joeruge

Hello All,

Just picked a pair of Rolf Prima Vigor on E-bay for what passes for a good price these days. It was a bit of an impetuous purchase as I hadn't done adequate research.

The wheels arrived yesterday and they appear to be in very good condition and they look great.

Though they don't say 'tandem' on them anywhere, the rear wheel is 145mm OLD. I've identified them using Rolf's informative website as 2004 models.

I was surprised how narrow these rims are, about 13.5mm inside. The Rolf website recommends a maximum tire size of 28mm, which is the tire size we normally use. But, this is a general recommendation for all their wheels. Most other places I've checked (Sheldon, Mavic, Schwalb) recommend something more along the lines of 25mm.

Now I might be tempted to put 25's on these rims and save them for only doing fast 'events,' though I'm not sold on the idea of using 25mm tires on a tandem, either for comfort or safety.

Does anyone have any thoughts or experience with these narrow rims? Any problem running 28's on them?

Thanks for your input

Joe R

bwebel

We've had a set of Rolfs from that generation and have been pretty happy with them as "go fast" wheels. We've used both 28s and 25s with no particular difficulties. I'm likely to sell ours in the spring, but solely because we moved to 11 speed and disc brakes, not from any unhappiness with the wheels themselves.

That width of rim was pretty standard for performance wheels at the the time. The widespread move to wider rims and tires didn't come for a few years after 2004. A lot of people have ridden a lot of tandem miles on 25s, so unless you are a particularly heavy team, I wouldn't stress about using 25s on those wheels if that's what you end up deciding to do.

joeruge

Hi, thanks for the reply. You have given me some good information, a bit of confidence and maybe some piece of mind that I didn't blow $330 on a pair of wheels I couldn't use.

I wouldn't say we are a heavy team. We're about 310, plus the weight of the bike. I suppose I will set these up with 25's and hold them over for our big, competitive rides.

Still, these are amazingly narrow rims considering this wheelset is meant for a tandem. These rims are narrower than the rims that came on my Trek Madone 5.2!

Thanks again.

bwebel

310 lbs on those wheels should be perfectly fine with either 25s or 28s for fast riding on decent pavement. I personally would probably put 28s on them as I don't see that there's much reason not to unless the brakes won't fit them.

I know single bike rims are routinely 23mm+ wide and tires 25mm or more these days, but this is a fairly recent development. As I recall, HED started pushing 23mm rims in about 2007, before that, pretty much any high performance rim would have been 19-20mm wide with singles riding 20-23mm tires. Racing tires equivalent to the modern Conti GP4000 simply were not made in wider versions, sometimes 23mm would be the widest available.

Rims for touring or heavy loads would have been wider, and tandems certainly would have used them, but go fast tandem wheels would have usually been built with 20mm or so rims. Some high performance tires you could get in 25mm, so that's pretty much what we rode on the tandem. Before we got the Rolfs, we were usually riding some Campy Atlanta wheels that were 34mm deep and 19mm wide with 36 spokes, and never had any problems with them either.

geoffs

Narrow rims such as the Rolfs will take a 28mm tyre, however the downside is that with a tyre this width, the tyre will form a lightbulb shape. This means that you will need to run high pressures to stop the tyre from squirming during cornering. I tried running 28c Gatorskins on the Deep V rims that we had and it just didn't feel good. We do have a tendency not to slow down much for corners so your experience may differ.
The recent trend to wider rims means that the tyres sides are more vertical and the handling is hugely improved.

joeruge

Thanks to those who replied. I was hoping to use 28c's on these rims. My experience for most of the riding around here is that you benefit from the extra air space with no penalty. The somewhat softer tire eats up some of the rough pavement and gives a smoother, faster ride (because you're not bouncing all over the road).

Much of that would go away if I had to run 28's at higher pressure. But not too interested in getting a 'squirmier' ride either. Tandems are hard enough to control going down a twisty mountain rode. I don't need any extra challenges!

So, though I might try the 28's on these, I'll probably settle on 25's just for race day.

Thanks again for your input.