The midwives of our carefree bikes were sand and salt water. Bernd Rohloff wanted to cycle along the beach on the French Atlantic coast. But he couldn't. The very first wave washed salt and sand into the chain and sprocket. Soon after, the gears crunched to their knees. Nevertheless, Rohloff did not want to give up cycling on the beach. Back in Kassel, the engineer sat down to think next to the "green monster", his loudly rattling chain machine. After a short period of brooding came a long period of tinkering: He sorted cogwheels of various sizes into a tin about the size of a one-litre "Faxe" can. Rohloff arranged the pinions so that they revolved around each other like planets orbiting the sun. In technical jargon, this is called planetary gearing. Rohloff placed three of them in a row, resulting in 14 sensible gear steps. Finally, Rohloff fitted the Pilsner can into the bike. The result was the technically best gear hub in the world - the Rohloff "Speedhub".
Not only frequent riders dream of a maintenance-free bike: nothing to lubricate, adjust or correct, a bike that just runs and runs and runs. A hardtail is the only possible basis.
You can find these bikes in the PDF download:
Idworx Mountain Rohler
Juchem HTR
Norwid Thyra
Red Bull Globe-400
Rotor Propaganda
Voitl MX III
