“You’ve got to see wheels as just a wear-and-tear item"

Giraffoto

I’ve just had a chat with a cycling colleague, who holds the above opinion. I’d mentioned (OK, “can’t stop going on about” is more accurate) my new bike, and that I’d been concerned at first about the tiny number of spokes. His point of view is that (in no particular order): rims only last a couple of years with abrasive brake pads; freehub bodies get mangled by the cassette; you can’t re-use the spokes after a rebuild; if a spoke breaks, you go home anyway rather than fixing it at the roadside; and he has a pair of £75 Shimano wheels as spares for the couple of days it takes the next cheap-and cheerful pair of lightweight wheels to arrive.

Is this a common point of view? Do many people think about their wheels like this? I’m still going to go for a handbuilt set when the current ones finally give up.

ddraver

I sympathise, but I hope he's wrong and I ve been unlucky...

veronese68

He's not wrong if you think about it, it just sounds a bit extreme when you put it like that. The rim is certainly a wear and tear item, any braking surface is. Get a set of handbuilts made around a decent hub and you can get the rim replaced, new spokes is probably a good idea if you're doing that. The bearings in the hub are a wear and tear item. So really the hub shell is the only part that isn't a wear and tear item.

iPete

He is mostly correct. I like to see good hubs as longer term investments though. I can wear down a rim in 6k miles but being handbuilt the hubs will soon be going onto their third rim. I've also been told it can be OK to re-use front spokes.

mercia_man

Yes it's a common point of view, not just in cycling but in life generally. If something wears out, you replace it. Many modern cyclists lack the ability and/or desire to do even basic repair jobs on their bikes. But they have the money or credit card simply to replace. I guess they feel they have better things in life to do than fiddling around getting their hands dirty.

I like the idea of recycling and of extending the life of products. Our house is almost totally furnished with secondhand or family heirloom furniture and carpets, I got years of extra life out of an elderly Gaggia coffee machine and Goblin Teasmade that had been thrown away, we make lots of things for our garden from discarded pallets and I'm adept at taking apart our dog's extending lead and reassembling all the springs and plastic bits to make it work again. It's the same with my bikes. I get satisfaction in maintaining and repairing them to ensure maxiumum life of components.

I've got factory wheels and I've got handbuilt wheels. Nothing wrong with factory wheels, although I personally wouldn't get the cheapo variety with poorly tensioned spokes and tiny bearings that wear out within a few hundred miles.

Some members of this forum sneer at handbuilts, suggesting they are heavy and flexible. They are misguided. Go to a proper wheelbuilder and you will get something specifically designed and built for you. Good handbuilts with modern wider rims can be stiff, light and strong. Breaking a spoke or having to re-tension spokes are unlikely to be an issue, rims and bearings can be easily replaced when worn, and problems with cassettes eating into alloy Shimano-fit freewheels can be solved by steel or titanium freehubs or going Campag which don't suffer as they have deeper splines.

The wheels on my touring bike, which have a much harder life than those on my lightweight road bikes, were built by Paul Hewitt some 15 years ago. I have replaced the rims once, re-using the original spokes, and have replaced the original alloy Campag Record freehub which cracked by using a complete axle, bearings and freehub assembly from a modern Record hub. I expect I will still be using those wheels 15 years from now.

Smokin Joe

I don't see any problem with re-using spokes, I've done it several times front and back.

iron-clover

Its true unfortunately, with rim braking you will get through the rim eventually, requiring a rebuild if possible, or scrapping if not.

I like the idea of handbuilt wheels- my current nice weather pair are handbuilts with Hope hubs. Unfortunately they aren't as cheap to rebuild as it is to buy a new cheap pair of wheels as I haven't yet learned how to build wheels myself yet, so I'd be looking at about £100 per wheel to rebuild at good shop prices, whereas the Shimano R500 wheels are £75 for a pair.

As a result I use said shimano wheels as general use/ winter wheels.

This is one of the biggest advantages for disk brakes IMO- sure the pads may wear more quickly and a bit more of a faff to replace, but an expensive rim should last much longer.

keef66

Harsh but true. I don't brake very much, so I'm nursing a pair of RS10's through their 8th year; just put new bearings in and I'm keeping a close eye on the wear indicators which are getting harder and harder to find. They are now on the summer bike but I accept that they'll be scrap in the not too distant future. When I broke a drive side rear spoke the wheel became instantly unrideable, jamming against the chainstay. And the spares proved quite elusive; I now have a solitary silver spoke in an otherwise black wheel. When I need new wheels I'll be getting some handbuilt ones with a higher spoke count, so hopefully they'll never leave me stranded, and I'll be able to buy replacement spokes as required...

I put the cheapest R500 wheels on the winter bike because I liked the fact they have conventional J bend round spokes and more of them. For £70 a pair I'm happy to view them as consumables; If they last 7 years it's only a tenner a year. I spend more on tyres...

stevie63

The R500 have to be one of the best bargains in the bike world, They are better than the standard wheels supplied on most sub £1000 bikes and they just go on forever. I recently replaced mine with some handbuilts after 5 years of trouble free service and whilst the handbuilts are better, I wouldn't say that there is much in it. The only downside is they are not 11 speed compatible.

lancew

I asked my LBS what wheels he suggested between Mavic Askiums or to spend a bit more on Kyrsium's.

He said that as I'm commuting on the bike and putting in around 500 commuting miles a month that currently I'd be better off with the Askiums as replacing the rims on the Kyrsium's would cost too much. He also suggested that he was recommending me Mavic's over Fulcrums because he is able to source Mavic parts easier for me.

All that would suggest that you have to look at your wheels, or at least your wheel parts as "wear and tear".

What parts of your bike would you say doesn't that apply to long term?

mercia_man

Lancew wrote:

I asked my LBS what wheels he suggested between Mavic Askiums or to spend a bit more on Kyrsium's.

He said that as I'm commuting on the bike and putting in around 500 commuting miles a month that currently I'd be better off with the Askiums as replacing the rims on the Kyrsium's would cost too much. He also suggested that he was recommending me Mavic's over Fulcrums because he is able to source Mavic parts easier for me.

All that would suggest that you have to look at your wheels, or at least your wheel parts as "wear and tear".

What parts of your bike would you say doesn't that apply to long term?

Why not buy a decent set of handbuilts and learn how to replace the rims yourself when they wear out? You would have higher quality wheels than Aksiums and would save money in the long term. The only person to miss out would be your LBS who would lose you as a regular source of income.

ddraver

Do you think MerciaMan may like Handbuilt wheels? I can't tell...

southdownswolf

I'd love to buy a nice set of hand built wheels, but my wife keeps finding other stuff to spend money on.

lostboysaint

You have particularly poor negotiating skills then!

simon_masterson

The bike industry, like any other, wants you not only to buy what they can produce most easily and cheaply, but also see it as preferable and desirable. This forum seems to be a good indicator of how effective the manufacturers' marketing is. They don't want you to use wheels that are long lasting and repairable, because they get less money out of you; hence the standard fare with too few proprietary spokes, sometimes glued in, in silly patterns. Rims with braking surfaces are a consumable of course (though some distinctly longer lasting than others), but freehub bodies (etc) haven't always been made of cheese. I have every reason to believe that my Campag 8 speed hubs have many more years left in them, not to mention building up into better wheels than the aforementioned.

sigorman85

The reason I have discs now! No more rim wear

buckmulligan

sigorman85 wrote:

The reason I have discs now! No more rim wear

Exactly, this is one of the main reasons I'd consider switching over to discs.

Especially this time of year when the roads are covered in crap, it breaks my heart every time I have to squeeze the brakes and hear the screeching of grit on aluminium

Anonymous

Disc winter/Rim Summer ;-)

Be honest if you want discs because of how they look ;-) ;-)

buckmulligan

Haha, no I'm still firmly in the "look-odd-on-a-road-bike" camp but the potential for lighter rims is a plus as well.

Having recently given my mountain bike it's annual winter run-around, I'm reminded just how much nicer hydraulic discs are, but I'm not sure that much stopping power is a good thing on a bike. It only takes a slightly over-zealous grasp at the lever and you could be locking up wheels all over the place, which rarely works out well on a road bike.