On Apr 19, 2010, at 12:02 PM, Thomas Lynn Skean wrote:
Hi, all. I seek counsel.
I weigh about 250 lbs. I often carry 10-15 lbs on a rear rack. I ride
a Trek hybrid, sitting bolt-upright. (By the way, this Trek is about
as Riv'd up as any Trek could be. Actual Riv relevance: Later this
year I'll also be riding a Hillborne and any counsel I receive will
apply to it for sure; maybe/maybe-not for the Trek. Also, the riding I
do is very much non-clubby, non-race-y, and non-trivial in distance;
this seems to match up with Riv philosophy and thus seems appropriate
for this group.) I use 700x35 tires on 32- or 36-spoke wheels at about
60 psi.
<snip>
Help? Thoughts? Musings?
Tandems put more load than you on wheels. So do loaded touring
bikes. They are not experiencing the failures you are. The axle
failures you report really bother me. I would look very carefully at
the frame- make sure the dropouts are properly aligned (if not they
can put a bending force on the axle). A *good* bike shop with frame
alignment tools can check this and make any adjustments, or go to a
frame builder. If your frame has horizontal dropouts I would
recommend replacing the frame with a bike with vertical dropouts;
these support the axle better and were created to reduce axle
breakage. They also work better with fenders.
60 psi in a 700 x 35 tire at your weight seems low to me.
My going-forward-advice would be to use no less than a 36 spoke rear
wheel. I'd recommend a Phil Wood freewheel hub (less expensive but
still spendy) or Phil Wood cassette hub (grande expensativo). You
won't break those axles nor will you be at all likely to tear the
flanges apart. The rim recommendation I will have to defer, although
Chalo Colina over on the rec.bicycles.tech group weighs over 300 lbs
(I think he's like 6'8" or something like that) and he has had good
results with Alex rims (and rides 48 spoke wheels). He has
recommended the Alex AT-400 or the DM-18. You can Google for "Chalo
Colina Alex rims" and find some of the threads and his email address
if you want to contact him. Jim Thill on this mailing list builds
good wheels professionally and has put some wheels together for
bigger riders than you. He might have an option on a rim, too.
Chalo is also a machinist and builds lots of bike stuff to meet his
particular needs as a very big, very heavy guy. Check out his brakes:
http://chalo.org/
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW
Owners Bunch" group.
To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bu...@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch?hl=en.
