Monkey Ride: Tyler's 29+ Surly Krampus Mountain Bike with RohloffSPEEDHUB 500/14

Tyler here at Cycle Monkey has a bit of a fat tire fetish. He also has a bit of a Surly fetish. It sometimes seems as if he has almost as many Surly bikes as he does Surly T-shirts, and he's been known to wear a different Surly tee every day for two weeks straight - with socks to match just to show off. This bike is one of his recent creations - a Surly Krampus with 29x3.0" Surly Knard tires and a Rohloff SPEEDHUB 500/14 internally geared drivetrain.

Rohloff-Equipped Mikkelsen Touring Bike

A local customer recently brought this Rohloff SPEEDHUB-equipped Mikkelson touring bike in for some routine service. It's about as purpose-built as any bike we've seen. With S&S frame couplers, three water bottle mounts, Nitto racks, a special-edition Brooks Professional saddle, and a variety of other top shelf parts, this bike is deluxe.

There are plenty of interesting details on this Mikkelsen that demand a closer look. One of the most unusual components is a 3-piece handlebar that allows the stock Rohloff twist shifter to be mounted in the center. The handlebar is made from two halves and a center sleeve that clamps onto them and into the stem. 

The Rohloff SPEEDHUB 500/14 is the perfect drivetrain choice for a loaded touring bike like this Mikkelsen, providing an adjustment-free system that will handle any kind of riding the owner can dish out.

This Mikkelsen has cantilever rim brakes but also utilizes a bar-end shift lever to control a tandem-style disc drag brake on the rear wheel. 

The rear end of the bike manages to fit everything without interference. Chain tension is controlled with an eccentric bottom bracket and vertical dropouts allow easy wheel removal. The disc drag brake is mounted between the seat and chain stays to keep it away from racks and bags, and the rack mounts are located far enough up the seat stay to allow easy access to the cable box. Finally, the inside of the seat stay has a boss welded to it that the OEM2 axle plate on the hub keys onto.

This bike was obviously built with careful consideration and looks quite ready to take on anything from leisurely rides to serious adventures. S&S couplers allow the frame to be split and packed into a much smaller container than a standard bike box, usually eliminating any extra airline baggage fees.

If you're considering building up a Rohloff-equipped touring bike or your SPEEDHUB needs service, contact us and we will be happy to help.

Build Details:


• Frame: Mikkelsen Touring, S&S coupled and lugged
• Fork: Mikkelsen Steel
• Headset: Chris King NoThreadSet
• Stem: Custom steel, painted to match
• Handlebar: Custom split drop handlebar
• Shifter: Rohloff
• Grips: Cork tape
• Seatpost: Nitto Jaguar
• Saddle: Brooks Professional, Limited Edition
• Front Hub: Chris King
• Rear Hub: Rohloff SPEEDHUB 500/14
• Spokes: DT Swiss
• Nipples: DT brass
• Rims: Mavic A719
• Tires: Continental Top Touring 2000
• Cranks: Sugino 75
• Chainring: Sugino
• Rear Sprocket: Rohloff sprocket
• Chain: Sram PC58
• Brakes: Paul Touring Cantilevers F/R, Avid BB7 disc rear
• Brake Levers: Cane Creek/Paul Components Cross Top
• Rotor: Galfer 203mm

Surly Krampus 29+ Mountain Bike with Suspension Fork, Rohloff SPEEDHUB500/14, and Gates Belt Drive

Sometimes the team here at Cycle Monkey dreams up a project that is not specifically for a customer but rather to satisfy our own curiosity. We chalk it up to product research, but these projects also have a bit of a selfish motivation: we like to build cool bikes! We put together this Surly Krampus to showcase in the Rohloff booth at the Interbike trade show in Las Vegas last September. The various customizations on this build were very popular at the show and prompted plenty of people to stop by and marvel at the Rohloff hub, belt drive, and suspension fork we had installed on the frame. 

The goal for this build was to create a bike that could be ridden more aggressively through rock gardens, off drops and jumps, and down steep descents. Surly’s Krampus comes stock as a fully rigid 29er with large volume tires that can care of some of the harsh bumps found on trails. Its three inch wide tires on 50mm wide rims provide a fair amount of pneumatic suspension, but in certain situations, the bike is very clearly rigid.

Nirve Switchblade Chopper Rohloff Conversion

This Nirve “Switchblade” chopper, styled after a classic motorcycle, is one of the more unusual bikes we've had in for a Rohloff conversion. We have experience installing Rohloff hubs on almost every type of bike, but this was a new one for us. The goal was to give this extremely relaxed, comfortable bike the low gearing to pedal up and over more hills.

The owner of this bike lives in San Francisco and uses it to cruise around the waterfront and flatlands, but he also wanted to be able to pedal up some of the city’s many steep hills. The bike had come with a three speed coaster brake hub, but he wasn't satisfied with its limited gear range. He also has a trailer that he uses often to carry groceries and gear, so he wanted a durable drivetrain that would be strong enough to haul plenty of weight.

Our customer bought this bike in part because he likes the classic styling but more importantly because he likes how comfortable and relaxed it is to pedal. The chopper puts you in a very leaned-back seating position, with the cranks and pedals far in front of you and the handlebars very high in the air. The one limiting factor, however, is getting up hills in this seating position.

The Rohloff SPEEDHUB has the largest gear range of any internally geared hub on the market and is an ideal choice for this style of bike. Since the geometry of the bike doesn't allow you to stand up and crank hard on the pedals, climbing hills is easiest with a low gear and steady pace. The SPEEDHUB gives you a 526 percent change in gearing across 14 gears, ensuring a very low and very high gear to get over all kinds of terrain.

For the wheel build, we laced a silver SPEEDHUB up to a 24 by 3 inch aluminum rim, designed to fit larger volume tires for a comfortable ride. For the front wheel, we used a larger 26 by 2.5 inch rim on a silver Schmidt SON 28 dynamo hub. We hooked up the generator hub to a Busch & Muller Lumotec Classic front light, giving him plenty of battery-free lighting for night time cruising.

We had to make a few adaptations to the stock setup in order to make the rear wheel compatible with the chopper frame. Because the frame was based around the use of a coaster brake hub it did not have any brake mounts, either disc or rim. Rohloff does not offer a coaster or drum brake hub option, so we needed to install brake mounts of some kind. Our customer found and brought us a special disc brake mount adapter that is installed around the hub’s axle and is secured to the dropout.

Once the brake issue was settled, we used the Rohloff long torque arm to anchor the hub’s torque input to the frame. The cable routing was a bit unusual due to the orientation of the brake mount and the shape of the frame. We had loop the brake and shift cables backwards around the dropouts instead of running them along the chainstays.

A variety of leather and chrome components give this bike a classic chopper appearance. A leather Brooks saddle, grips, and front fender mudflap match the leather handlebar bag. A chrome handlebar and polished stem match the silver wheels we built. The spiked silver Tioga Spider pedals finish off the bike's look.

The bike now offers the gear range needed to pedal around San Francisco while still maintaining the unique chopper style our customer was after. When he came to pick up the bike, he was very pleased with the new-found range the SPEEDHUB gave him. He said he was excited to ride around the city on a much more regular basis. If you want to do a Rohloff conversion on your own bike, contact us to discuss the details!

Build Details:

• Frame: Nirve Switchblade

• Fork: Nirve 

• Headset: Chromed steel

• Stem: Polished aluminum

• Handlebar: Chromed steel chopper bars

• Shifter: Rohloff

• Grips: Brooks Plump Leather

• Seatpost: Chromed steel

• Saddle: Brooks B66

• Seat Clamp: Nirve

• Front Hub: Schmidt SON 28

• Rear hub: Rohloff SPEEDHUB 500/14

• Spokes: Sapim Race

• Nipples: Sapim Brass

• Rims: Wide chopper

• Tires: Innova 24x3.0 rear, Innova 26x2.5 front

• Cranks: Race Face Turbine

• Pedals: Tioga Spider

• Bottom Bracket: Race Face Turbine

• Chain ring: Surly Stainless Steel

• Chain: Wipperman Connex 7R8

• Brakes & Levers: Tektro 319A BMX brakes, Avid BB7 MTN calipers

• Rotors: Magura Storm

• Extra: Busch & Muller Lumotec Classic front light, Busch & Muller 4-D Lite Plus tail light, chain guard, fenders, handlebar bag

Independent Fabrication Rohloff-Equipped Custom Touring Bike

Matte black Independent Fabrication "Independence" frame
customized with S&S couplers and Rohloff-specific cable routing.

Independent Fabrication is known for building beautiful, eye-catching bikes and this matte black touring frame, although understated, is no exception. We built this custom “Independence” model for a customer who lives in Thailand and has done plenty of off road touring throughout Southeast Asia on his trusty mountain bike. Although his old bike had served him admirably, he had been dreaming up the ultimate touring bike based around the Rohloff SPEEDHUB 500/14 for years. He wanted his new ride to last him for the rest of his life, so the SPEEDHUB was the perfect shifting system for his needs.

Initially this customer had been interested in a Surly Troll frame, which is a very popular model for off road touring. However, he wanted S&S couplers to make the bike easier to travel with. That would have required us to send the frame to a frame builder for modifications and then to a powder coater to have it repainted. After considering his options, he decided to go with a custom frame to get all the features he wanted in one complete package.

Sliding dropouts make for easy chain tensioning.