Stainless steel 559 rims

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cycle tramp
Posts: 3531
Joined: 5 Aug 2009, 7:22pm

Stainless steel 559 rims

Post by cycle tramp »

Do they exist? Has anyone seen any?

(Thinking of going with a rim and hub brake combination, with the next build - ages ago when I was just cycling around on a 1960's roadster, it had stainless steel rims, and braking with modern rim brake blocks was that bad for sub 14 mph speeds)
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pwa
Posts: 17366
Joined: 2 Oct 2011, 8:55pm

Re: Stainless steel 559 rims

Post by pwa »

Why would you want stainless steel rims? Surely they would be heavy. The main drawback of aluminium rims is that with rim brakes they wear down. But with a hub brake you won't have that worry.
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fausto99
Posts: 952
Joined: 19 Sep 2011, 10:06am
Location: NW Kent

Re: Stainless steel 559 rims

Post by fausto99 »

pwa wrote: 24 Sep 2022, 10:08am Why would you want stainless steel rims? Surely they would be heavy. The main drawback of aluminium rims is that with rim brakes they wear down. But with a hub brake you won't have that worry.
+1 on that. Going from alloy to steel rims is the fastest way of making a bike freely heavy and stodgy due to the increase in rotational inertia. I have hub brakes on my winter bike and would like to change from alloy to carbon if only I could find some 36 hole ones.
tim-b
Posts: 2091
Joined: 10 Oct 2009, 8:20am

Re: Stainless steel 559 rims

Post by tim-b »

The whole point of (stainless) steel rims was to make the bike slow enough that it didn't matter that rim brakes wouldn't work in the wet 😂
That advantage doesn't exist for a hub/disc brake :D
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iandusud
Posts: 1577
Joined: 26 Mar 2018, 1:35pm

Re: Stainless steel 559 rims

Post by iandusud »

Back in the day when alloy rims were somewhat exotic, expensive and fragile, and therefore only fitted on proper racing bikes, chromed steel rims were the order of the day. However I did see the occasional bike come into my shop fitted with Dunlop stainless steel rims, and things of beauty they were. However with alloy rims being now ubiquitous, cheap and strong there is no good reason to fit anything else.

BTW this was long before the 559 rim existed in the UK and I can't imagine that anyone has ever made a 559 rim in S.S.
resus1uk
Posts: 294
Joined: 12 Mar 2007, 9:28am

Re: Stainless steel 559 rims

Post by resus1uk »

I had stainless steel rims, spokes and bars on my Gazelle Dutch bike. Low maintenace. Very heavy but had hub brakes. Compared to a Kettler city bike with alloys, the Gazelle was only good for the flatlands it was designed for. After leaving York for the Peak District it had to be replaced with a lighter machine. Even my vintage trike is lighter.
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