Tim: Personal experience is interesting.
I'm also over 200 pounds and I've been riding bikes for 40 or so years in all of the increments of gearing - pre-BMX, touring, MTB. Yet, I haven't had a spoke break since 1980 - the year I got my first handmade rear wheel. I have had two wheels develop eyelet cracks and one wheel self-destructed due to a rim manufacturing defect AND I've had a slew of crappy machine made wheels that always seemed to go out of true. That's not the same as comparing apples to apples - My experience tells me that well built 36h wheels (with good quality parts and a professional build) are pretty equal in durability. I will certainly acknowledge that less dish is probably an advantage to the 7 speed freewheel hub (on a 135mm spacing!), but that it is a belt and suspenders approach to building strong wheels that carries with it the disadvantage of availability of parts/ranges/shifters. I will also admit that I've wanted a set wheels builty with those Riv/Phil hubs and a seven speed FW for a couple of years. As you pointed out in your post, heavy, aggressive riders certainly put more strain on their wheels. I met a guy this summer who had toured 10,000 miles on his stock Surly LHT without any wheel issues! He packed lightly and weighed about 170. Dave On Aug 29, 1:06 pm, Tim McNamara <tim...@bitstream.net> wrote: > On Aug 29, 2010, at 1:51 PM, Dave Craig wrote: > > > I'll assert again that the supposed advantage of the > > dishless/freewheel wheel bit is WAAAY overstated. > > That's not my experience, being old enough to have gone from 1 cog to > 9 in all of the increments over the past 45 years. The higher dish > wheels fail much faster (going out of true, cracking rims). But I am > also 6'4" and 220 lbs, built more like a linebacker than like Lance. > Someone who's 140 lbs would probably have a much different experience > than me. > > To the OP, I have had a 36 spoke/135 mm/7 sp rear wheel on my All- > Rounder for 14 years. I never had to true the rear wheel from 1996 > until I replace the worn out rim two years ago. And I've not had to > retrue the new wheel (same hub, same spokes, new rim). Ultra- > reliable. This is the bike I use on and off-road, on gravel roads, > for light touring and brevets, etc. > > The issue with freewheels is that it's harder to find the cog ranges > that you can find with cassettes. There are good ones out there- > Shimano still makes freewheels, after all, and there are other makers > as well (IRD, for example) although many bike shops are less likely > to stock a lot of them. The dish is not necessarily less between > freewheel and cassette hubs with the same number of cogs. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bu...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch?hl=en.
