Broken spokes. Need help with a good Wheel/Rims

Hi good day. I broken 11 spokes the other day and cost me $35 with labor to get the wheel repair. I don't mind spending a reasonable amount of money to get a heavy duty wheel with heavy duty spokes. I have a 26" mountain bike. Looking for something without fancy mods e.g. I am not able to cut the rear sprocket down. I don't mind paying a reasonable amount but don't want to go put ridiculous amount of time to do modifications. I live in canada so shipping to this lovely contry is pretty expensive.

Any recommendations for good wheels? I don't know where to get heavy duty stuff.

 

[Chalo]

My local surviving bike shop sells recycled **** called XRIMS laced by a 10 yr old kid after school. For $40.00 a pop.
You buy this **** once and never return.
Pre warped and bent straight , Until you ride it.

"X RIMS" are single-walled Alex rims. They are pretty much the best single-walled rims out there in my experience, but they are inexpensive. Because they are good but inexpensive, manufacturers use them to build cheap wheels that are often poorly assembled. Often VERY poorly assembled. Thus Alex rims have acquired an undeserved reputation for being lousy, when they are not.

In any case, a single-walled rim is not appropriate for a motorized bike when there is a sturdy double-walled rim available. A motor's weight, vibration, and speed are hard on a bicycle, and an MB rider should be using the strongest parts he can afford, not the cheapest ones he can find.

A $40 wheel is a very cheap item that many shops won't take the time to condition properly. I always do, but it is not a money making proposition. That wheel probably costs $20 wholesale. If a shop gives it the equivalent of a $20 repair before selling it to you, then it's like they charged you for the repair but gave you the wheel at cost.

There is no rim so good that a terrible quality build can't make it into a weak and unreliable wheel. Rims and spokes are secondary in importance to the thoroughness and consistency of the build.

Chalo

 

[5-7HEAVEN]

Very well said, Chalo!

Welcome to the club.

 

[spad4me]

"X RIMS" are single-walled Alex rims. They are pretty much the best single-walled rims out there in my experience, but they are inexpensive. Because they are good but inexpensive, manufacturers use them to build cheap wheels that are often poorly assembled. Often VERY poorly assembled. Thus Alex rims have acquired an undeserved reputation for being lousy, when they are not.

In any case, a single-walled rim is not appropriate for a motorized bike when there is a sturdy double-walled rim available. A motor's weight, vibration, and speed are hard on a bicycle, and an MB rider should be using the strongest parts he can afford, not the cheapest ones he can find.

A $40 wheel is a very cheap item that many shops won't take the time to condition properly. I always do, but it is not a money making proposition. That wheel probably costs $20 wholesale. If a shop gives it the equivalent of a $20 repair before selling it to you, then it's like they charged you for the repair but gave you the wheel at cost.

There is no rim so good that a terrible quality build can't make it into a weak and unreliable wheel. Rims and spokes are secondary in importance to the thoroughness and consistency of the build.

Chalo

These rims actually say recycled on them.
These people are the only game in town except wallmart.
I freely admit I made a mistake buying one.
I made a bigger mistake by recommending them to my fellow riders.
A BMX speciality shop LOL sells this stuff.
You do get what you pay for.

Ps I am now totally confused. I thought these were Double wall rims this is what they look like .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bicycle_rim_diagrams_03_.png

 

[asfazrq]

that's really odd Chalo. I have heard nothing but good things about the wheel master. I guess I'll have to see if for myself. I've lost faith in regular bicycle spokes, stainless or not as the spokes are not designed to take the kind of pressure the sprocket and the rag joints put on them. sooner or later the higher quality stainless steel spokes will likely fail. yes it's more expensive to go to the wheelmaster but I hope never to see these problems again. as per retighting the spokes every time, one could put in locktite compound on the spokes to hopefully get rid of the issue.

 

[Chalo]

that's really odd Chalo. I have heard nothing but good things about the wheel master. I guess I'll have to see if for myself.

I am certain that Wheel Master's wheels are at least as skilfully built as the better examples in the bike industry, but the plain fact is that fat spokes only work right with big heavy rims and very high spoke tensions. Bicycle rims can't withstand the compression that fat spokes would put on them when the spokes are in their correct tension range.

I've lost faith in regular bicycle spokes, stainless or not as the spokes are not designed to take the kind of pressure the sprocket and the rag joints put on them. sooner or later the higher quality stainless steel spokes will likely fail.

I think you may well be right. I have limited experience with rag jointed sprockets and their long term implications. Spokes are designed to be used purely in tension between one end and the other. Anything transmitting force to the middle of the spoke, be it a rag joint, a GEBE sprocket ring, a smaller rim used as a v-belt pulley (or whatever), places a bending load on the spoke at the attachment point. And while normally laced spokes don't see significant increases in tension from ordinary riding, bending tensioned spokes at mid-span does raise their tension quite a bit-- it is one of the traditional stress relieving methods used by wheelbuilders.

Best practice is to drive the hub, or even the rim, but don't apply force to the middles of the spokes. This is a clear advantage of friction roller drives, shift kits, Manic Mechanic sprockets, disc brake interface "sprotors", etc.: They let the wire wheel function as designed.

Chalo

 

[Chalo]

Ps I am now totally confused. I thought these were Double wall rims this is what they look like .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bicycle_rim_diagrams_03_.png

This a a double-walled rim made by Alex, the DM24. It is an excellent choice for a motorized bike, cargo bike, pedicab, or any other pedal bike that needs very strong wheels. It's also among the least expensive of double-walled rims at $20-$25 online retail:

 

[the wheelmaster]

Chalo, I'm sorry, but your friend did not have a set of my wheels, I've never had a wheelset fail EVER, never had any come back, and if he had actually bought them from me he would have known that I back up my work 100%.. I can't imagine anybody paying what I charge for wheels, and then not telling me about any problems encountered, sounds a bit fishy to me......

 

[Chalo]

Chalo, I'm sorry, but your friend did not have a set of my wheels, I've never had a wheelset fail EVER, never had any come back, and if he had actually bought them from me he would have known that I back up my work 100%.. I can't imagine anybody paying what I charge for wheels, and then not telling me about any problems encountered, sounds a bit fishy to me......

I'll try to fill in some of your blanks, so you can assess the veracity for yourself.

This was in probably 2003 or 2004; my buddy and I lived in Seattle then. The wheels were mountain bike wheels, with red powdercoated deep rims on disc hubs. I was not familiar at that time with the rim brand, so it was surely not Velocity. They might have been Vuelta. The rims were superficially like the Velocity Deep-V ATB that had been available up to then. I don't remember what color the hubs were, but the spokes were silver. My buddy (I'll call him T.O., which are his actual initials) mounted the wheels on a dual suspension mountain bike which he rode mostly on the street.

The rims had been drilled out to receive the larger 9ga and 10ga nipples, and lacing tension had slightly puckered the holes.

When I saw his super-strong new wheels, I reckoned they might loosen when ridden. The puckering around the spoke holes was a strong clue that the spokes needed more tension than the rim could physically provide.

T.O. was generally happy with his wheels, but they did loosen continuously, and he had to tighten them back up more and more frequently. They didn't ever fail structurally- there was no noteworthy bending, flat-spotting, or collapse- and it seemed the only reason they went out of true was from spoke loosening. I don't remember T.O. ever being as unhappy with his wheels as I would have been, and I think he stopped using them only because he didn't want to spend the time to keep them tight anymore.

To me, such a gross mismatch of spoke gauge to rim weight constitutes a failure of design, not procedural skill in wheelbuilding. It betrays a poor understanding of the physical principles at work in a wire-spoked wheel. The most skillful and consistent wheelbuilding can't make up for such an elementary mistake.

I encourage anyone who is interested to read up on "tensegrity" structures, because a wire wheel is basically one of those:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tensegrity

In tensegrity terms, the rim is a circular "strut" and the spokes are "tendons". If the spokes are too thick and inelastic to react to forces applied to the wheel, then they can lose all tension under load and the wheel becomes unstable.

Chalo

 

[Whizzerd]

This is the kind of discussion I love here on the Groups. I recall that Chalo is a bonifide bike Mech.. That said, "asfazrq", I have a new Worksman bike w/ the Worksman wheels, HD tires and tubes with a BMP/Titan 50 setup. The wheels are phenomenal!

 

[the wheelmaster]

Take all that flexing, and stretching, and apply it to a Clamshell Sprocket design "Which I think is rediculouse, but is what Asfaz Has", your stretchy wheel will fail quickly, Thick spokes simply hold up better when a motor is applied, look around this forum, read the reviews.
I would gladly put one of my wheels in a brutality test against any other wheel available, mag or otherwise, lets put our money where our mouth is like on PINKS, Make it a fair test, and I'll send a Superwheel , we will find out what holds up under the Pummelling... All in good fun, I respect your opinions, while at the same time offering a challenge....:helmet: