Touring - velocity

Hi are any of you using velocity wheels for touring on a loaded bike ie the chuckker. I have seen some reviews of velocity wheels cracking. What other wheels would you recomend. Thanks for the help

Mavic A719. Here (http://www.bikeforums.net/showthread.php/179835-Mavic-A719-rims-any-good-for-heavy-duty-touring) is a discussion from just af few months ago for you to review.

I used 700c Velocity Synergy OC rims when I build wheels for my touring bike. Only have a few thousand miles on the wheels, but so far they've been great!

The 48-spoke velocity dyad rear wheel has done well for me for loaded touring. With v-brakes after many miles the sidewall wears and eventually fails. However, these dyad rims have worked as least as well as mavic rims as far as failing and tearing around the spoke holes. I had switched to 48-spoke rear wheel after having three rims fail on a 6000 trip across Canada (15 years ago) and 48-spokes work much better given some extra weight on me and my gear.

I just had some wheels built up to ride TDA next year on a mountain bike and chose 36/40 velocity cliffhanger rims for front/rear. Only have 600 miles on the bike so far including five days of light touring but so far so good.

I had some custom wheels built several years ago with 36H Velocity Dyad rims and Ultegra hubs. I have only used them for commuting so far, but they have been bullet-proof in about 5,000 miles of use. I recently converted one of my commuter bikes into a loaded tourer using the Dyad wheels but haven't taken a loaded trip yet, but I am confident that they will perform well. I did a lot of research before building the wheels and the consensus seemed to be that Dyads are as strong as Mavic A719s but considerably lighter. Both rims will handle similar sized tires -- that is, tires 28 mm and much wider.

Isn't the chuckker, made for Bike Polo?

I've used 36H Velocity Dyad wheels and the Mavics. Both are good. I know little about the Chukker.

I'm using 32 hole A23 on my road bike and 40 hole Dyads on my touring bike. Both have been 100% trouble free.

My experience with velocity rims would be that they seem to hold up very well but I have never toured on them. I have a read were people have had them split in the middle when doing loaded touring but it also seemed velocity was always great to take care of them.

Mavic seems to be consistently good, the Sun Rhyno lite is a good inexpensive option. Just make sure the guy building the wheel knows what he is doing and you should have a durable wheel.

the dyad rims are the way to go for touring. They are a bit wider so your wider touring tire can fit better. They are super strong. I just built a set of wheels with dia compe touring hubs and some dyads, with db spokes, and i cant wait to use them!

I've been experimenting with the quite light velocity aeroheads the past year and a half. The first one failed after about two months and 3500 miles, only 100 of them loaded. The section that connects the two sidewalls simply failed at the valve-stem area. They were great about shipping a replacement out right away. The second one lasted about fifteen months (about 20,000 miles but only 1500 loaded). Well, once again they shipped out a replacement the day I contacted them.

I would have given up on them but I had heard that they had a few bad runs back when those first two were made. If the third one doesn't give me a full life, then I'll have to switch. I did notice that this one seems to be slightly beefier than the first two. It's weird to have a rim fail. My prior set of wheels on my touring bike lasted over 300,000 miles and finally became unusable when the Phil Wood hub gave up the ghost. (Yes, even Phil Wood parts do eventually die.)

I had similar experiences with the Aerohead OSs back seven to eight years ago. The first one was used for randonnees and light touring. The second one did get a beating. I did get a third, but my confidence was a bit lacking, and it is a spare and won't be used for touring.

I have 36H Dyads but haven't done that much touring on them. I have opted for Mavic 719s for our recent touring bike builds, mainly because of our very positive experiences so far with them on our tandem.

My prior set of wheels on my touring bike lasted over 300,000 miles and finally became unusable when the Phil Wood hub gave up the ghost. (Yes, even Phil Wood parts do eventually die.)

Your rims lasted 300,000 miles?! That is way above my experience, though I am somewhat hard on rims (winter + rim brakes=free sandpaper). I think that the 20,000 miles you got on a set is reasonable based on my own experience and reading/talking with others, depending on the point of failure (brake track?). Maybe someone else with more experience can chime in, but that's my thought.

@ the OP, I have not had issues on either of my wheelsets that have velocity rims (1 pr dyad, 1 pr A23), but neither have more than 2000 miles on them yet. As a bonus, they built up easily, which is good for a new wheelbuilder as myself.

Your rims lasted 300,000 miles?! That is way above my experience, though I am somewhat hard on rims (winter + rim brakes=free sandpaper). I think that the 20,000 miles you got on a set is reasonable based on my own experience and reading/talking with others, depending on the point of failure (brake track?). Maybe someone else with more experience can chime in, but that's my thought.


I was in the perfect place for rim life. Davis from 1980-2000. Minimal rain, no grit, 25 miles to the nearest hill (and most descents don't require any braking when one is young enough to be immortal). Heck, there weren't even many stop signs to deal with. Oh, and that was when the roads in most of CA were still well maintained.

Here in Eugene, we have a city and county that insist on putting down razor sharp grit that both grinds rims to dust and slices tires. It's almost June and they still haven't swept it off the road. Add in the lack of any decent routes that allow one to avoid stop signs and I don't expect to ever get even 50,000 miles out of a rim that is used for any training rides hereabouts.

By the way, the second rim failed the same way as the first, only more extensively. The interior connection between the two sides just gave way. It was cracked at almost all of the holes drilled for access to the top of the nipples. The Velocity rep said that they see that type of failure mostly when folks put 35 mm or larger tires on and over-inflate them. I generally roll on 25 or 28 mm, so he was somewhat surprised.

Your rims lasted 300,000 miles?! That is way above my experience, though I am somewhat hard on rims
I have always considered "full life" to be lasting until the braking surface wore through without cracking around spoke nipples or anywhere else. Full life becomes harder to define with disc brake rims, hopefully I will see over 20k miles on my current set.

I had one of the velocity rims that split, it was a rear cliffhanger...and it happened twice. Velocity was very helpful and ended up giving me a chukker and spokes after the second failure. They have held up well touring with the exception of the cracking problem.

I also run chukkers on my cx bike, they have taken plenty of abuse but no touring.