The walk of shame

After a morning of drowned rat riding, a few of us stayed on for 'one last loop'.

Going down the fast twisty singletrack that eventually ends up beside the house and the road I clipped a sapling with the end of my handlebars. Next moment I was over the bars and quickly checked my bike...











I've never had a wheel do that before! and it's two weeks old!

The hub / disc look fine. Does it need a new rim or can (should?) it be straightened?

Si

ahh, that'll be the end of 'Exfoliator'.

Nice wheel Thats one reason why I don't ride anything other than Crossmax SLs.

A 5 day long weekend in Spain lots of big drops and rock gardens......not even a tweaked spoke required.

But you'll def need a new rim and some spokes. Hub should be OK.

hi si

i do have set of mavic 117 so if you need something to get you by just let me know or for a small price you can keep them

oh dear Simon ,i think thats called a pringle.

r u o.k ?.

Jim, thanks for the offer. I've rebuilt my Kona and I'll hack around on that until I get the wheel rebuilt.

Nath, it was the downhill singletrack that meets the exfoliator before the steeper bit down to the road. A couple of low heavy wet branches in the face threw me off line. I was flowing until that point...
Crossmax SL wheels look lovely but isn't there a weight limit on them (which I probably exceed) plus they are bloody expensive.

Any recommendations on another rim? recommended wheel builders? I'm tempted to sacrifice 100g and stick on a sturdy Sun Singletrack SL1, not light but it won't die or bend on Welsh rock gardens...

Si

Nah no weight limit on the SLs AFAIK. I think there is on the SLRs.

What about Mavic STs they weight about 50 grams more than the SLs and are as strong as flip, plus UST!! Or if you want bullet proof, there are the SX's. But they are 20mm front I think. All the guides in Spain ride Crossmax SX's

ST front is £200 - 760grams
SX front is £200 - 910 grams

Its one of the old adages of you get what you pay for !! Yes you can get a SUN rim, that will withstand some kind of Nuclear holocaust, but I reckon a 31mm wide rim is a little overkill unless you are planning on sticking moto X tyres on!!! Plus will prob weigh well over 1kg, and sticking weight on the bits that spin round is not good.

If I were you go for a Hope Pro 2 hub, these things are bullet proof and have cartridge bearings (so a 15 min job and £5 to change) then get a solid rim like a DT EX 5.1. Merlin build these for £80 all in. If you bend one of those you are doing something BIG (4ft +)

I wrote a nice long reply and the forum crashed and lost it

Here we go again, the abridged version

Ive got Hope pro 2's with Dt5.1's
Bought them from chain reaction in August 2006 Ive retension them once in that time and chained the 2 bearing in the rear free hub body(£7 from ebay)
Ive been about on these wheels and they have been well abused with no serious problems.

If your going for the pair don't put a cheap cassette on the rear as the free hub body is alittle soft and a cheap LX cassette with jam on I've never had a problem with XT cassettes.

Tyres can be a bit of pain on the rims when changing you have to make sure you break the bead all the way round the rim before trying getting at it with the tyre levers or you will just bend them.

I would buy another pair


(select all and copy incase things go pear shaped again)

There is a guy on STW selling a brand new Hope Pro 2 Hoop with DT 4.2 rim. £85 Knock him down to £75 !

HERE

Thanks for the info guys. The front hub is hope 2 pro and brand new so I'll just stick a new rim on for now. Might get a spare wheelset in the summer once I've decided if I'm going to keep the light QR fork or go beefier with a pike 454 air.


~S

I've just purchased a fine pair of Hope Pro 2's with DT 4.2's.

But then I'm not a fat *******!

Just for the record my front wheel was £85 from wiggle so the gentleman on STW is taking the whatsit! As I'm sure you wouldn't get the usual purchase warranty/guarrantee.

Maybe you should follow this blokes example

http://www.thisisexeter.com/displayNode.jsp?nodeId=137015&command=displayContent&sourceNode=136999&contentPK=20717649&moduleName=InternalSearch&formname=sidebarsearch