Thread: help a fat guy
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Old 05-14-02, 02:18 PM
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Rich Clark
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The most likely trouble spots will be the wheels and the fork. If you're working with a decent bike shop, you might ask them about replacing that bottom-of-the-line suspension fork with a rigid cro-moly (steel) fork, which will be much less likely to break.

With machine-built wheels like these, difference between wheels holding up and wheels breaking is usually whether they were prepped by hand when the bike was assembled. It's not something every bike shop does, especially on entry-level bikes, but in your situation I'd insist on it.

Preparing the wheels means 1) manually stress-relieving them, 2) bringing the spokes up to proper tension with a tensionometer, and 3) truing the wheels. (Stress relieving is usually done by grasping two non-adjacent spokes and squeezing them towards each other, continuing around the wheel, which distributes mechanical stress through the spoke and does much to prevent spoke breakage. It's routine on hand-built wheels, rare on machine built ones.)

Bikes like these are not going to hold up to severe abuse, even with a small rider. They'll last a long time riding on pavement, gravel, packed dirt, and such, but they're not up to the rigors of downhilling or cross-country on rough terrain. If you want a bike that can handle a large rider under that kind of stress you'll need to spend more money.

Have a great time with your new bike!

RichC
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