LeeG

I don't understand your criteria. Light weight rim with very heavy weight tires, low cost rim with high cost tripping where durability should be the highest criteria. Marathon Plus and 24 spokes makes no sense. One of the reasons for more spokes is what happens tossing the bike around off road, minor crashes or heaving the bike into a vehicle and one spoke gets tweaked hitting something.

rear wheel spokes also break because that's where the greatest load of unsprung weight sits and for dished wheels spokes are more vulnerable to inconsisent spoke tension.

"getting away with" implies trying to accommodate too many conflicting criteria.

As mentioned above what range of tire sizes do you anticipate using? From the description of your use I'd use CR18, Mavic 319, etc. in 32 or 36 holes. The price difference between cheap and expensive rims is kind of small over the cost of a trip or life of the wheel. If weight really is an issue pick different tires don't make the wheel less durable.

spectastic

i c

the reason why i asked is because i found a nice deal for a front wheel, that would cost about the same as building my own front wheel. But I guess it would be good experience to start out with the front wheel, get used to it, and then do the rear wheel.

LeeG

Sounds like you're mixing up the decision of getting "something" with getting something that meets your intended purpose. Even if the 24 radial spoked front wheel was free it wouldn't be a good idea. Is this a disc brake bike, what size tires? Spoke selection doesn't have to be a big deal but you could spin out for days on the possibilities.

spectastic

rim brakes, 25 tires, possibly 28 on the back, but doubt it. i've already got everything listed out, except for the stem, front wheel, and saddle (trying to find something comfortable yet cheaper than a 155 romin evo)

MassiveD

Right on.

To the OP, the first post was for a blend of durabilty on through to Alphine. There was nothing in that post to suggest you wanted a time tria bike for a guy weighing 140. If i were you I wouldn't build that bike with 20 radial, though probably people do.

If you really want what you said in the first post, get a touring wheel. What that looks like is Velocity rim, 36 spokes, butted or straight, and a 35mm tire. or 32. Look at current research that indicates narrow tires are not faster. Slap this stuff on the bike and you will never regret it. Do some crazy thing that sounded good while gazing at a screen and you may get to taste your decision again many times on the road. I get all kinds of kooky ideas sitting at home, about the only thing I actually care about on the road is that the bike doesn't break down. I can fix it, and carry stuff to handle the routine problems. It's not good if you get stopped on the road, you will loose a pile of time when it is either nice and you wish you could be riding or when it is really nasty and nobody wants to stop to give you a lift. I have never been zooming down the road thinking "man this would be so much better if my tire was a mm narrower, and I have a few less spokes". There have been a few miles where I could have used a wider tire, though. I can always put up with a 35 mm slick.

bradtx

What is the bike you're building into your touring bike?

If you are limiting tire size to 25-28 mm, you can use a road rim. The Mavic Open Sport comes to mind. Last year I used some 32h Mavic CXP22 rims, but they won't meld with your weight weenie outlook.

Brad

Wilfred Laurier

3-cross on an Alfine hub with a 26 inch wheel results in borderline unacceptable hub-flange/spoke overlap - the spokes on my rear wheel almost touch the head of the adjacent spokes. If I were to build my 26" Alfine wheel again I would go with 2X.

grolby

You can probably get away with it, yes. I think there's no real advantage to radial lacing, and arguably some disadvantages, but the wheel will hold up if it's competently built. Probably not what I would use though.

"Very bad idea?" That's overstating it. Modern wheels can be very tough. The main concern would be, if a spoke breaks, the rim will wobble quite a lot.

I see you are a believer in the idea that "they don't make it the way they used to." Romantic, but false. Modern rims and spokes and nipples are all, on average, considerably stronger than they used to be. Spoke tensions are higher, not lower. Rims are much stiffer and stronger. I'm really not sure where you've got this idea that modern rims are supposed to be trued at low spoke tensions, but I don't believe that's the case.

Incidentally, I see that you are recommending a Velocity rim as the basis for a good touring wheel. Hmmm. I do not have experience with the Dyad. However, I can say that Velocity's road rims are not very good, and I would be surprised if their touring rims are built to a higher standard of quality. Popular is not the same as good. I suspect the reason so many people are happy with their Velocity rims is that they are simply not very hard on their wheels.

Rowan

There is also the fact that when Velocity moved its manufacturing from Australia to the US, there were quality control issues. I thought they had overcome them, but maybe not. The Dyads I referenced earlier were Australian made ones.

On the other hand, I have the Mavic 719 rims on several bikes and they have been faultless to a tee.

grolby

That's a possibility, but there are so many good options at similar prices that I don't feel that I really need to give them another shot.

LeeG

Ok so you're expecting good smooth roads. Most of my high speed light touring was 35yrs ago on 28mm tires and I weighed 145lbs and carried no more than 15lbs. One long trip on a custom touring bike was with 32mm rear and 28mm front tires carrying 25lbs. The fatter tires helped on bad pavement. I hope your bike can take fatter tires if you're not on smooth pavement.

GravelMN

I've got Mavic 719s on The Mutt and so far they have performed well for light touring, gravel grinding, and winter duty. I have them laced 36-spoke 4X to Deore LX hubs. I run several different tires on them for different conditions from 28mm for day touring, 42mm for gravel grinding and 40mm studded for winter. I weigh about 240# and have no complaints about them after around 1,500 miles of mixed riding.

MassiveD

On a touring wheel crazy comes to mind, it isn't simply "arguably some disadvantages". Flange failures are common, and the info I saw was people mostly discussing 28s and 32 on racing rides. If you look at the spoke line to the exist when you lace it radially it is much shorter than cross. But the actually failure mode is more complex and normally results in multi spoke separation and wheel collapse.





I think the main failure is that a bunch of spokes pull from the flange, and the whole thing goes down. I don't think there is an unreasonable load on spokes that causes them to fail first. The wheels can collapse easily on lateral loads. For me, I don't bank a lot of turns on my touring bike, unless there is a hill involved, but it could still happen.



It is, then why do you idiotically go on to say they are all better today, which is highly doubtful. Are wheelsmith products today, a lot better than previously. Hubs have hardly changed. It is really only rims, and they have changed a lot, and I do not see the benefit for what we do. Particularly weight weanies who want to save a spoke should consider why they want rims that are so much heavier.

Believe what you want, but I got the Park numbers direct from velocity when I needed them to build my wheels. They are pretty low. And if you follow the logic, why wouldn't they be? If the rim is super stiff, why highly tension the rim, the rim is the strength to a greater extent, and this allows them to pass on the otherwise required double eyelets. I also discussed it with Jobst Brandt because I couldn't see how one could follow his advice on tacoing a wheel to find max build tension when the rim was inflexible.

Velocity isn't all that good but a lot of high mileage tourers recommend them above all other brands including the previously dominant Mavic. There are a limited number of rims that can be built to 40 or 48 spokes. Peter White builds with them. There were better rims before the whole thing went in a different direction, but for what they are they are the best of the current crop. Of course stuff can change at any time. One other thing I note when looking on euro sites is the huge number of brands I have never heard of. I pretty much narrow it down to Mavic, DT, Velocity, and Alex, but there are many more makers out there and I doubt anyone can actually rate all of them.

I try not to be hard on my wheels, it isn't Moab, on an MTB. I want smooth rolling if I can get it. My failure mode would mostly be fatigue.

grolby

I don't think flange failures on modern radially-laced wheels are common at all, but sure. I had one that I got from Nashbar, of all places. Super cheap, 20 spokes. I mistreated that horribly over a season of cyclocross racing, most notably one race with a flyover with a very poorly sloped transition at the bottom. We were slamming into the ground with full force. It was pretty scary. Despite this and plenty of other mistreatment, that wheel never so much as went out of true. Anecdote, yes, but there you go. The 32-spoke Velocity rim that ended up on the front wheel I replaced that one with was much, much worse.

I think it's perfectly logical to use high spoke tension on a modern rim, at least for a rear wheel, because rear wheel dish is pretty significant these days. But I'm not a wheelbuilder, so never mind that. I stand by the contention that modern wheels are on average superior to the wheels being built 20, 30 years ago. I don't think anyone who actually pays attention can really dispute that, but you called me an idiot, so I suppose you can. Most notably, stiffer rims seem like a clear improvement to me. They make the wheel stronger, and if a spoke breaks, they don't wobble as badly. For those and other reasons, the 40 and 48-spoke wheels you refer to are really redundant today. There's nothing wrong with with White or Brandt, they certainly know how to build a wheel, but they are practitioners of the old school ways, and times have changed. Sheldon Brown made the same complaint about low spoke-count wheels with heavier rims, but in practice many of these wheels have held up well and that's why they are still popular today.

Rowan

Alex is a brand of wheel I would never touch again for any sort of riding other than twiddling along in the neighbourhood. It was standard fitment to my Fuji Touring when I bought it circa 2000, and the rear one in particular was no end of trouble.

Doug64

It is worth noting that Co-Motion Cycles, a very reputable bike builder uses Dyad rims on most of their bikes including Tandems.

Co-Motion Cycles | periscope-torpedo

fietsbob

In a 16" wheel it would be OK ... Bike Friday 349 Tikit wheels are 24 spoke Brompton uses 28

fietsbob

Quote:

3-cross on an Alfine hub with a 26 inch wheel results in borderline unacceptable hub-flange/spoke overlap - the spokes on my rear wheel almost touch the head of the adjacent spokes.
If I were to build my 26" Alfine wheel again I would go with 2X.

In Actual Practice the spokes are on opposite sides of the hub flange , and it has not been a problem ..

I have 3 32 spoke Dyno hub wheels 2, 26" and 1 20"... spoke and all are 3 cross ..

but you can do what you wish ..

LeeG

Well said