bike should only rattle in some gears).
After a lot of trial-and-error I noticed that the issue was caused by a small misalignment of the hub with respect to the dropouts which I think caused some tension and deformation within the hub when tensioning the bolts. The solution was to fit the wheel paying very close attention to the drop-out alignment and not to apply too much tension. The hub runs without a single miss-shift ever since (a little over 1000k so far) :D.
Riding the Wolverine
More than a year has gone by since I started the build and finally the time to go on a 2-day gravel bike-packing adventure was there!
Up until this point I mainly used the bike as a commuter and for a few single-day gravel rides, which is nice, but multi-day bike-packing on gravel was the true excuse to build this bike.
When googling for a suitable route to ride I came across The Dirty Boar. A 170km, 70% unpaved/gravel route winding trough the hearth of the High Fens — Eifel nature park: Perfect for a 2 day trip.
Some Pictures
If you’re interested to see more photos and cool videos of the route, check out my Relive videos here Dirty Boar Day 1 & Dirty Boar Day 2!
Bike verdict
Epic. I really enjoyed riding the Wolverine for 2 long days. It can easily handle all the types of terrain we rode on: rough gravel, trough rivers, steep climbs covered with roots and fast descents. In all those situations it felt smooth and sturdy. The Alfine hub also delivered. Even at the steepest climbs it didn’t shift of block once, amazing! And the belt-drive truly is the icing on the cake. While my buddies chain began squeaking badly during the 2nd day, my bike never made a sound. Really cool to cruise through the forest and to only hear the sound of gravel under your tires.
Feel free to reach out if you have any questions our need help building your own wolverine or belt-drive, happy to help!
