I'm gonna jinx myself now. I've done enough riding on the Ram in ways that have taken advantage of the dual spacing that I've been very happy with the feature.
I built the bike up in 2003 with a road bike mentality, so a good deal on a production wheel made 130 the default. Then 3 years later when I was ready to use the Ram on a light tour, it was a no-brainer to bring over the stouter XT wheel from another bike. That wheel was 135 and fit easily. I agree that if I were doing a new Rammish frame now, I would opt for 135 like the Hilsen. But for when the Ram was made, and my desire then to have a road bike with light wheels and also the option of load-carrying wheels, the 132.5 has worked well for me. So if it's been risky, it's been worth it so far. -Jim W. Sent from my iPhone On Jul 4, 2013, at 6:56 PM, Mike Schiller <mikeybi...@rocketmail.com> wrote: > I have not seen any real data on how many Ram's have cracked in this area. > It's more then a few from what I've read. Just a quick internet search shows > at least 5. As I said there are many factors that lead to failure in this > spot. Maybe it was due to slightly lighter dropouts or as Gabe said above, > overheating during brazing causing a change in material properties. In my 30 > years in the Rocket Engine business we analysed many failure modes and while > most were due to fabrication variation some were design related. And a lot > more redundancy is built in to a Rocket Engine than a bike. > There a quite a few Ram's still on the road and they probably are ridden > longer in years than some other bikes. No one said the design was flawed. I > had one myself and really liked the ride. > The facts are pretty simple as far as the 132.5 spacing is concerned. The > drive side dropout see's more strain than other spots on the bike and is > structurally weaker due to the thinner and smaller tubes that are used in > that area. Adding more strain to a location by forcing the frame outward or > inward doesn't make sense. You can believe what you want. Not a single one > of the current Riv models use that spacing. Maybe that's the best answer. > > ~mike > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "RBW Owners Bunch" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
