Broke my rear wheel. Best replacement options?
 

I'm asking here because, well, this is where the smart folks hang out.

Here's my story:
I bought a set of Mavic 517s on Deore hubs for my mountain bike that I converted to a commuter. Mostly so I could quickly swap fat tires wheels and skinny commuter tire wheels quickly and easily, plus I have a road cassette on the commuter wheels.

Yesterday I discovered a big 'ol crack on my rear rim. Must be the heavy panniers and the commute bumps.

Should I:

1. Get a new rim and have a wheel built using the old hub? (is that cost effective)
2. Buy a new rear wheel (but I have no clue about what to get, or how much it might cost...)
3. Just use the mountain bike rear wheel and swap tires and cassettes, which would mean going mountain biking would become a royal pain?
4. Some other thing I haven't considered.

Please, oh 50 folk, offer your collected wisdom.

Wow, that's a 36 spoke wheel isn't it? Cracking that would be of big concern to me. Can you take it back to where you bought it and ask if it's covered under warranty. (Even if you bought it on-line you might be able to ask the same thing). If no relief is availalbe, I'd probably take it to my favorite LBS and ask how much to rebuild. I think you're looking at $85+ to replace it with something that might not be as good.

517's are relatively light rims, similar in function to the open pro road rim.........nice but not necessarily the strongest for heavy loads. You might want to look at the Mavic 317 rim as a possible replacement. It has more extruded shaped inside the rim to add to the overall strength.

You could reuse your old hubs and buy new spokes and probably get years of use from the result.

The 317 is a stronger rim but I am afraid I do not like Deore hubs. The minimum I could recommend for Offroad use would be an LX hub. My mate Martyn is heavy at around 250 lbs and he uses 317 rims and LX hubs and He will wear out a rim and hub at the same time. Never breaks them but a wheel set will last him about 2 years offroad with all the muck and grime and his bad riding.

I would go up to XT hubs for my use with 217 rims (I still have a supply of these very light rims) but then I rarely use the brakes offroad. Don't do fast enough uphills- On the flat and I am playing catch up and Downhills I do more falling than braking.

I would hit Craigslist and find a used wheel in good condition, there are plenty of them. Then you can resell the Deore hub. Rebuilding the wheel, unless you do it yourself, will cost more. I haven't used the 517, I understand they were the new versions of the 317 that my son and I are using. I think I paid $100 for my son's with Specialized hubs and $120 for mine with DTSwiss hubs and spokes. These have been bulletproof. I am no kamikaze on the mountain bike but my son did some 3'+ jumps/dropoffs with them without even needing any truing, he is light though.

Yep, 36 spokes.
I've had them a year and a half, and I got them on eBay, so returning them is out of the question.


I said Deore, but now that I check it's Deore XT. I don't know the mountain bike hierarchy, but I think XT is the good stuff (?) Does that make a difference in the rebuild opinion?

I'll look into 317 rims, and talk with my LBS.

Now if those Hubs are XT- Rebuild the wheel with a stronger rim like the 317 and new spokes.

MTB hierarchy

Complete crap then
Deore-
LX
XT
XTR.

So why they term a lot of stuff as Deore-LX I do not understand.

There are others there somewhere like saint and other special use units but XT is almost as good as XTR- at half the price. Just like Ultegra and Dure Ace.

XT hubs are worth rebuilding (think Ultegra). Figure about $50 for a rim, $30 for spokes and $30 for labor (give or take) to have it done at the LBS. The math works better if you can build it yourself. I would compare it to the price of a similar wheel from Quality Wheelhouse from QBP.

I'd definitely lace a new rim onto the existing XT hub.

If I were doing it today I'd use a Velocity Aero Heat rim mostly because I was blown away with how well the 700c version laced up when I rebuilt my tandem wheelset. Once I brought them up to tension neither wheel required virtually any trueing!

I'll go along with the votes for option 1, with something like a Mavic 317 rim. I've had similar cracking problems with 517's and 717's on my 'bent. At 185-190 lb, I'm not that heavy, but I've cracked two rims in one year, so it's probably time to try something sturdier.

SP
Bend, OR
...where it was 0F this morning.

OK! I called the Wheel Peddler, a way-cool mobile repair bike guy who is not only nice, but very supportive of local cycling events.

He'll take the XT and build me a wheel on some 717s, which he says are stronger than the 317s (517s are not made any longer)

It'll cost me a bit more than I'd hoped (but what doesn't?)

Fortunately I have only two more commute days until Christmas break, which I think I can make on my cracked rim (fingers crossed) while I wait for the new rim to be shipped in from across the country.

Thanks for helping me spend my money!

Another vote here for rebuilding on your existing hub. Do the lacing yourself, then have it tensioned and trued by a pro if you do not feel competent to do that.

Hey, could you do this:

Sheldon Brown recommends that a U-lock be placed around the rear wheel, through the triangle instead of through the frame. The idea is that a rim would be very difficult to hacksaw through, since it is under pressure.

When you remove the old rim from you hub, could you first try hacksawing through it, and reporting to us as to the difficulty? That's your homework assignment. Extra credit if you do the sawing with a tire on the wheel.

Can't say if it is the same over there but here we have a wheel building company that is cheap.

I never rerim wheels-- except for the Tandem where I have yet to do it but the hubs are expensive and I would re-rim if the occasion arose.

But This builder in the UK is good. I can get a new wheel -say xt hub with a 317 rims- cheaper than it would cost to re-rim. I could get a rear XT hub to a 317 rim for around $80.


Of course this does not help you but investigate some of the wheel builders in the US to see what they can do.

On the link- just sort the hub- rims and spokes and they Hand build cheaper than I can buy a rim and get it rebuilt

http://www.merlincycles.co.uk/?fn=pr...&categoryId=98

From your site Xt hub, 717 rim (what he is getting, not the 317) and DT straight gauge spokes is $87 before shipping. That's probably just a little less than the QBP option I mentioned. I would go with butted DT spokes which would make it $94. Those prices are for everything silver. Go for all black and it's $104. I think prices are a little higher here.

It would probably come down to buying a pre-built wheel for about the same price as the rebuild with the used hub. Advantage is the wheel is built by someone you know. If that someone is you, you can save $30-$40.

For various reasons I am very hard on rear wheels and will crack one about every 10,000 miles. It's always been this way, going back 20+ years and regardless of who builds it. Spoke life and truing are a different story. The right builder makes all the difference. I don't trust machine built wheels and will gladly pay whatever price my guy asks for his expertise.

I do not like Black spokes and that is after having a wheel break most of the spokes within 500 miles from new. I know there are some good Black spokes out there- but there are a lot of "Poor quality material" that can be hidden under that black paint. Kept replacing the spokes with S/S but when I had more silver than Black ones- I ditched the wheel set. If the buider had used that quality of spoke- I did not want to know about the rest of the wheel. Returned them and got my money back.