Originally Posted by jbrams
Any one else willing to weigh in on whether or not the 32h wheel in the rear is going to hold up under a 300+ body doing strictly pavement riding?
Sure...I'm game.
I started riding my Mavic CXP33, 32h, wheels at ~300lbs. They had 14/15ga. butted spokes single cross pattern. I kept rubbing the rims on the brake pads. So I took them to local shop, had 'em put 14ga. straight spokes on in a 3x pattern. No problems with rubbing anymore. But, one of the spokes consistently came loose. I had to re-tighten it every 50 miles or so. Took back to the shop, they fixed it up with some spoke prep. No more problems coming loose. A little wobbly, but I trued that up quickly.
After ~1,000 miles on the wheel (rear) and down to about 280 lbs, I was coming down a mountain ride (about 4,000 feet loss over 25 miles). I noticed it was out of true again. Would have to fix later. Next day, I was going to go for a ride so went to true up. Noticed some serious spoke pull-through around two neighboring spokes. 3 weeks later, I have the wheel back from the shop after the
local Mavic sales rep (out of Boston!--I'm in California!) inspected and replaced the rim (I did have to pay $40 labor, though
).
My working theory: I weigh alot. With only 32 spokes, my weight was less spread out than it would have been with an extra 2 spokes on that side of the rim. Then, coming down hills blasting through curves at 35-40mph, I put alot of centifugal force on the wheels and the spokes holding the hub off the ground. This didn't help with the eventual pull-through.
However, to take a little salt with this, I'm thinking that with my constant problem of keeping the wheel true, it might have been a weak spot in the rim itself, aggravated by me and that ride. Evidence to support this: shouldn't the spoke have broken before the rim?
I last had 36h touring rims (Matrix Titans) many years ago and had absolutely no problems with them at all. But, Mavic has a pretty good rep.
Go figure.