Road Wheel Recommendation

[AlexWins]

I am 6'6, weight 308lbs and recently took my 07 Trek 1400 on a tour around Ontario Canada.

I've snapped a spoke or two in my time, so I embarked on the tour with some trepidation.. Some of the rural roads in Canada are.. not so great.

On a kind forum user's recommendations I fitted my bike with:

Front: Mavic Open Pro 32 spoke
Rear: Mavic Open Pro 36 spoke

Both had double-butted spokes, Shimano 105 hubs and ceramic finish braking surfaces.

The ride was pretty tough on them, after plenty of un-planned detours they had spent a lot (LOT) of miles on rocky dirt roads and trails, with no more protection than my 700c Conti tires.

I had a trailer (Extrawheel!) so the load on the wheels was just me, but 308lbs is not to be sniffed at. The wheels performed brilliantly! Very rigid and responsive, quite light too, within reason, but frankly over 200lbs equipment weight saving becomes a costly pretension.

Not a single broken spoke in 2000km of varied surfaces, and otherwise the wheels show very little sign of wear, they have stayed perfectly true and roll wonderfully. They give every indication of being bullet-proof for some time to come.

If anyone else is looking for touring / training wheels for their road bike I can recommend these without a moments hesitation, of all the things I have ever purchased for cycling these stand out as by far the most pleasing decision.

I should add that these were hand built and set me back somewhere in the region of £170. Not much by riding enthusiast standards but quite a lot by casual rider standards. So far they are looking like a solid investment though.

Shame my tubes weren't so reliable!

 

[Froze]

I'm sorry to say but the recommendation for the wheels was inadequate for your weight. The safer recommendation would have been 40 on the rear and at least 36 but 40 is safer on the front. Several rims would have those kind of spoke holes including Velocity Dyad and Chukker, and the Sun CR18 if you want a budget rim; the Velocity Chukker is the strongest of the three rims but it's the most expensive but if you can afford it it's the one I would recommend for you, the others will work just fine but the Chukker will hold up a lot longer.

Your body weight alone at 300 pounds was enough to stress out 36 spoke rear wheel, then add on another 25 pounds of bike plus 50 pounds or so of touring gear and you're pushing 400 pounds of weight!!

If you want a good place to have a custom touring wheel built that will be guaranteed to work and at reasonable prices give this guy a shout; see: http://www.peterwhitecycles.com/ This guy is probably the foremost expert in wheel building for touring and tandem construction and he can recommend the best build for you. Make sure you tell him exactly how much your total weight is including body clothed body weight, your bikes weight with full bottles, and how much weight your touring gear weighs including racks, panniers, gear in the panniers, fenders etc, then to be safe add another 25 pounds to the total for margin of error. Most LBS's don't deal much with the touring crowd so they don't really have the expertise to build an adequate wheel set for your needs, thus go to an expert and Peter White is an expert.

By the way if you want to save some money you could have the rear wheel taken apart and reused as a front wheel, then you would need a 40 wheel built for the rear. Or save your current wheels for when your not touring and you'll have a lighter wheelset for cruising the local streets on thus saving your touring wheels for touring.

 

[Pat Stowe]

I agree with AlexWins I"ve had several open pro wheelsets. The latest, using 32' holes have been virtually trouble free for 3yrs, just had to do a light "touch up" on the true 2X, only 1- 2 mm off. I've ridden all kinds of surfaces including "dirt" ( no cobbles yet) and have weighed as much as 258 lbs when using them (now 225lbs) I friend who was a team mech for 7-11 claims that 32s are stronger than 36s because there are "less holes"! I'm also currently using DT 370 hubs, with removeable sealed mech bearing assemblies, great stuff!- wear out a race or cone? no problem! replacing the bearing is inexpensive, KEEP the hub