oaxaca

New to here. I've been riding a 2008 specialized crosstrail hybrid. Wondering if anybody has had experience touring on one. I just bought it as a commuter but ended up taking it on some 50-80 mile overnights on a whim with probably 70 pounds loaded on the back (I just made a rack for my 65 liter overnight pack and used a bontrager grocery on the other side so needless to say it was a bit lop-sided). I made it home but had three broken spokes on the drive side by the time i hit my driveway. I have since gained some knowledge regarding bikes, but not too much. I'm not on a big enough budget to be able to buy a dedicated touring bike and I still mostly commute, but sometimes I commute with extra heavy loads and also want to be able to go long-distance with it.

I looked around on the internet and from what I've read, it sounds like i need to upgrade from 32 to a 36-spoke rim for the rear to start, and then i'm wondering can i get a new fork in the front since mine doesn't have mounts for a rack? (is that interchangeable even??? are there other options? I know the crosstrail is kind of a funky design...)

Regarding the rim, I'm wondering what most people do... is it cheaper to buy a wheel and build it at home? (assuming I am patient, mechanically inclined, expert you-tube instruction follower, and own a truing stand) or to just buy a pre-assembled? I mainly want it to be cheap and strong enough to handle frequent light curb dropping with a decent load and to be reliable on a long ride with 70 pounds on it...

elcruxio

first of all, don't curb drop with a load if you can at all manage it.

secondly, if you're mechanically inclined, then build your own. You'll get a strong wheel from the start since factory built wheels usually need to be retensioned anyways. I'd say that even more important than a truing stand is a tension meter since your bike doubles as a stand. Even tension that's not too high or too low is IMO the most important thing in builds, even more important than absolute trueness.

as for the rim, some options are Mavic A719, DT swiss TK 540, rigida/ryde sputnik

B. Carfree

There is nothing that brings me more joy, in terms of bike work, than building my own wheels. If you're going to do it, here's where you start:
Wheelbuilding
Also, be sure to pick up a copy of the late Jobst Brandt's book The Bicycle Wheel and read it in its entirety. This may help you avoid the mistake of getting heavy straight-gauge spokes because you think they will be more durable than swaged. The Bicycle Wheel 3rd Edition: Jobst Brandt: 9780960723669: Amazon.com: Books

I agree that you would probably have a better outcome with 36 spokes rather than 32. However, the single most important thing is the quality of the build (even spoke tension and such), followed by the quality of the parts. The wheels on your hybrid were probably not well built; you will do better on your first effort than what you had, and you will be even better as you get a few builds under your belt. With that in mind, you might consider just purchasing some new swaged spokes and rebuilding what you have. You'll gain experience for a small cost.

Maybe you can use the money saved to buy a tension meter. (I got lucky and bought a truing stand at an auction for a bike shop that was going out of business and then a neighbor found a dish tool at a thrift shop for me to use, so once I got a tension meter I had everything I needed.)

LeeG

For some reason Specialized made a lot of general use bikes with 15gauge spokes. Two ways to go about this, just buy a sturdy replacement wheel or get 14g spokes and rebuild it and learn how to build a good wheel.

After that learn how to reduce your rear load and spread the weight forward.

I'd hold off on replacing the fork and loading up the front end with mondo loads until you've got the rear fixed.

https://www.bikeman.com/WE9032.html

oaxaca

I appreciate the advice. My only experience with bike wheels was replacing the three spokes on my wheel the day before i needed to ride my bike to work. I quickly learned that its not a task to be taken lightly. Especially after I rounded off a couple spoke nipples due to them all being slightly different sizes from the factory somehow, and having to do the whole thing twice, all while getting terrible misleading advice from the local bike shop "mechanic". The bent rim probably didn't make it any easier... Probably the most frustrating project i've ever taken on using youtube instructions. aside from maybe soldering...

But I did learn a lot that day. It was probably an eight hour project when all was said and done. Spent a fair amount of time of time on the sheldon brown wheelbuilding site. Lots and lots of info there.

oaxaca

all that being said, my bike went to hell and back over seven years with heavy loads on a 32 spoke factory built wheel with the narrower gauge spokes and all the weight on one side (I pushed it too far when i rode over a few inch drop with a good load), so hopefully with my new super fancy dual-grocery-bag load equalizing setup and with any luck a good 36 spoke wheel with decent spokes I'll get many, many more trips to hell and back.

also, whats a dishing tool? sounds like it might be handy. hehehhh

elcruxio

A dishing too is handy, kinda. You use it to check the dish on the wheel (checking that the hub is in the center of the wheel) I don't use one, I just flip the wheel in the stand while I search for the perfect true. Gives the same end result eventually.

I think I actually threw my dish tool in the trash in the last move... (self made, no money lost)

HTupolev

Dishing tools detect how the rim is centered.

If a wheel spins stably with no wobbling, but the rim is consistently 1mm closer to the right side of the fork than the left, it's true but has a dish offset.

saddlesores

you can get decent wheels fairly cheep....you didn't mention
your budget other than not having the cash for a "dedicated"
touring bike......building your own can be fun and profitable,
but are you at that level of bicycle fengshui yet?

you don't gotta change your fork.....platform racks can mount
to the brake bosses or fork legs with p-clamps.....or a set of
inexpensive lowriders will mouth with u-bolts.

what are you carrying that comes to 70 pounds? any chance
you could delete some items or substitute lighter weight stuff?

70 pounds of gear? isn't that the cargo weight rating of the
bob trailer?

my truing stand is the rear triangle of a cracked frame.
my dishing tool consists of an assortment of empty
aspirin bottles and some various sized notepads.

rims....i likes sun rims, rhyno lite or cr18. recently been
using alexrims dh19 for touring and commuting.

elcruxio

Although to be honest, a 1mm dish offset is entirely acceptable. I actually try to manage a 1mm offset towards the non drive side for my rear wheels so I get a better bracing angle and more even tension

Tourist in MSN

Cost wise, you might want to buy the wheel instead of build it. Cost of spokes can vary a lot at stores, on-line they often come in larger quantities than you need and you might not get the length of spoke you need which can be money down the drain. But wheel builders that do it for a living can get parts much cheaper than retail customers. I build my own wheels but I don't think I save that much when I do that.

Tubus makes an adapter that can be put on a fork for mounting a front rack, I have never seen it but from the photos it looks robust. I do not know if your fork is steel or aluminum, but I would feel better about that adapter if your fork was steel. Use a magnet to see which your fork is.
tubus - LM-1 Montageset für Gabeln ohne Ösen

fietsbob

Europe tours on Hybrids .. maybe get Ergon grips with bar ends, Or Figure 8 bend trekking bars ..
& you keep all the stock controls.

leave the wheels you have if not low spoke count.* just have funds in your pocket to get new ones
if you damage yours.
*32 if you're light may do fine..

Consider this :

If a fancy wheel is damaged in the Popular Busy summer touring season the Hub gets Mailed Home .

as Generally, Nobody wants to stay for a business week to try to get in time to Order & ship
just the right Rim to be rebuilt by hand into a rear wheel ..

so a Machine built shop checked wheel is The ready replacement.

The 520 on the shop floor often gets its Wheel Cannibalized Too ..

Rob_E

Building vs. buying wheels for me comes down to what you want vs. what's available. Some places stock pre-built wheels, and, if what they stock is what you want, or close enough, there's a good chance you can get the wheel for less than your cost of components. But if you have very specific wants/needs, I find it's cheaper to buy the parts and assemble them myself. You do tend to end up with extra spokes if you buy them in bags of 50. That's more extra than you need, but I find it nice to have spokes that I know are the perfect match for what's on my wheel. Makes replacing a broken spoke a lot easier.

Also consider whether you need a stronger wheel or just a better built wheel. When my factory-shipped wheel started breaking spokes, I ended up just buying a full set of spokes for the side where the breaks were happening. Once I replaced my 18th spoke, no more breaks.

Front rack: I have used an Old man Mountain rack that mounts at the skewer and at the brake mounts. No need to worry about special rack mounts on the fork. Now I'm leaning towards a handlebar-mounted harness to hold a dry bag. Maybe a little lighter than a rack, but it does put the load up higher than is ideal. Also I don't know what the result will be when used with a suspension fork. Seems like that might affect your suspension.

36 vs 32. I prefer 36, especially on the rear wheel, but many people do fine with a well-built 32 spoke wheel, and I'm switching to 32 on my 26" wheels because it's easier to find parts. Well built wheel and a well balanced load can help you out though. 70 pounds sounds like a lot of gear, and there may be a way to scale that down, and there should definitely be a way to move some of it off the rear wheel and on to the front.

Good luck.

LlamaBikes

For heavy loads on rim brake rims, I'd recommend Velocty NoBS/Atlas or Rigida/Ryde Andra 30 with 36 thick strong spokes such as Sapim Strong or DT Alpine spokes on either.

GeoKrpan

A set of Shimano MT15 wheels cost me $110.

oaxaca

Good to know about the racks. I'll definitely look into that. as for the gear, it varies a lot. I commute with a lot of junk pretty often just due to work and school (18 credits=lots of textbooks, plus laptop, plus food and water for the day). The only times i had 70 pounds on it I had a lot of junk. But it was all "necessary" for my 4-day bicycle vacation. And by necessary, I mean I don't go without two hammocks, my kindle, water filter, sleeping bag, tent, bike lock, overnight backpack... the list goes on. So short answer, i could if i had to.

My budget... I guess i should say that I don't have the budget to want to buy a touring bike and to feel good about it, and the crosstrail has served me well over the years. So I mean... I can probably spend whatever I need to to get a wheel setup that will do what I need it to... I only paid 275 for the bike so I guess no use going too crazy? but ive also had no problems with the bike. so maybe why not go crazy...

oaxaca

I guess i'd want to spend maybe $150 in order to get a wheel that I can be confident about not breaking spokes on. something around there anyway. or less, of course.

I guess another question though, do people normally replace a rim after its bent? Intuitively, it seems like the spokes should have no problem straightening out the rim (and im talkin an inch or less of wobble side to side, not bent in half or anything) but the bike shop guy tried to tell me otherwise. He told me a lot of things though. few of which were true.

elcruxio

An inch can still be repaired, but it'll never get perfect. I'd get a new strong rim if I were you, but that's also because I like new durable stuff that certainly lasts.

If you get a Shimano hub and a TK 540 you'll spend maybe around $100 for the parts and you can then spend the remaining $50 for tools. A cheaper rim will get you a cheaper wheel, but the rim is pretty important.

indyfabz

If you have $210 to drop on a front rack, the Nitto Big Front Rack, sold through Rivendell, has a platform, attaches securely using the supplied p-clamps (two different sizes come with the hardware package), and will last you forever.

LeeG

If the rim is truly bent from the impact where the aluminum is deformed and not just out of whack from a broken spoke the spokes will not take that out. The wheel could be rebuilt with that tweaked rim and judicious whacking it may continue a long life but that hop or grabby brake surface is now the new normal.

$.02 get a decent 36 spoke prebuilt wheel with a 24 mm or wider rim. Mavic 319, Alex Adventurer, Sun Rhynolite, etc.
no need to get a $90 rim or fancy hub. THEN learn how to build a new wheel on your old hub.

oaxaca

I'm definitely leaning toward just building my own at this point... sounds more satisfying, and possibly cheaper and more reliable. so from what i'm finding on the web looks like it's either something like the rhynolite or alex rim for around 35 or 40 dollars or the tk 540 rim for around 80 dollars?

Next question, If I go with something 27.5 mm wide (thats what im seeing for the rhynolite) is that going to rule out thinner tires if end up wanting to go lighter again in the future? I usually keep a couple different tires around and swap them out depending on the weather and what kind of riding im doing. 32 mm is the thinnest tire i use. would that still seat properly on a 27.5 rim?

I get lost when I try to shop around because there are about a thousand brands with a thousand different prices depending on prebuilt or just the rim then everything seems like it either doesn't tell you what the width is or doesn't offer 36 hole or charges too much for shipping or is out of stock or blah blah blah

When i look for prebuilt I find results for everything from 30 dollars to 3000 dollars...

elcruxio

I'm pretty sure a 32mm tire will work with 27.5 rim width. Not 100%, but at least in the road community wider rims (almost as wide as the tire) have been popular for a while now.

How is the TK 540 so expensive? I got mine for way cheaper. Must be EU prices or something like that...

Anyways, I've built both the TK 540 and the A319, never tried rhynolite. The A319 was a bit finicky to build, the A719 was a bit better but still not perfect and the TK 540 practically built itself. It was such a joy to work with the TK 540 I considered not using any other rim than DT Swiss ever again.

Comparing the durability of the A319 and TK 540, I do notice a difference. I'm a heavy rider so my wheels need to take a lot of stress and the TK 540 is just plain more durable and resistant to going out of true.
I did one tour with the A319 and during that time (and also as it was the break in period) it got a mm or two out of true. On a second tour and again within the break in period of the wheel, the TK 540 got 0.3mm out of true and has not budged since, even though it has gone through much, much worse roads on heavier loads than the A319.

The advantage of the DT Swiss rims is that they allow for higher spoke tensions. Mavic allows 100kgf as max tension whereas DT swiss allows for 120kgf. Might not seem like a lot, but it's actually pretty huge in the rear wheel as the difference is actually in the non drive side (NDS) spokes. The NDS is always a lot slacker than the drive side (DS) because of the cassette causing a spoke bracing angle difference between the two sides. the NDS spokes are about 60-70% of the tension of the DS. So with a DS spoke tension of 100kgf you'll get a NDS tension of 60kgf, which is actually really low. With 120kgf DS tension you'll get 72kgf NDS tension which is a lot better, almost typical front wheel tension values.

Why does any of that matter though? Well, it matters because spokes don't break because they are too tight, they break because they are too loose and a heavy load makes this effect even more pronounced. Why this is would require a lengthy explanation which you can look up, of just take my word for it. But a too loose a spoke can get into a loose / tight cycle when the wheel spins under you which quickly breaks the spoke. So not having the spoke get slack at all is the optimal choice.

Rob_E

Tire Sizing Systems

Chart on Sheldon's site doesn't go as high as 27.5, but from what it does show, it doesn't look like you'd want to go lower than the mid 40s on your rhynolite rim.

Since you have an existing wheel set and presumably use 32s on that, I would make sure those wheels are in good shape and use them when you want to use your 32s.

GerryinHouston

27.5 is the external rim width on the Rhyno lite. Sheldon Brown's tables are for the inner rim width, in this case 21.5 mm (based on various rim profile pictures from the Internet).

Based on this, the acceptable tire widths are 35C-50C

Tire Sizing Systems

Rob_E

Good catch. I was assuming it was the internal width. So 32 is still narrower than might be recommended, but very likely possible.