staticnoise

Hello guys!
I was wondering if anyone knew how much weight mountain bike wheels can carry individually?

See, I have been digging around, and apparently my cheap 26" mountain bike has a solid axle (it doesn't have the wheel release lever thing). What I want to do is put pegs on my back wheel, and ride around with my friends standing on the pegs. I myself am 150lbs, the bike is probably 40-50lbs, and the friends range from 150-200lbs. However, since they'd be standing on the pegs, the back wheel would get close to 150-200 (their weight) + 100 (bike & me divided by 2) pounds. Add in the the pot holes/bumps etc, and the wheel has to be able to handle about 400-450lbs (though ideally 500lbs) by itself without collapsing.

So, does anyone know of wheels that might be able to handle this much weight? I looked around and was surprised to find that companies don't publish the weight ratings! Does anyone know of an equivalent metric or a chart that compares these things?

Ride safe.

JanMM

Ride safe.................... What you are wanting to do is not so safe. And against the law many places.
How about a tandem bicycle?

AEO

yeah, 26" wheels can do that...
tandems, surly LHT and other xtra cycles can attest to that.

But this mainly depends on wheel quality. solid axles are a good indication of poor quality as they're normally found on cheaper bikes.

One thing to do is use a really fat tire on top of a well built and strong wheel.

jgedwa

setting aside any safety or legal issues, I think you are asking an awful lot of that rear axle.

If your bike is really 40-50 pounds then it is a cheap bike. Cheap bikes have super cheap wheels. Super cheap wheels hardly stand normal usuage for a minimal mileage. So, expect the wheels to expire sooner rather than later. Is that a problem? Maybe just run it into the ground and replace it with another crappy wheel when you need to.

+1 on the big fat tire recommendation. Anything you can do to soak up the road will help. And you will need as much air in the tire as possible to avoid pinch flats. But still, you will get pinch flats doing this anywhere but on the velodrome. And I think that pegs are not USCF legal on the track.

j

DannoXYZ 

Actually, you cannot use static weight to determine the loads a wheel will face in actual use. Hitting bumps will load up the wheel with up to 4Gs of force or 1600-1800lbs. Luckily for you, the solid axles are typically made from weaker steels than the chromoly used in hollow axles and will break well before the wheel collapses.