Goat Herder
Member
Also what is the life span of your rear wheels & spokes with 75 mile round trips? What kind of wheel are you using and what gauge spokes are involved?
Well, you still want the rim strip. I have a new rim and strip now, so once I get my brakes tuned up and fitted to this new wheel I'll give it a power test. But I think the rim strip is actually what is going to prevent it from sliding in the rim. Hairspray is an alright idea, but it will drift/crawl I'm sure slowly. Like if your tube is losing pressure, you can see it drifting by checking the valve stem every so often.
I've actually only completely broken one, and that's because I didn't know about the hard corners thing at first. It secures in by kinda snapping in. It's got fins/tabs on the sides hugging the inside of the rim, and if you "grind out" of them on a hard turn it can tear the tabs/fins, and will be more prone to grinding out on a less extreme turn in the future on that spot of the wheel. I'll take a pic tomorrow of it. This is my second pair, and I'd be lying if I told you an exact timeframe before I thought it necessary to replace. About a year and a half or so. At the time I was about 230lbs, and I'm down to 170 now, so I'm sure this one will at least last me as long, hoping for 2 years. I really can't put a solid number of miles on it cause I don't have an odometer, but I know I can say thousands.
Actually, as far as solid anythings are concerned, these feel like they've got at least 65-70 lbs in them, so it's very comfortable in that respect. You feel the bumps, but I'm a hardtail guy who likes to feel the road he's riding on. I surely wouldn't use these in any offroad situation. Of course, if you've ever ridden on a touring bike with 80 lbs, you'd know that the tradeoff for feeling the bumps is that you have what at least feels like zero drag.
An added thing about these on a motorized bike is that there is more weight at a lower center of balance on them and a lot more torque and speed than what they would have been rated for.