Touring weight!
 

Ok how much weight is too much? With my weight being well over 300lbs how much pannier weight can I add to my racks before I blow out the tires or wheels? I currently use Marathon 700x45c tires on the disc trucker and only had a small packed bag with clothes and my laptop for work but it felt like the rear tire and rim were about to detonate. At my current weight (6'6'' and 350lbs) there will be no way I would be able to go on an extended tour with more gear.

I know, I know I need to keep peddling and reduce my weight but any other "super clydes" like me out there who have experience pushing their bikes to the limits and if so what were your results?

I found this on Surly's web site.

I toured for while with a guy your weight. He had spent a couple of years before the tour getting the bike beefed up to his specs. One of his problems was breaking crank arms.

See the journal below. This guy details all of the weight related mechanical issues he had at 155 kg.

I think the conventional wisdom would be lose weight, pack light, and get the strongest hand built wheels you can.


crazyguyonabike.com: Bicycle Touring: Thailand to Australia with the 155 kilogram rider., by Ray Pokai

I'd look at high spoke count and tandem wheels. Also you might want to consider a trailer when you tour. The more you ride the more weight you will lose....and the more you'll ride......and the more weight you'll lose.

+ 1 on high spoke count wheels and using a trailer.

LOL! Combined weight of 300lbs...LOL

if you havent already, post this in the clyde section, at least there you hopefully will get real life experiences with X wheelset for riders of a given weight.
Do remember that with wheels, who puts them together and the attention to spoke tension plays a big part in how strong the wheel is, although it obviously makes sense the route of looking into tandem wheels.

the trailer idea also seems like a good idea, a bunch of weight off the wheels of your bike. Downside of course is the extra expense of a trailer in case you find you really arent into touring, mind you they probably are not that hard to resell.

good luck with getting riding more and finding a setup that works.

People tour on tandems with team weights above your weight, so I don't see any reason you can't tour. Pack light (or if you can't pack light enough use a trailer) and use good heavy duty wheels.

Credit Card Tour= Spend more : bring Less ; Stealth Camping is bring more: Spend Less..

Shouldn't be a problem with smart equipment choices. You just have less margin for error. We tour on a tandem with four panniers and an on-the-road weight (us+bike+gear) around 400 lbs using 35c tires and 40 spoke wheels. As mentioned by others, a good set of hand built wheels with high spoke count will be your most important variable.

Our tandem frame limited us to 35c tires which forced us to run 110-120 psi to prevent pinch flats. This pressure is somewhat above the tire's (Schwalbe Supreme) listed max pressure. You have the luxury of 45c tires so I suspect they will safely carry your touring weight without going much (if any) above their recommended pressure.

Call Co-Motion and ask them. They make solo bikes (specifically I am thinking the Americano model) with tandem wheels. I have never ridden a Co-Motion but I rode with a guy a couple years ago that had one. He talked about how solid the bike was.

Thorn Nomad (I have one) is a very robust frame designed for a Rohloff. Some tandems use Rohloffs, so the hub should be able to take your weight. You could call or e-mail Thorn in the UK and ask. If you go this route, they usually use 32 spokes per wheel, I would suggest you insist on 36 on the rear. I built up my Nomad from the frame, I used 36 spoke wheels.

Neither of the above options is cheap, but there are not a lot of robust frame options out there that are less that would not feel like a wet noodle. A custom frame might not be much more and might even be less, you could get one made that takes the wider tandem hub spacing.

If you can cut 500 calories out of your normal diet every day, that is about a pound per week you will lose. A pound per week does not sound like much, but a slow steady approach might give you the best long term solution that is maintainable. Massive attempts to lose weight often fail, a slow steady approach that is not a huge change to your existing diet might be more sustainable. Starting today you should plan on something like this.

I would not assume the OP wants to lose body weight. The 300-pound guy I toured with made it point to finish his tour weighing 300 pounds and he was successful. He was just a big guy with an average amount of body fat.

I would love to trim down but honestly with my body type I will never get down to 225 so you are partially correct.

Ok so I know I need to lose weight (currently working on it!) and have customer wheels build but where can I have the wheels built? What can I expect to pay for a custom wheel?

There are local prices I typically pay....so not cheapest, but I figure my wheel builder's gotta eat.

- labour $50
- spokes $1 - $1.5 [depending how fancy]
- rims ~$100
- hubs $100 front/$225 rear

Look at Universal Cycles' site in Portland, Oregon. They build an excellent wheel- actually, thousands of them.

Try their custom wheel builder or call them and talk to one of their wheel builders.

Good luck.

Universal Cycles -- Custom Wheelset Builder

Given your location, visit Peter White: phone ahead though. Peter White Cycles Home Page

I run 40 spoke rear wheels; Velocity offers 40 spoke hubs with 130mm OLD. For 135mm OLD, I use Wheelmaster - I them from Niagara Cycle. I build my own wheels. My wife and I are over 500lbs team on our tandem, plus the bike weight and whatever we carry. Tires are 38-622 Schwalbe Marathons at 90psi, on 40H Dyad rims, Wheelsmith SS14 spokes front and rear.

40 spoke rear, wisdom has the suggestion of the same rim up front.. solo, you dont really need a 40 spoke , but if the rear is damaged

the front is your spare rim source, and you get a common 36 hole front wheel , in that case, for the front..

Getting the gear weight entirely off the bike and into a trailer might make the most sense, but if that's not your preference, you can move quite a bit of weight up front, maybe all of it. You will never stop the rear wheel from taking most of your weight, so moving gear forward might help. I've gone with most of my gear in stuffed, Ortleib Back Roller Classics mounted on my front rack. Not great in a headwind, and sometimes I feel like I might do better with some (but not most) of that weight distributed towards the back, but for the most part it works well. If your front wheel is built as well or close to as well as your rear wheel, it makes sense to give it as much of the load as you can. I like the way the bike handles, too, compared to when all the weight is on the rear. I may try and go with four, smaller bags in future, but even then I'll be trying to but the heavier stuff up front.

Another vote for a trailer for the OP's situation.

His wheels are currently without issue and he wants to take luggage.

A trailer would offer bigger returns for investment compared to buying new wheels it seems to me.

I like both my Extrawheel and my Carry Y-frame

Good luck with your choice and outcome OP

I'm not sure his wheels are currently without issue. Sounds like he was feeling like the wheels were not performing well with a very small load. If that's the case, it might still be worthwhile to upgrade at least the rear wheel to whatever the maximum spoke count can be found.

But even then a trailer would be worth considering. I have done trips with panniers and trips with trailers. They both have their pluses and minuses, but definitely one of the huge upsides of a trailer was that the bike had none of the weight, and felt almost the same as unloaded, especially when the way ahead was straight and flat.

I have no experience with the Extrawheel or any single-wheel trailer, but it always looks to me like they might be more difficult to balance the load so that most of the weight was supported by the trailer wheel. Maybe that's not the case, but I want to throw it out there, because the OP's goal is not more gear capacity, but rather less stress on the rear wheel. To my mind, not backed up by experience, a two-wheeled trailer would be better for that.

After too many failures with old Fuji Tourer, I built up a DT when I was 285, default pack around 30...

I'm using 48 phill wood tandem hubs, velocity chukkers and marathon 38's (+ rear, 420 front). Made a mistake one commute home and took it airborne a good long ways at 20+ mph w/ about 50lbs in pack. Wheels are still perfectly true. I've done other dumb things like ride off curbs as I was too tired to think properly.

Around 3500 miles on them still like new.

They were pricey and they are heavy.
They are also marvelously smooth and nearly silent.

Frank of Frank's Cyclery built them,
::: Welcome to Frank's Cyclery ::: (He uses twitter and facebook for current stuff).

Spoke with them early 2013, the wheels are the limiting factor.

Looked into the price of custom wheels and they are not cheap.

They are not. However if you think your current wheels are sketchy, then a beefier wheel is pretty much a necessity for an extended tour. You may do well with a pre-made wheel that meets your width and spoke requirements, but even then it's not a bad idea to have a mechanic go over it. You have 100 pounds on me, and when I bought a new bike with, I think, a 36 spoke wheel, I had to take that rear wheel to the shop multiple times to have a spoke replaced and the wheel trued. After a couple of times, I got tired of the expense and time off the bike that every broken spoke caused, so I bought some spokes and a cheap truing stand and started doing my own wheel work. After I had broken and replaced about half the spokes on my wheel, they stopped breaking. If you're not going to punish your wheel, people can get by with a machine-made wheel, but touring tends to be punishment enough. A touring clyde needs to be extra careful about wheel strength and build quality.

My solution has been to build my own wheels. I ride a 36 spoke rear wheel and use 32 in the front. It took some trial and error, but my last few wheel builds have been solid. And by buying the wheels in pieces, I could shop around for the best price for each part. It's still often more money than you'll spend on a pre-made wheel, but if you have need for an extra tough wheel, you may not find that being offered pre-made.

Another thing that makes for a stronger wheel is a symmetrical wheel build. That's standard for the front, but on the back, that usually means a hub gear. A hub gear is not everyone's favourite touring choice, but it's an option.

Unfortunately because of my size everything I purchase needs to be higher quality. I always say...if I cannot destroy it it cannot be broken.

48 spoke 20" BMX wheels will hold up well ..

Rohloff 32 hole get re drilled for 16 more spokes for long tail Cargo bikes . Aaron Goss in Seattle does that.

I guess its going to come down to putting out the cost for some tandem style, expertly build wheels. Given your weight it doesn't seem like there are really other options. I hope you can get other recommendations from guys near your weight.

If you were to go to a 20 inch wheel as you would on a bicycle like a Bike Friday, running a 36 spoke wheel is akin to running a 40 spoke touring wheel in a 700c.

The 36 spoke wheels on my 20 inch touring bike are insanely strong and I am building up a set of 28 spoke wheels for lighter touring.

Smaller diameter rims do not need as many spokes to deliver equivalent strength and at your size you might look at a 26 inch wheeled bicycle with 40 or 48 spoke wheels... this is what we use for our tandems and larger single riders.

Since I am a lightweight rider (145 pounds) I built my touring wheels on custom hubs (36 spoke) laced to CR18 rims and even when I am locked and loaded my total weight with the bike would not touch 225 pounds.

For you I'd build 48 spoke wheels laced to even stiffer rims... we have been very happy with Salsa Gordo 48 spoke rims and have one 400 pound customer who has been trying to break the 48 spoke disc wheelset we built for him for almost three years ago... they have never needed to be touched with a spoke wrench because they were built right.

Yeah I agree that I need a top quality wheel and will be working with a local wheel builder to purchase the correct wheels to support my heavy duty needs. From what I have read online the 48 spoke Velocity Chukker (properly built and with top quality hub and spokes) should be able to handle almost anything I can throw at it.