Mountain Biking - double walled rims/good tires

What is the main benefit to having double walled rims ?

I am thinking of changing the rims on the mountain bike that I am about to buy and want to get decent rims and a good pair of tires that are puncture resistant (for road cycling).

Any suggestions/recommendations on either would be much appreciated. I have the option of swapping parts for this bike at a discount when I buy it so want to get the best that I can.

Justen

PS..I live in Vancouver, B.C. so if you can recommend any good brands, I would really appreciate it.

Why umm....buy a mountain bike and put road wheels on it?

Originally posted by KleinMp99
Why umm....buy a mountain bike and put road wheels on it?

Well, I dont' have enough money to buy two bikes, one for the road and one for mountain biking.

Also, I don't like the road bikes with the superslicks. We have some very rough pavement and some pretty shredded up pathways and I also like going down hills with roots and stuff to go over so having one bike with two different sets of tires made better sense. Mountain bikes are much more versatile than any other kind of bike too so it seemed like a reasonable decision to me.

Justen

Originally posted by Justen
I have the option of swapping parts for this bike at a discount when I buy it so want to get the best that I can.


I take this as you are buying road wheels and road tires. Or is it that you want double wall MTB wheels and slick mtb tires?

Originally posted by KleinMp99
I take this as you are buying road wheels and road tires. Or is it that you want double wall MTB wheels and slick mtb tires?

I was thinking that I would start off with double walled rims and some decent but not totally slick road tires because I cycle on a lot of loose gravel and stuff.

I can't MTB until I get this cast off so no point buying MTB tires yet but when I do, I want to get some good ones.

There's no reason that I would have to change the rims, right ? I mean, doublewalled rims will work just as well on the road as for north shore stuff.

Justen

Not sure on the dbl walled rims.. but I ride road and mountain. I ride my mountain for winter commuting. When there is no ice or snow, I put on the semi slicks and I can crank out some fast speeds. I thought about another set of rims, but I have changed so many tires, that it only takes me 5-10 minutes to swap between tires for different temps/conditions. If I didnt road bike, I would be able to ride the mountain bike with light semi slicks just fine.

some semislicks oughta do it

The ideal setup is two wheelsets, one for the trail the other for the road. XT hubs with Mavic X618 rims and double butted spokes make a nice set of wheels. A smart move is disc ready hubs in case you decide to go the disc brake route in the future.

This bike does have disk brakes on it already so I am all set in that respect.
I think I am going to get two two sets of tires though.

Justen

From what I understand, double walled rims are stronger and les likely to twist from jumps, flips, etc. The down side is they are harder to mount tires on. I have Sunrims RhinoLites and it's a fight to switch tires.