How long should wheels last?

mathie

I know its a bit of a "how long is a piece of string?" question but how long would you expect a set of wheels to last? Ones that were sold to you as "bomb proof"?

I ask as I got 6 months out of a custom built wheel and two spokes went through the rim.

Wishbone Ash

mathie wrote: »

.. I got 6 months out of a custom built wheel ...

It would be better to express it in kilometers travelled. 6 months could be 10,000km or 1,000km.

(Rim wear is the main reason why I have to replace wheels).

mathie

Wishbone Ash wrote: »

It would be better to express it in kilometers travelled. 6 months could be 10,000km or 1,000km.

(Rim wear is the main reason why I have to replace wheels).

Roughly 5000kms

seamus

I'm not sure what you mean by the spokes going "through" the rim. Most spokes are routed through the rim, they're actually only held in place by the overall counter-tension of the other spokes, they're not secured to the rim. If you mean the spoke fell out when you removed the tyre, then it's just a broken spoke and can be replaced.

You're right, it is a "how long" question really. The actual rims themselves you'd usually expect to get in the region of 15,000km out of them before they need replacing due to brake wear. Spokes can vary - a heavy and/or strong rider doing a lot of hard miles (high gears or tough climbing) will break spokes faster than someone who does a lot of easy mileage.

But six months is far too soon in most cases.

Edit: 5,000km is annoyingly in-between. If the rim is destroyed, then that's too soon. If it's just broken spokes, it may be bad luck or riding style.

Chips Lovell

Spokes can get pulled through rim, i.e. nipple forced out through the spoke hole, rendering the rim useless.

mathie

Its definitely not that the spoke fell out. There is a hole in the rim where the spoke should fix to. Two holes exactly where the two spokes should attach to the rim.

seamus

Then it's a faulty rim, 100%. Wouldn't necessarily blame the wheelbuilder. They could have overtensioned it, but more likely to be a fault in the rim.

Dono1975

after how many KM's should you service wheels/bearings ?

G1032

Dono1975 wrote: »

after how many KM's should you service wheels/bearings ?

Probably depends a lot on the conditions you ride in. The bearings will survive a nice dry summer much better than I horrid wet dirty winter

Wishbone Ash

seamus wrote: »

.. expect to get in the region of 15,000km out of them before they need replacing due to brake wear....

Is it viable to get rims replaced in 'off the shelf' wheels e.g. Campy Zondas, Fulcrum 3's etc.

clog

Wishbone Ash wrote: »

Is it viable to get rims replaced in 'off the shelf' wheels e.g. Campy Zondas, Fulcrum 3's etc.

Usually it will be cheaper to replace a whole factory built wheel than get a replacement rim and re-build.

I replaced a set of rims on a pair of Kysrium sl a couple of years ago and by the time I bought the rims and a few replacement spokes then got them re built it worked out that I could have got a new pair for about 20 euro more.

tomasrojo

If your rims deform under the pressure of tyre levers, it's definitely time to change.

That was the point when I changed my wheels last. I was very broke, but I was a little anxious cycling around on what I knew must have been very thin rims. This is a very bad idea.

seamus

Wishbone Ash wrote: »

Is it viable to get rims replaced in 'off the shelf' wheels e.g. Campy Zondas, Fulcrum 3's etc.

It's viable if you DIY, but really only for use as a spare wheelset. If the rims are done after that many KM, the hubs are well worn too and you'd be better served buying one brand new set and replacement hubs and rims to rebuild the old pair as your spares.

Hubs are pretty bombproof, once serviced up they're fine, but they'll never be like new.

Of course it does depend on the wheelset as well. Often the deals you'll get for a full wheelset end up working out cheaper than replacement rims and spokes, which practically never have deals on them.

Some manufacturers may specifically discourage rebuilding of their wheelsets with OEM parts because of the potential impact if a DIY wheelset was to fail mid-race. Big wheels with ZIPP written on them, folding in half mid-TT and caught on camera. Doesn't look good Instead why not sell the wheelsets slightly cheaper than the rims so people don't even try.

Magilla Gorilla

I got a rear Ksyrium Elite rebuilt for 120. No problems with it. Original rim had cracked at a spoke hole (just out of warranty of course).

doozerie

seamus wrote:

It's viable if you DIY, but really only for use as a spare wheelset. If the rims are done after that many KM, the hubs are well worn too and you'd be better served buying one brand new set and replacement hubs and rims to rebuild the old pair as your spares.

I disagree on all counts.

There is no reason why rebuilding a wheel with a new rim should result in a wheel which is inferior to the original, *if* the wheel is rebuilt well. In fact, a wheel which is rebuilt well can be superior to the original factory-built wheel.

As for the reliability of the newly rebuilt wheel, if it was one I’d rebuilt myself, while I wouldn’t let a race be my first use of it I certainly wouldn’t earmark it purely as a spare wheelset either. Wheels can take a hammering in races, and you don’t want to be within a close-packed bunch when a wheel develops a problem, so test riding a new rebuilt wheel (or even a brand new wheelset, for that matter) is better done on a training ride. But once I was happy that the wheel(set) was okay, I’d have no reluctance to race on it, in fact I’d have more faith in it than some others I’ve seen around me in races that might not have been maintained, or even inspected, for a very long time.

And hubs themselves don’t really wear, as such, if they are good quality. Badly manufactured hubs can be plagued by a range of problems including poorly drilled holes for the spokes which can increase the risk of spokes breaking. Badly manufactured hubs are a liability. Good quality hubs though should be effectively as good as new if maintained well, generally speaking that means just replacing the bearings as needed.

For me the big problem with factory-built wheelsets is that they often require proprietary rims and spokes, and you pay a massive premium for some of those (screw you Mavic, you are certainly not alone in this, but your spoke prices in particular are ludicrous!). And some of the hubs use bearings which are hard to source too, or use seals which are sometimes impossible to source (I’ve had issues in the distant past with Shimano hubs for that latter reason). This doesn’t apply to all factory-built wheelsets of course, but if you care about such things as lifespan and ease of maintenance then you need to be careful if choosing between factory wheelsets.

More generally, I’ve had relatively high-end Mavic MTB rims fail on an MTB that I used exclusively for commuting (arguably an easier life for an MTB wheelset than being taken off-road regularly, although I’m prone to carrying a silly amount of stuff on my pannier racks at times). The spokes pulled through the rim in the same way as described by the OP - well, they didn’t actually pull through, I replaced the rims before it got that far. I initially put that down to my building the wheels badly but it happened with the next set of rims I built up too. After a bit of online digging I found something written by a noted wheelbuilder saying he had experienced the same issue with his own builds and having contacted Mavic to enquire whether this was due to faulty rims he was told that cracking around the spoke eyelets was essentially inevitable if using their MTB rims with high-pressure tyres (I was using the rims with slicks, which fit that definition). In my case I continued to use the rims, cracks and all, but kept a close eye on each rim for signs of it degrading - I used them daily for a year or more before replacing those rims.

So based on my experience rims can crack under “normal” use, where my definition of normal may not match the rim manufacturer’s definition. Depending on the nature and extent of the cracks this might not be a problem, as such, it certainly signals the beginning of the end of the rim but there might be a lot more life left in the rim that you might think (albeit I wouldn’t race on such a rim or take it off-road either).

OP, I’d recommend that you bring the wheels back to whoever built them (assuming you know who that is) to get their feedback and advice.

hesker

Would it be worth getting the spoke tension checked before bringing back to the wheel builder. I know the tension will probably have changed now that 2 spokes are gone but still might be worth getting an independent wheel builders advice.

doozerie

hesker wrote: »

Would it be worth getting the spoke tension checked before bringing back to the wheel builder. I know the tension will probably have changed now that 2 spokes are gone but still might be worth getting an independent wheel builders advice.

Generally speaking I'd say it's never a mistake to get a second opinion, but the danger is that the original wheelbuilder might then take the view that the independent wheelbuilder did something to the wheel that voids the warranty.