Failure mode of overloaded factory LHT.
 

Split the alex rims. Surly rear rack, properly tensioned wheels. Well over reasonable capacity with rider plus cargo. The wheel post-mortem is attached. I'm just glad that the weak link was a 40usd replacement and not the rack or frame.

I've had good luck with 36 spoke Sun Ringle disk rims on a MTB. If the Alex fails again, are Rhyno lites any stronger?

I'm going to apologize right now for all the posts and pictures from me today. My wife and I are sitting out severe thunder storms and rain while on a tour. I'm bored silly,but I have managed to figure out how to download pictures from Photobucket to posts on this site using my phone.

Back on topic. You might consider Velocity Dyad rims. They have a good reputation. I've used them for several thousand miles of touring with reasonable loads, and have not had any problems.

Rims with spoke hole eylets seem to have problems with cracks.

Mavic rim.
http://i783.photobucket.com/albums/y...im%20Crack.jpg

what was the load.....rider and cargo?
all asphalt or cobblestones or PB?

had a similar (but not as bad) rear CR18 go, replaced with
a rhyno lite. no further problems.

if you want super heavy duty, you could try a sun mammoth
fat downhill rim. super heavy duty, super heavy as well,
but that may not matter in your case.

cracked rim
 

My opinion is that the spoke tension was too high, just my opinion. Been building wheels since '76

Agree 100% with Doug. Eyelets are pure JUNK science.
My Dyads have done 19,000 miles, many at 290 lbs GVW. Just the 2 wheels are 15 lbs.

Dyads should also have 40h and 48h options.

Rim failure around the nipples is not that uncommon. I had an old tubular rim that did that... I found it that way under my roommate's bed. I have no idea if it just spontaneously sprung, or someone "borrowed" my bike.

Looks like sun doesn't make mammoths any more. MTB wheels are becoming mostly disk unfortunately. The mtx disk wheels I built were absolutely bomb proof, but I'd like to stick with rim brakes for touring.

It's interesting to see anti eyelet opinions. Most claim the opposite. I'd definitely use eyelets with aluminium nips to avoid galling, but I doubt anyone with 36x12g uses aluminium nips. Velocity wheels had a reputation for splitting a few years ago.

ExtremeSquared, How many miles and how much overloaded?

Here's a link to a post about Velocity Chukker rims I was considering for my primary touring bike: http://www.bikeforums.net/touring/10...fo-please.html The only reason I didn't buy them at the time is because the rims on my second touring bike weren't as bad as I thought, which were going to be replaced with the primary bike's wheel set.

Otherwise I think that build quality has as much, or more, to do with wheel longevity than eyelets (an old debate) or even many of the other aspects to what makes a good wheel that we nit-pick over.

Brad

A lot of tandems now a days are running on 28 spokes with 350 lb teams. What are you doing that's more severe than that?
I still have not heard from anyone with a list of the 100 lbs of stuff they carry on a heavy tour. There are a few places in the world where 20 L of water might make sense, along with enough food. But a good water filter weighs less than 3 oz. in most places.

300+ pound rider, ~40lbs groceries, 50lbs dog food. The rear axle weight was too high.

These are the first wheels I haven't built in a while -- they were the factory wheels at factory tension. If anything, they were under-tensioned. There are a lot of us at the C+A forum that build our own wheels and are pretty good at making high mileage x high axle weight wheels by keeping inside the margin between static failure and flex failure. I rebuilt the wheel with another alex, at a tension proportional to rider size this time. I doubt the alex is a bad rim if used with standard touring loads.

Too much spoke tension? That'll do that real quick if the rim isn't specially reinforced for higher spoke tension (like DT Swiss rims or the Ryde Andra 20)
Also, even though you refuse to read the post that refute your ridiculous claims, it has been pointed out to you time and time again that tandem teams use tandem rear spacing, which effectively allows for less spokes. Tandems may also use specially reinforced or offset rims or both.

I only carry 60lbs. I think 100lbs is quite rare and you're just throwing around hyperbolic statements to effectively seem like a winner in a made up argument. Basically you're using a very crude strawman without even having a specific opponent. That's kinda sad man...

Also as a side note, I'd like to see you try to suck out water out of desert sand with your techy water filter.

Did you have to modify the hub or rim to fit the 12 g spokes?

Brad

2mm straight gauge. I forget what gauge that is.

"...Very generally speaking, we feel comfortable with combined rider and cargo weight of up to about 300lbs..."

http://surlybikes.com/info_hole/faqs...g_haul_trucker

Have you considered a cargo trailer, like a Burley Nomad?

https://burley.com/product/nomad/

BTW 2.0mm diameter = 14 GA

So where is the gear list?
Finland is not a desert!

IMO: Overloaded = Yep for the stock wheels. You probably want 40 spoke/Tandem wheelset. The Surly frame should be fine.

I'll just be less of a dick to the bike. 60-70lbs of cargo is plenty.

no. you posted a link to ONE $20,000+ hand-built super-dooper
high-tech one-off tandem in one of your silly threads to "prove"
that the crappy 24-spoked wheels on your unused 920 were
somehow capable of surviving wally-world speed bumps.

100 pounds of stuff? from another thread "toured with front and
rear bags plus trailer. fully laden, with 5 gallons of water and
several days of food, bike+stuff would be around 175 pounds."

had stuff like: 3-man 3-season tent, heavy-duty hiking boots,
trangia 2-pot stove set, dozen rolls of slide film, slr camera
with extra lens, 3-4 paperback novels, spare tires, gold pan.

afraid i don't have a complete list, i wasn't aware at the time
that i'd need to "prove" anything to basement trolls. guess
i was just too busy just touring......

You could give these babies a go. SUN RHYNO LITE 40 SPOKE 29ER MOUNTAIN BIKE COMMUTER WHEELSET - Strong enough for an ox!

I've been using the Disc version of these rims and when I go grocery shopping with a basket on my rear rack and have my 65L backpack on, the weight on the bike is well in excess of 450lbs, albeit I am only commuting within a city.

The funny thing about touring is that you don't have to tour where you live (which you would know if you toured)

I'm not currently touring finland. I'm somewhere else. Don't know yet whether we'll face deserts as we don't have a set plan.

+1.


Which doesn't make much sense, given the statement further down that these were factory tensioned. Since most machine built wheels are sorely undertensioned, perhaps this was a manufacturing defect in the rim? Heat treatment wasn't quite up to snuff, etc.


It's likely that the mis-manufactured rims are out of the distribution channels by now, but if you don't want to take that chance, look at Sun CR-18, Mavic A317, or the like.

Love it when the guy who cannot even manage to get out on the Katy for a few days offers "expert" advice. And did we ever see a proof of life photo of the alleged bike?

If they were factory tensioned, they weren't "properly tensioned," as you stated in your first post. With machine built rims, I always de-tension, then re-tension them properly. A good rim builder did that with my LHT rims when I got it five years ago, and they are still fine, despite heavy loading and general abuse on the road.

That being said, I am not saying that is what caused them to fail, you already offered good reason for their failure. I'm sure the overall weight was what it took to reveal the weakness in the rim. In the future though, you can get more out of a machine built rim if you de-tension and re-tension them before using. Who knows, it may not have failed if it had been done.

I have a 2011 LHT and am fortunate to have relationships with shops who employee knowledgeable wheel people. I don't go ultra light and subject the bike to abuse. Indeed, just got back from an 11 day tour in Montana which featured some very harsh, unpaved roads, including one 20 mile section of dirt/rocks/gravel with massive washboards in places, including on descents. Third time the bike has been over that road since I got it. I think the wheels have been worked on twice. With that said, I am curious as to what rim the OP broke. My '11 LHT came stock with Alex Adventurer rims. IIRC, Surly switched to a different rim a few years ago.

I had a Velocity Dyad rim that was showing signs of cracking at the nipple holes. Switched to a Mavic 719, eyeletted rim and didn't have any issues. But I also had a couple more wheel builds under my belt at that point, so it could have been the build, but given the option, I'll take eyelets over no eyelets. But I'll still do no eyelets if that's what's available.

I used to be a fan of eyelets. Then I swapped my mountain bike from Mavic 319s to Stans Flow EX (to convert my MTB to tubeless for flat prevention). The Flow EX are 80 grams lighter and much more lateral stiffness.

After looking at everything the reason became clear. Old designs like Mavic 319/719/Open Pros/Open Sports have tall clincher beads and constant wall thickness. Modern tubeless ready rims have shorter beads variable wall thickness. The saved material is moved to the spoke track. With a thicker spoke track there's no need for eyelets. Combine that with variable wall thickness, properly designed thanks to CAD, stronger and lighter is possible for no additional cost.

In the two year interval I've sold off all my 319 wheels and switched everything to modern tubeless ready rims. Stans Flow EX on my MTB, SunRingle HelixTR25/27 on my GG/Tourer and DT R460 on my city bike. My road bike is running a Shimano tubeless wheelset.

Even if you don't want to run tubeless (today) TR rims are a better solution, they run tubes just fine and going forward you'll be able to take advantage of tubeless technology as it takes over the market.

I'm a fan of the Ryde Andra 30 rims for bikes that will be abused. Also Velocity NoBS are a solid option too. I've overloaded a LHT like crazy and did not have any issues, the wheels ended up getting replaced because the rim sidewall split due to rim brake wear

ESquared, how many miles on those wheels? Curious if rim wear contributed to failure. For such big loads on a rim brake wheel I'd be inclined to go for the Ryde Andra rim if replacing rims occurs more than you like. The Rhynolites are a great value, after that I'd try VeloOrange Escapade or Velocity Atlas.

We're a 500+lbs tandem team; 40H Dyads worked fine for several thousand miles; then a spoke failure (straight 2.0mm spokes) in the front (captain is much heavier than the stoker). Changed to 48H, and went with Velocity NoBS (same price at Niagara) with Wheelsmith DB14 spokes.

The Dyad front rim was rebuilt with Wheelsmith DB15 spokes, and along the rear wheel is on a mid '90s Trek 720 based commuter.

Hubs are Wheelmaster "tandem" hubs; 135mm rear OLD.

This is a good option. :)

Are you using brass nipples? I ask because my daughter hit "something" on her CX bike and the brass nipples on three or four of the spokes deformed and pulled through the rim preventing rim damage.

If you have trouble again, try some DT Alpine III spokes. I'm going to use them for my next wheel build because they'll fill the spoke hole in the hub better and provide more support area at that point. The 1.8 section will also provide a little bit of stretch under tension.

Brad

PS A trailer, as mentioned earlier, may very well be a good option even with the 60-70 lb. load