Typically 29″er riders range into the “Clydesdale Class”: Riders weighing more than 200lbs. Oh sure, you have your diminutive riders, and “XC whippets”, general weight trail riders, and the like: all enjoying big wheels, but the 29″er accommodates big folks so well, that many have gravitated over to the wheel size. This review focuses on one such rider: Jeff, and his experiences aboard a hand built set of wheels designed and crafted to work for him. Here Grannygear gives us the introductions and backdrop for this review…

A Clydesdale Wheel Build: By Lacemine 29: by Grannygear

It ain’t easy being a clyde mtn biker. You stress frames, torture cranks and chains; brakes get hot, tires need to be big, and the wheels suffer most of all. Typically 29er wheels for a 250 pound class rider need to be pretty burly. Forget about lightweight race rims like a Stans Crest. Better check the Flows box on the order form. Spoke count? 36 perhaps? Maybe even an MTX 33 or Salsa Gordo rim.

Hubs get pushed to the limits as well. Blown free hubs, stripped pawls, cracked hub shells, etc, litter the garages of powerful, heavy, and aggressive riders.

For instance, Jeff-J aka ‘circus bear on a bike’ runs around the high side of 255 lbs and is 6’6” tall. He will never be fast uphill but get him on a flat or downhill grade and watch those big legs push some mass down the trail. Jeff is a smooth rider and as an older guy, does not get too much air under his tires so rims last him pretty well. But hubs, well that is another story. Being a budget rider kind of guy, Jeff typically runs a Shimano hub. That ended up being a bad idea as several free hubs on his STX and XT level hubs went **ping** when Jeff put the power to them on steep grades. An upgrade to a FH-M629 free hub courtesy of Shimano has lasted so far, but there is always that tip toe up the trail feeling that doom is indeed impending.IMG_0909a

Then, a conversation with one of the premier 29er wheel builders, Mike Curiak of Lacemine 29 ended up getting around to a hub suggestion for Jeff-J. But more than that, it morphed into a discussion on what are the limits of a Clyde’s wheels? How light can you go? Do we need a high spoke count? A freeride/AM strength hub?

And the end result was a bit of an experiment in building a wheel set for Jeff-J that may even be flirting with, well, maybe not disaster, but maybe the limits of good sense. Mike C. would build them and we would turn him loose and say, “go pedal fast and hard, big guy…cuz you deserve it” and we would see what would happen.

This is what Mike had to say about the build:

“If you’ve ever looked at the info form on my site, you’ll see that I ask for basic stuff like height, weight, and how long they’ve been riding. That’s the foundation, and right there I’ve already got a good idea of what rims to use for this person. Spoke gauge(s), lacing pattern, and tension balance are critical on every build, but the rim is really in the driver’s seat as it’s width/weight/relative whippiness dictates most of the performance/durability/reliability characteristics of the wheelset. But then I dig a little deeper and find out about what bike the wheels will be going on, rigid or suspended fork, etc… Another piece of the puzzle there—if they’re riding rigid they’ll probably be interested in a wider rim so that they can run lower pressures. If they’re a clyde they’ll have concerns about durability of the wheels as well as the drive mechanism. If the bike is a SS I can build the rear a lot lighter than most are expecting, merely because dishless wheels are so much more durable than dished. You get the idea—lots of different people with vastly different needs, and every scenario is unique. In Jeff’s case, he’s a lot larger than the average bear but, somewhat surprisingly, he doesn’t have trouble wadding up wheels so much as destroying freehub bodies. It was immediately apparent that although he didn’t want to spend the $ for a bling wheelset, he needed ‘more’ in the freehub durability department than 98% of the rest of us. Based on his experiences, we immediately ruled out pretty much all hubs other than King, Hadley, and DT Swiss. I’ve had excellent success using all three manufacturers hubs for clydes and even tandem 29” use, so in a way it was a tossup. What ultimately pushed us over the edge toward the DT 240s hubs was their relative underdog status. Ask any ~300# cyclist what hubs will hold up for them and chances are good they’ll answer either King or Hadley, and nothing else! In over a decade of riding, racing, and building with the DT hubs, I’ve found the DT star ratchet mechanism to be at least as durable as those others, yet I’ve also found that the DT system is not only easier to maintain but far less likely to need maintenance.

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Jeff knew that 32h Flow rims worked for him so there was no need to second guess that. He’s used to beefier spoke gauges, but I wasn’t convinced that he needed the extra material if we could guarantee balanced (and high) tension right out of the box.”


And so it began. The order was made and the boxes arrived soon enough along with these comments.

Hey Guys-

I built Jeff’s wheels this AM then boxed and shipped them out this PM. Grannygear, you should have received UPS tracking info already?

Tension balance came out great—as good as it gets for any rim, much less a lighter-than-most NoTubes rim. I tensioned them higher than Stans spec, and I stress-relieved them more than the rims would have preferred…;) Basically, I did exactly as I would do for any other Clydesdale that really rides their bike. After the first ~2 hour ride, and assuming psi’s in the ~30’s, the tension should be back down into normal/acceptable ranges, and it should stay there for ~a year, maybe more.

Trueness/roundness is as good as it can be for a non-post-machined rim. There are blips in the .5mm range, but there isn’t much I can do about those.

As beautifully as they balanced out, this is still a bit of a gamble. IMO, a 32h Flow/Comp wheelset is best for a ~200lb on-the-ground rider. Jeff weighs considerably more than that, and it sounds like he gets after it on the bike. I guess that’s the nature of experimenting, eh? Experiments aren’t worth much if you already know the end result…

Spokes are all 2.0/1.8 Comps. Even the white ones…;). Nips are all DT Prolock alloy—even the red ones…;). Given my druthers, I always use Prolocks. They make lacing/tensioning smoother, and they stay smoother down the road than any other spoke prep/goop out there. The only time I don’t use them is for people that are really pinching pennies, or when someone wants other than black or red.

I don’t have any set time frame for this test/review. Do you? IMO, the longer the better. If he has problems with the wheels, obviously we’ll have to take the nature of the problem into consideration, but if they’re working for him and he has no complaints, well, maybe we should just see how long he can ride that wave?

Don’t hesitate with questions, and please keep me posted.

Cheers,

MC

The scale showed a 907g/1004g F/R weight with out quick releases. The front hub was a 15QR and was weighed without the QR axle. Both hubs were Centerlock type DT Swiss 240S hubs.

And now the riding begins. Will it be a happy relationship? We shall see. Stay tuned as Jeff-J hits the trails on his new wheels.