Brucey wrote:BTW the carbide grizzly failures reported above are almost certainly corrosion-assisted. cheers
You could well be right, the rims, like most of the components, were chosen for their low maintenance and longevity. It’s my everyday bike, ridden in all weathers and left outside all day and it doesn’t get cleaned much. Even so, I'd have thought a double eyeleted rim would still be less prone to this sort of failure? The previous Sputnik had done a higher mileage without such problems.
I built myself a pair of wheels using Mavic E2 rims when I was 15 or 16 that I am still using today. I used them for club riding, hill climbs and even (my favourite) touring. I was told that they were not suitable for touring but they have seen me round the north of Scotland a few times as well as Lands End to John-O-Groats when I was 17 and a few other tours since. These wheels got me to school and later to uni on a daily basis. Nowadays they get me out and about enough to keep my weight down. I should add that I am now 51 so it should come as no surprise that the spokes are getting rather thin due to rust, though in over 35 years only one spoke has ever snapped (rust issue) and that was very recently. It seems that double butted rustless spokes are indeed double butted but in no way rustless. (As a school lad I couldn't afford stainless spokes at the time.) They started to to rust within months of making the wheels up. The rims are as good as new even after over 35 years of use in Europe and Asia and touring complete with camping gear that due to budget constraints was never state of the art lightweight. I cannot speak highly enough of Mavic E2 rims. The braking surfaces are still in very good condition.
that experience tallies well with my own. Quite possibly your spokes were Berg chrome spokes? They used to rust like fury, but they were the best I could get back in the day...
FWIW Mavic E2 rims had thicker braking surfaces than any contemporary Mavic rim has. Of present Mavic rims only the Open pro is significantly lighter in weight. Perhaps modern rims are stiffer, but this is a quality that is overrated IMHO and is anyway less important if you have a sensible number of spokes in your wheels...
I have been 'experimenting' with various mixes of wheels & tyres over the last year or so and seem to have found that wider tyres protect rims from wear more than thinner tyres. The reason for wear is mainly road grit etc picked up by the tyres during wet weather. The mix of water and grit gets dispersed as the wheel spins. I have a feeling that a wider tyre (28 or 32 mm) will tend to fling more of this mess away from the rim than a 23 or 25mm tyre will. Anyone else have a similar experience?
whilst living in the lake district and being a mountain biker,the predominance of slate acted like grinding paste on the rims.I used to replace them by taping the spokes together so that,on removing the rim,the spokes remained in place ready to recieve the new rim.Worked pretty well as far as I remember.
cyclop wrote:whilst living in the lake district and being a mountain biker,the predominance of slate acted like grinding paste on the rims.I used to replace them by taping the spokes together so that,on removing the rim,the spokes remained in place ready to recieve the new rim.Worked pretty well as far as I remember.
Not heard of that method before. I tape the new rim to the old one in three places, then simply pass over a spoke at a time to the new rim, before re-tensioning.
