Cycling UK Forum

PH wrote:

mercalia wrote:so the morale is dont put too much strain on alloy bars? then they wont break?

No, I don't think there is a morale.

My morale would certainly be better if I didn't have to worry about putting too much strain on the bars! That shouldn't really be necessary though. However, if you're a powerful rider (or one who is taller or who likes to use wider bars), you would be wise to choose your bars carefully.

Wider bars will exert more leverage to the stem interface. I've also noticed that Nitto offer their wider bars with a special heat treatment, which I suppose, in theory, should make them more fatigue resistant, or is it just to make them more stiff? Wider bars will more likely be used be taller, more broad shouldered people, who will tend to put more twisting force through the bars.

I've had several bad experiences with butterfly bars. This started with Humpert butterfly bars that came with my Dawes Galaxy. They became distorted around the stem clamp, with scoring markes around the edges, where the stem clamped them. I actually got through 3 of these bars!!! (replaced by the bike shop FOC), before deciding to install drops. Looking back, I wonder whether my LBS may have mis-sold me the ITM road Race stem, which AFAIK, was only ever sold in 26mm (anyone know?). The butterfly bars were 25.4 stem dia.

Apart from this uncertainty, I'm pretty certain that using wide bars, such as these, on a tourer, was inducing more twisting force,and so fatigue. They also felt 'noodly' - well, the whole set up did TBH.

More recently (5 years ago :0), I built up what I call my trekking bike, or gravel bike, to use modern parlence. Because I'd enjoyed the ride comfort and position of the butterflys, I choose to try out the original Modolo Yuma Butterfly bars. This time, I've only got through 2 of these bars! This time the guilty component was a Nitto bar shim, which unbelievably, was sold with a sharp edge which scored the bars after a year of service At ths point I deceided to use the proper 25.4mm stem.

Anyway, although I continue use these bars, the mileage they undertake is low and I don't use the bike as a loaded tourer. I will periodically check these bars because of my experiences.

One final point, I always check the edges of the stem clamp area any of stems I use. If they look at all sharp or hard edeged, I just file a little of the edges, if only to reassure me that this stem won't contribute to any wear.

Even with the sprig anchor pins located in the lowest of the three holes on the canti stud and the equalisation screws let completely out?

mjr wrote:

Paul A wrote:I Agree with Meic that turning the bike upside down scraping the saddle, handlebars, GPS, and lights etc on the tarmac isn't the way that I would choose.

I wouldn't do it on tarmac. Grass is OK, though, especially if the saddle's covered (even with only a bag) and especially with aero brake hoods (no cables to kink). You can't always find a suitable fence to hook the saddle over.


http://vimeo.com/110915955

Does anyone use anything to steady the front wheel whilst lifting up the rear. It wasn't clear from the video, but the front did look well behaved.

Anyway, I was about to suggest carrying a Crepello Quick-release third-hand (TM) for this very purpose

TrevA wrote:The secret is having the bike on the ground (wheels downwards) when refitting. If using a stand, I can never get the wheels centred, so I just take it off the stand, fit the wheel then replace on the stand.

I used to struggle to centre the wheels whilst working on the workstand.

Recently, I devised a quick release third hand from reusable zip ties, initially for hoisting and centreing Mudguards. Of course I quickly realised that the device can also pull the wheels snuggly into the dropouts as well

PH wrote:

CREPELLO wrote:They do seem to have been manufactured incorrectly. They're not fit for purpose. You can ask for replacements.

Probably not after they've

cut 40mm off the bottom

I'd have sent them straight back if they were not right.

I think I would argue with the SKS distrubutor that the modification was made out of ignorance of the fault and that the OP then subsequently learnt of the fault. It would be, or should be, clear enough that the fault wasn't derived from the modification, but that the mod was made because of the fault.

They do seem to have been manufactured incorrectly. They're not fit for purpose. You can ask for replacements.

On the divorce of rigidity, one factor is that the stay bridges are a smaller radius than the inside cute of the mudguard. This allows then to wobble more, effectively pivoting on the rivets.

I address this by widening the stay bridges,particularly the lower front one. A little extra packing can help, but it's better to get the bridge to properly support the mudguard to remove as much movement from the rivets as possible.

RickH wrote:

amediasatex wrote:Not to mention there are cheaper alternatives to the SON hubs, SP and Shimano being the obvious other choices.

The article in Cycle does also specifically mention the Shimano DH-3N72 as an alternative in the examples.

Except the article advised buying a 3N-71, which has been out of production for about 11 years. And illustrated this with a picture of the 3N-80

531colin wrote:If your wheels go off when you ride them, its because you haven't "finished" them.....the final repeating cycle of "stress the wheel, true the wheel, balance the tension."....repeat until the wheel stays true when you stress it.
If some spokes unwind when you first ride the wheel.....so what? Unwinding 1/4 turn doesn't change the spoke length.

Ok, you've convinced me Colin. Everyday's a school day

531colin wrote:Its possible to reach a high tension on the driveside spokes if you tension the driveside first, then tension the NDS to pull the rim over. That doesn't mean you always make the wheel too tight doing this, but you might.
How to proceed?........forget about spoke wind-up, its a complete non-issue. If any wind-up remains in the "finished" wheel, all that happens is a little burst of tinkling when you first ride the wheel, as the spokes unwind.
Anybody with a reasonable mechanical "feel" will tighten the nipple "past-where-they-want-it-and-back-a-bit", this means you get very little wind-up anyway, and most of what you get unwinds during the final repeating cycle....stress the wheel, true the wheel, balance the tension.....stress the wheel, true the wheel, balance the tension....repeat until stressing doesn't cause it to go off.

I always felt that spoke wind up was an issue in as much as a finished wheel that looked true, would upon riding become untrue due to various spokes unwinding unpredictably. Perhaps I should just "build 'n' ride", as some may say. I always back of a 1/4 turn.

Gattonero wrote:
I've seen that before and my take is that is due to the mechanical action of the riveting machine at the factory, having to deal with a flat eyelet that is going on a concave (along the rim) and convex (side to side) section of the rim, thus causing the mechanical stress to concentrate in a defined area.

Makes sense - the rim is quite convex. All other rims I've had have tended to have a flatter middle cross section, which would obviously not stress the eyelet/rim interface as much.

deliquium wrote:I've just bought a pair of the polished silver (non anodised) Kinlin ADHN rims and will be building them up this week - with interest re the eyelets, which do indeed have tiny gaps under them where the rim extrusion curves to the sides. No visual signs of rim distortion though. And my measuring device shows the machined brake surfaces to be 1.32mm

Oh, I didn't realise there were non anodised ADHN's available, or maybe my rims are also non anodised? They appear anodised to me. Yes, the brake track thickness is dissapointing isn't it?

http://hubjub.co.uk/kinlin-adhn-101-p.asp

They are in a completely different league (also reflected in price) to the superb Velo Orange Raid rims which I built recently for a newly refurbished 1948 Stallard frame. The non machined brake surfaces are beautifully true and provide excellent braking (only covered 148 miles so far), even with cheapo standard pads as fitted to Tektro deep drop R559 calipers.

I've never spent that kind of money on rims before - but the quality, superb highly polished finish, and ease of build makes me a very happy chappy for the time being at least

https://www.veloduo.co.uk/collections/w ... -x-32-hole

It is quite tempting to send the ADHN's back and splash out on some VO rims. I want something nice to compliment the NOS Deore XT 730 hubs I recently acquired, the aim being to build up a decent retro looking tourer, albeit, not completely authentic (some modern parts allowed).

Re the OP - a few years ago I bought some DRC ST Touring rims from Spa. When built up the majority of the eyelets pulled away from the rim leaving large gaps. Spa agreed there was quality problem and refunded as soon as I sent them a photo. If I recall others too had similar problems

Yes, I had these on my main tourer at the time, and as I was doing a fairly high mileage, I was a bit concerned about rim failure, so swapped them out for LX17's. But having thought about it, I'm not sure the eyelet pulling out slightly was necessarily bad for structural integrity. After all, the eyelet is doing it's job of spreading the load on the inner face of the rim. The peened outside bit of eyelet that's visible doesn't see any load, that I can tell.

MikeDee wrote:I'm confused, did you already build these rims up into a wheel and then notice this problem, or were these distortions there on the bare rim before lacing?

They are as yet unbuilt. See the picture above.

Thanks all.

mercalia wrote:been none here in London.

Further proof that London is indeed on another planet compared to TROTUK. Is another planet even.

Brucey wrote:very many lightweight rims exhibit similar features, if not before building, then certainly after. What is happening is that the anodised surface cannot deform in the same way as the underlying aluminum, so it does indeed 'craze' with micro-cracks, when the rim is stressed, either when the eyelets are fitted and/or the rim sees the spoke loadings

Sorry I couldn't reply sooner - family care duties.

Here is a picture of the Kinlin ADHN RIM in question. I'd say that the distortion does look worse in real life than the photo.

I didn't realise that this distortion was a widespread or acceptable phenomena. Except that I've built up two other model of rims that have produced this physical distortion and I rather imagined that it was just down to my innept wheel building. These rims were the DRC STouring and the Ambrosia Excellence. I built four wheels with the Excellence - it was only the 2nd rear build that produced this issue.

I'd put this down to an improvised build technique I'd deployed - to substantially wind up the drive side spokes first , before taking up the tension of the NDS spokes. If I'd been a little more careful I would say this approach could produce good results, due to zero spoke wind up. But I may have over tensioned the rim as a result.

So I'm now a little nervous of over tensioning these rims. I'd previously built wheels on gut instinct, as well as knowledge largely gleaned from this and other forums.

How should I proceed? And I wonder whether the distortion could easily get worse through the wheel build?

OK,so after getting a bit excited about finding the KINLIN ADHN rim I have bought a pair but am a bit concerned about the structure around the eyelets. They are double walked, single eyelet.

https://www.sjscycles.co.uk/rims-tape/0 ... r-40-hole/

A quick look around many of the eyelets shows the rim extrusion is slightly distorted. This is highlighted by the appearance of crazing, or which I might suspect are micro fractures.

Would anyone accept these rims as fit for purpose? The shop (not SJS cycles) has acknowledged that they've seen this flaw before but implies that it is nothing to worry about and that no one else has returned them.

I notice that there is a 40 hole tandem version (mine are 36H),which suggests that they can't be that flaky as a rim. But they are quite lightweight for an 18mm internal width rim, @495g. Brake track is a little as 1.35mm thick.

Your thoughts please. Photos to follow.

There are still Vittoria Randonneur Pro's out there, but they won't be there for ever, unless Planet X buy up a big pile of them.

They are a superior alternative to the standard Marathon, being lighter, better rolling resistance and with good p******e protection.

http://www.halfords.com/cycling/bike-pa ... -tyre-700c

Last night I came across Shimano Selecta cranks with splined BB - pre-Octalink. http://velobase.com/ViewComponent.aspx? ... 5&Enum=115

I must say that I'm very surprised to hear that zip ties haved worked. I'm happy to be proved wrong but have some difficulty visualising how they worked in reality.