Alfine 8-Speed First Impressions

A 50km bike path ride after work on Wednesday, the first with the 8 speed Alfine, left me only moderately impressed with the hub.

The good and bad:

• The weight of the hub is very obvious, it would be horrible off road. The bike feels like it has a full diaper, if you know what I mean. 
• Unless you back right off on the pedals the change of gear is very clunky.
• You need to be firm with the gear changer and push the lever right to the stop. Could be that I'm used to XTR where you just bump the lever and the change is perfect.
• The gap in gear ratio between 4th and 5th is huge (1st = lowest, 8th = highest gear), so you go from spinning to grinding, or vice-versa, with one click. The other ratios seem to be right.
• Everything was still in perfect adjustment after the ride. 
• Seems it could be a nightmare to unhook the hub to change a flat.

Almost decided to pull the hub hardware to pieces tonight to check I had everything correctly installed, it just seems too clunky. Then I read the notes in the install manual:

NOTE:

• You can shift while pedaling, but on rare occasions the pawls and ratchet inside the hub may produce some noise afterwards as part of normal gear shifting operation. - Check!
• The 8-speed hub has a built-in mechanism to support shifting. When this mechanism operates during shifting, noise or vibration may occur. The shifting feel may also change depending on the gear position at the time of shifting. Check and check! 
• Noise may also be generated if the crank arms are turned backward or if the bicycle is pushed backwards when the gear position is 5, 6, 7 or 8. These occurrences are a normal result of the structure of the internal gear shifting mechanism and are not a malfunction. Check!

Seems everything I'm hearing and feeling is 'normal'.

As you all know, the word 'flat' or 'puncture' should never pass ones lips, or keyboard. 

I arrived home this evening to find a flat rear tyre on Alf Green. Apart from no quick release it wasn't too much of a drama. Change to the lowest gear to slacken the cable, unhook the cable from the holder and the wheel is away. There's a few greasy bits to touch to do that so I'll squeeze a poly glove into the seat bag in case I should need to touch those bits in transit. By the way the flat was a faulty schrader valve, not a puncture in the Schwalbe Duranos (I am very impressed with these tyres).