lightweight wheelset to swap onto tourer? worth it?

iclestu

I love my Dawes Galaxy and think its ideally suited to this overweight commuter/laden-tourist who lugs everything from shopping to tents. Perfect tool for the job.

buuut...

as I am growing to enjoy cycling more, losing weight and starting to improve (well kinda!) I am wondering about investing in a set of lighter wheels. The theory being I could strip off the rack and switch for lighter road rims for a nice sunny day ride over the hills then put the rack back on and the heavier duty touring rims for commuting/load lugging.

Will this make a noticable difference when the frame is really designed for heavier work? Worth it?

Any recommendations?

walkingbootweather

Well you might save a bit of weight but n+1 is a better way to go IMHO.

A good quality tourer can be pretty rapid, but generally speaking the frame may be stiffer (designed for carrying a greater load), the geometry more relaxed, the gearing a bit low and finishing kit over-engineered for reliability over weight saving.

For more speed you could change the wheels, remove your rack and mudguards, reconfigure your computer and tinker with your riding position but its all a bit of a faff, if there is an option to have a different tool for a different job.

Jay dubbleU

I changed the tyres on my Galaxy from 35mm Marathons to 28mm Marathon Supreme - made a heck of a difference

iclestu

Jay dubbleU wrote:

I changed the tyres on my Galaxy from 35mm Marathons to 28mm Marathon Supreme - made a heck of a difference

On that basis a lighter weight wheelset with some light narrower road tyres ought to make even more difference? Surely

iPete

Go the full works, lighter wheels, tyres and tubes & I'm certain you'll notice the difference.

jejv

I think it's a reasonable thing to do - with some caveats.
What to do partly depends on cash & partly on how lazy you are.

Like the other folk, I guess lighter, grippier, less lossy tyres might make more of a difference than lighter wheels.

I don't know what the rim size (internal width) of your current galaxy rims is - I guess ~17mm - but I'd be suprised if they were not suitable for 28mm tyres, and 25mm or even 23mm might be OK.

28mm is the largest size that most good road tyres come in, though Schwalbe Duranos now come in 32mm.
[I only know about Schwalbe tyres]

If you don't have much problem with punctures, I'd suggest a pair of 28mm Schwalbe Ultremo ZX. Search forums for opinions on Ultremo ZX. [Trouble is the search engine ignores 2-letter "words"]
A bit tougher & cheaper there's 32mm & 28mm Schwalbe Duranos.

Rolling resistance tends to be less for lighter, softer compound tyres, but tubes affect rolling resistance too, so lightweight tubes might help a bit.

Narrower tyres have less air resistance, but with mudguards I doubt this matters. Wider tyres have less rolling resistance, and less losses in the rider. There seems to be little evidence about where the tradeoff lies, but there seems to be some consensus that you have to be quite awesome to benefit from tyres narrower than 25mm.

So I think the first thing to try might be to get a couple of Ultremo ZX, put them on the wheels you have now, and see how you like them.

We do what you suggest - we don't have loads of bikes, but we have a lot of wheels, with different tyres on:
Stelvio or Ultremo ZX slicks for road, [discontinued, but excellent] Marathon Cross for rufty-tufty touring, Smart Sam for off-road, and Marathon Winters or Nokian W240s for Winter. Not sure when we'd want to use "normal" Marathons - they seem neither fish nor fowl - not obviously better than slicks on poor surfaces, and not competing with anything with a proper tread in mud.

Like most touring bikes, recent Galaxys have 135mm rear dropouts. Modern road & CX[Why?] bikes have 130mm dropouts. So a set of off-the-shelf lightweight road wheels won't fit at the back. Ready-built 135mm wheels with less than 19mm rims are hard to find. But a good LBS or - say - SPA Cycles will be happy to build what you want onto Deore hubs, and that may not be much more expensive that machine-built wheels.

Then you can swap the wheels to suit the occasion.

iclestu

Many thanks for the helpful advice and info jejv, i hadnt even considered the drop out width.

Jay dubbleU

iclestu wrote:

Jay dubbleU wrote:

I changed the tyres on my Galaxy from 35mm Marathons to 28mm Marathon Supreme - made a heck of a difference

On that basis a lighter weight wheelset with some light narrower road tyres ought to make even more difference? Surely

I had a lighter wheelset from Spa on my Galaxy so didn't need to swap wheels but logically I would think it makes sense

iclestu

On this dropout width thing....

I happily swapped the boardman (cx) rear onto the dawes when i broke a few spokes and it worked fine, never noticed any size issues, looseness, etc?

Did i unwittingly bodge it or does the Boardman cx have 135mm dropouts too then

gosport_commuter

I would guess the boardman had 135mm dropouts, just as my dawes edge CX bike also has 135mm dropouts. I was under the general impression that most, if not all CX bikes from the last decade-ish are 135mm, and 130mm is the realm of the road bike.

Jay dubbleU

I think CX bikes normally have 135 dropouts the same as tourers - my Croix de Fer did but it came with 35mm Racing Ralphs so I assume its to allow for wider tyres than you get on road bikes

jejv

Jay dubbleU wrote:

I think CX bikes normally have 135 dropouts the same as tourers - my Croix de Fer did but it came with 35mm Racing Ralphs so I assume its to allow for wider tyres than you get on road bikes

Older rim braked CX bikes were 130mm. Newer disc-braked CX bikes are likely to be 135mm, 'cos 130mm disc hubs aren't so available. If you have a speciality steel frame, it could be 132.5 to take either. But for cross-country, 135mm would make more sense to me because of the reduced dish => stronger wheel.

Googling:CX Wheelset will turn up a lot of wheels with Campy Hubs which are definitely not 135mm.

But a set of disc brake wheels with rim-brake rims would work. There's some off-the shelf wheels like that.

Can you fit a 130mm wheel in a 135mm steel frame ? Probably, but with some assembly required. Could space hub on both sides with washers, part way to 135mm - keeps wheel centred, but gears will need adjusting - limits & indexing wrong. Wouldn't want to lose washers when fixing puncture in dark. Axle on 130mm hub is probably long enough, so could shift axle towards NDS, space NDS, and redish wheel. Seems too much like hard work for a bodge to me.

Then I guess there's a few folk who've just done it, even with alloy frames, without realising there's a potential problem. The OLD is't usually part of the advertised spec of a wheelset or bike/frame.

The tyre width/clearance doesn't have much to do with the dropout width. A 100mm fork might take only 25mm slicks, or might take 65mm knobblies coated with mud.

Jay dubbleU

The wheels on my Galaxy were built by Spa and have 135 Ambrosio hubs which are excellent.

jedster

While I think the idea (swapping wheels, removing rack and guards for weekend rides) is sound in theory I think it is flawed in practice. My commuting bike is a drop-bar pompetamine with rack, guards, and 28mm schwalbe durano plus. My old one was planet-x uncle john cross - rack, guards and 28mm conti ultra gators. I did have a spare set of wheels with 23mm conti gp for the uncle john (don't have for the pompetamine because of hub gear / disc brakes). In practice they only time I ever used them and stripped the bike down was when I once did a triathlon. It just isnt worth the faff to remove the rack and guards for one ride then refit them before the commute and if you are not going to do that, changing the wheels/tyres has minimal benefit.

If I was going to be doing weekend rides regularly then I'd definitely buy another bike.

UndercoverElephant

Let's face it, you bought the wrong bike. In fact, you have bought two "wrong bikes", a CX *AND* a touring bike. The right bike would have been a roadie, you know that deep-down. You were just as misguided as the poor saps who ignore all advice and buy a hybrid.

Get a road bike.

jedster

that directed at me?

Au contraire! The Uncle John is an ex-bike. The pompetamine is the perfect bike for what I use it for - 20 miles commuting per day in all weathers.

If I regularly rode at the weekends I would DEFINTELY buy a road bike. As it is, a road bike would just gather dust in the garage alongside the rather pricy MTB which I hardly use...

J

UndercoverElephant

Actually, it was directed at the OP - but if the cap fits...

iclestu

UndercoverElephant wrote:

Let's face it, you bought the wrong bike. In fact, you have bought two "wrong bikes", a CX *AND* a touring bike. The right bike would have been a roadie, you know that deep-down. You were just as misguided as the poor saps who ignore all advice and buy a hybrid.

Get a road bike.

haha.

No.

Its true to say that if i could swap the cx for a roadie i would do so in a flash now, but thats ONLY because I now have the dawes. I bring shopping home on it a couple of times a week. How would a nice uber-light carbon frame and paper thin rims cope with my 15* stone + tins of baked beans and beer?!

*This may be a very optimistic guess :oops:

Jay dubbleU

I know the feeling - I do my weekly shop on the Dawes. It really isn't much hassel to take the rack off for weekend audaxing and its far more comfortable on distance rides than a road bike

edhornby

Jay dubbleU wrote:

take the rack off for weekend audaxing

I though for an audax you had to put a rack on the bike, eat nothing but soreen for 48hrs and grow a beard ??? ;-)

UndercoverElephant

iclestu wrote:

UndercoverElephant wrote:

Let's face it, you bought the wrong bike. In fact, you have bought two "wrong bikes", a CX *AND* a touring bike. The right bike would have been a roadie, you know that deep-down. You were just as misguided as the poor saps who ignore all advice and buy a hybrid.

Get a road bike.

haha.

No.

Its true to say that if i could swap the cx for a roadie i would do so in a flash now, but thats ONLY because I now have the dawes. I bring shopping home on it a couple of times a week. How would a nice uber-light carbon frame and paper thin rims cope with my 15* stone + tins of baked beans and beer?!

*This may be a very optimistic guess :oops:

Yes, yes - I'm sure owning a Luton van would be great for occasional trips to Ikea, but to have one as your primary form of transport would be crap.

Get a road bike.

walkingbootweather

Surely a tourer is more MPV than Luton Van?

The idea of an out and out sports car (or race orientated bike) sounds great and I'm sure would be great for play at the weekend, but would get a bit wearing as day to day transport.

IIR you have a Genesis Equillibrium which is perhaps the BMW M3 of bikes - offering both good performance and practicality. Still not as good as the humble MPV for certain applications though.

Jay dubbleU

edhornby wrote:

Jay dubbleU wrote:

take the rack off for weekend audaxing

I though for an audax you had to put a rack on the bike, eat nothing but soreen for 48hrs and grow a beard ??? ;-)

Audax is the only cycling activity where you eat your way round the course

UndercoverElephant

walkingbootweather wrote:

Surely a tourer is more MPV than Luton Van?

Nah, the nice, sensible hybrid with loads of kiddie seats is the MPV of the bike world. Something like this:



I'll concede that a touring bike is less Luton van and more:



You know, old, slow - clog up the road.

walkingbootweather

Probably says more about me than it does about you, but I found both of those images, in different ways, quite alluring.

Tourers slow? I don't think so. On my 12 mile commute I'm only a couple of minutes slower on my old steel tourer than I am on my titanium 'best bike'. If I spent say £500 on a new wheelset I reckon time savings over the commute would be measured in seconds rather than minutes.

I reckon Wiggo on my 20 year old Raleigh would beat a good club rider on some exotic flying machine. Either way I'd pay to see him try

Jay dubbleU

Checked my GPS stats for before and after tyre swap

35mm Marathons - Ave speed - 19kph Max speed - 35kph

32 Marathon Supreme - Ave speed - 25kph Max speed 42kph

walkingbootweather

Got some new shorts and a gillet last week. Curiously my average commuting speed last week was 14mph. For the previous week my average commuting speed was 12.5 mph.

I don't for one second believe that my new shorts and gillet made this much difference to my speed any more than I believe that changing from 35mm Marathons to 32mm Marathon Supremes alone is responsible for improving speed from 19kph average to 25kph average (a 24% improvement).

It would be interesting to keep stats over many months of undertaking similar journeys and even then how can you be sure that difference is not down to something as simple as increased fitness levels?

I have three bikes all of which I have had for three years or more, I have used all three many times over the same commute. Haven't got all the detailed stats to hand but my best time on my old tourer with panniers and 32mm tyres is 48 mins. My best time on my lightweight titanium framed, 28mm tyres and minimal kit is 42 mins. This suggest to me that by changing my whole bike for something very much lighter and designed for speed I'm getting less than half the improvement that JaydubbleU claims from simply changing his tyres. Perhaps I just need to MTFU

Jay dubbleU

Don't know what else could have made the difference - the same routes I normally ride, weather similar, wind similar, maybe I'm a little fitter but there you go

vorsprung

I agree that 28mm Marathon Supremes are great tyres. Probably the fastest for what they are.

If putting 28mm Marathon Supremes on still doesn't "feel fast" enough then getting another bike makes more sense than trying to make the Super Galaxy what it actually isn't

jedster

re marathon supreme - do you know how they compare to durano plus? Sounds to me like they are aimed at the same market - high puncture resistant training / fast commuting tyre?

jejv

jedster wrote:

re marathon supreme - do you know how they compare to durano plus?

I think Durano would be closer - similar weight for given size. D+ has the blue rubber belt, so heavier.

jedster wrote:

Sounds to me like they are aimed at the same market - high puncture resistant training / fast commuting tyre?

Schwalbe doesn't help much - one is "A touring tire that can do everything", the other is "For mile eaters. Durano is the right choice for high mileage purposes, because no other racing tire lasts longer."
So they're certainly marketed differently.

Iclestu never said what tyres he has now, and I don't think anyone asked.

If he's got something tough & heavy like Marathons on now, some decent 28mm-ish road tyres might change the nature of the bike in a good way.