Spoke Advice

Term1te wrote:

A well maintained wheel should easily last 15k. I've got a pair of Open Pros on old Shimano 600 hubs that must have covered 30 - 40k over the last 10 years on my commuting bike. I clean and re-grease the hubs once a year and regularly clean the brake pads and rims. That said, do watch how thin the rim side walls are becoming, I've blown one rim right off after it wore too thin. Fortunately I wasn't on the bike at the time. Pumped it up on a very cold morning and left it in the sun. A good 5 inches of rim blown off sometime during the day.

Wow! I'm amazed would be interested to hear what the norm is for rim braked wheels that are used all year round. As I said IME after 5-6k miles my front rims are dangerously concave and <1mm thickness (Open Pros too Term1te); e.g. I checked once one by pumping up to 150psi when it had done 5.5k and I thought it looked cracked and it popped. I too maintain hubs regularly and clean rims and pads. I reckoned my longevity was probably on the low side of normal mileage (for the reasons written in my first reply) but not that low!

Apologies Secteur if I'm wrong but I was replying on the basis of my own experience and what I've gleaned as normal mileage from others :oops:

Bozman wrote:

4 - 5k out of a wheel? Wow, so if I cycle 5K a year I know what I should get for Christmas then.
My last set of Mavic Ksyrium SLs did nearly 20k miles around Derbyshire, the rims and hubs were still fine and they were passed on, I believe that they're still in use and doing fine.

Mileage varies a lot depending on roads/weather, rider weight, maintenance and braking habits. In continental Europe it is pretty normal to get 15-20 K miles out of a rim, as they bother to build concrete barriers at the side of the roads to prevent the verges collapsing onto the tarmac, which is what happens over here as a result of rain and traffic. The result is a lot more dirt on the roads, which you pick up and it grinds your rims.
I find up north roads are cleaner than down south, but this is a generalisation, of course. There is also more rain up north, which might compensato for that to an extent.

Rims are rims, made of alloys with very similar hardness and wear resistance, none of them is harder than the particles of dirt you pick up, so I don't think brand and model make a significant enough difference and all the talk about this rim wearing better than the other rim is mostly nonsense, in the same league as "oiling the spokes" as a remedy for noisy hubs.

I have nearly 17000 KM on my Zipp carbon clinchers, if I wiped them down you would be hard pressed to tell that they were not new.
The biggest give away would be the small tears and nicks in the stickers and the cog marks on the freehub.

What the hell do you do to your wheels?

5500 miles on a pair of Reynolds Assaults. Ridden all year round and no rim wear visible at all. I am only just over 10 stone though, so this may help a bit.