Having repaired my first rear wheel puncture (after two years of using the bike), I realised that a roadside fix would be fairly difficult, thanks to the level of effort involved in removing the rear wheel. As a result, I decided to replace the rear tyre (a Schwalbe Pickup) slightly earlier (it had done maybe 6000km and was about 70% worn) than I normally would, to reduce the risk of punctures.
This went fine until the new tyre wouldn’t seat properly, leading to me using the standard trick of over-pressuring (to maybe 80 psi) in an attempt to get the last bit of the bead to pop into place. But, instead of that happening, the entire rim bed split. Bugger. All is finally well again after I bought an “identical” rim and rebuilt the wheel (after having to buy special “reducer” nipples when it turned out the new rim had smaller nipple holes than the old, astonishing?).
Anyway, the old rim was clearly badly weakened by salt-corrosion (there was about two tablespoons of white powder in the tyre when I took it off), and I would like to somehow protect the new rim from suffering the same fate. The bike is used daily through the Swedish winter in a city where the roads are salted. Washing the bike in winter is pretty difficult due to freezing temperatures. So… very far from ideal conditions!
Anybody got any ideas?
Cheers.
