Simply put - how much weight can a bike wheel support? Do they make ‘heavy-duty’ wheels? Where can they be found?
For good heavy duty wheels, you can use buggy wheels that are used at the trots. I know someone who put these on his bike for some heavy duty riding - they are extremely durable.
The strength of the wheel depends on the choice of rim and the number and thickness of spokes. The weight limit depends not only on wheel strength but also on the choice of tire, tire pressure, type of road surface, how hard you ride, whether the bike has suspension, etc. It also depends on how well the wheel is built.
Road bike wheels typically have 32 spokes, but special lightweight versions can have as few as 16. MTB (mountain bike) wheels are designed for more harsh riding conditions. They typically have 36 spokes and thicker rims.
You can definitely get heavy duty bicycle wheels. If regular MTB wheels are not enough (or wrong size), your best bet is to talk to a local bike shop and have them build wheels suitable for your purpose. They will choose heavy duty 36-hole rims and thick spokes.
By “build a wheel,” I mean buying a hub, rim and spokes and assembling them into a wheel. It’s not a particularly expensive work to get done by a bike shop, but it does require a lot of experience to build a good wheel.
One more thing - some shops (including on-line shops) sell “tandem wheels”. They are heavy duty wheels but they should fit most regular bikes. (Check the wheel diameter and hub width.) They’re not necessarily cheaper than a custom built wheels though.
I reckon you could pick up fairly cheap wheels second hand - go down to your local trots and ask. Or google “harness racing” equipment wheels.
One limitation on the strength to wheels is the way the hub is built into the middle.
This applies to back wheels only, but to fit all those sprockets in the wheel, it is necassary to have the hub off to one side of the wheel compared to the rim.
This is done by using shorter spokes on the freewheel side than on the open side of the wheel, and is known in the cycle trade as ‘dishing’.
The result is that the freewheel side spoke take more of the load, and those are the ones that snap.
It is possible to build a back wheel without dishing, this requires a differant length axle which also means that the rear wheel supports have to be further apart, so you need a differant frame.
This is usual practice on tandems, it leads to other things needing to be altered too such as the pedal axle length so that the chain lines up properly.This is done on high quality tandems, it’s one of the reasons thaty are high quality, and it costs.
Alternatively, on fixed wheel or single sprocket machines, no dishing is required at all, and those rear wheels are very much stronger.
You can also have lots of spokes, tandems use up to 48 of them and are affectionately known as ‘birdcage’ wheels as you can hadrly get your fingers between the spokes to clean them.
Do you actually have a heavy load to carry directly on the bike itself (as opposed to being towed)?
And how would you fit a sprocket onto a harness racing wheel?
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- Any bike shop can put together a heavy-duty wheel for you. What they do is ---- use better spokes, and possibly better hubs and/or rims. Cheap spokes flex too much and loosen, and there’s a large diference between what cheap spokes can take and what good ones can. If your spokes are coming loose, you hear a “twang” every time the bike wheel turns while carrying weight. If they break, the little shoulder bend up near the hub breaks off. If the bearings are shot, you hear and feel “rumbling” as you ride slowly (-and the pedaling effort goes way up, too).
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- The reason that they may sometimes sell you a new rim also is that cheap rims are aluminum, and cheap spokes are steel but use chrome-plated steel nipples to prevent corrosion of the rims where the nipples touch them. Good rims are aluminum also but have stainless-steel ferrules, or inserts in the spoke-holes of the rim, so you can use unplated steel spoke nipples, which are stronger and hold on better (-the plain steel cannot touch the aluminum, you see-).
- The reason they might tell you to buy new hubs is that the cheaper brands of hubs found on department-store bikes have very cheap bearings, and often lack dust covers and replaceable hub races at all. So when the “bearings” fail, the bearings actually grind into the hub, so the whole hub is shot (the hub is the part that the spokes thread through). Decent-brand parts will have replaceable bearing races–a ring inside the hub that the bearings roll around in, that is separate of the hub, and is replaceable.
- If you want to try to build your own wheel, I highly suggest you go to a bike shop with your old wheels and have them pick out or order the right parts for you as opposed to ordering online: spokes come in different lengths, and the length depends on the weave used. Just tell them you want to weave the wheel the same way as it is originally, and then replace one spoke at a time–don’t take them all out at once, as it’s darn difficult to figure how to get them back in right…
- “How much weight can a bike wheel support” cannot easily be answered. That would depend on the kind of riding the wheel is used for, and what kind of wheel it is. A good bike shop would be your best source for estimates–they would deal with heavier/larger people’s bikes and know from experience.
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Not neccessarily. Cassette rear hubs have been the standard for many yearss and have very little offset compared to a traditional hub.
FYI a Casette hub has the freewheel mechanism built into the hub rather than using a separate component freewheel. It reduces dish and allows the right side bearings to be located at the end of the axle which reduces risk of bending an axle under load.
If you want load carrying ability I’d go with a mountain bike hub and 26" wheel with 36 or 40 spokes.
Even on cassette wheels the hub is dished.
Yes it reduces dishing, though in the last four years or so the number of sprockets has been increased and has taken up a little more of that width.
Also true about the bearings, one does not see axles snapping as often, however spokes still snap on the freewheel side rather than the open side, due to the increased load that dishing imposes.
ummm… yeah. that would be me. I am a rather large man.
lawoot, get a mountain bike and put smooth road tires on it and you’ll be fine. I’m a big guy and I’ve never bent a wheel in my life. Even when I was younger and was riding a road bike with 20mm clincher rims and 1" tires. I was lighter then but still much heavier than the average rider. A big part of it is riding technique. Friends who were 40-50lb lighter would bend and dent rims riding the same roads. Putting a portion of your weight on your hands and feet makes the bike ride over bumps more smoothly and reduces saddle pressure.
Not laughing at you, laughing with you…that was a great response lawoot.
What sort of riding are you planning on doing, anyway? You might consider a QUALITY hybrid. I had a nice Gary Fisher. Beefier than a road bike, smoother and faster than a mountain bike.
For starters, just simple, around the neighborhood stuff. I HAVE a mountain bike that’s about ten years old (nothing fancy), and I’m thinking of getting it road worthy again. I NEED to exercise, and biking is one of the few exercises that I ENJOY.
Sqwerticus - yeah, they don’t call me Big Dave at work for nothing…
I dont know exactly how he did it.
I suppose you just put in a heavy duty bike hub and use the harness wheel spokes and rim.
Good for you! I know how that goes, I can’t stand any other excercises either. (I even bought a rowingbike because I couldn’t find an upper body excercise I enjoy.)
I think a standard MTB bike will work just fine, maybe even the ones you already have. Take them to a bike shop and ask for advice - you’d probably want to have them true the wheels (i.e. adjust alignment and spoke tensions), unless they tell you the wheels are dangerously old and worn/rusted.
Even if you overload bike wheels, they usually don’t fail catastrophically. Usually you just break one spoke which won’t even stop you from riding home (albeit slowly). One broken spoke could be just a fluke, so just get it replaced. If you keep breaking spokes, you should probably replace the wheels with more durable ones.
I was in the same boat a few years back, lawoot. Don’t worry about your weight; if you’re riding a mountain bike in fairly easy conditions, its engineering should be more than adequate. Just keep riding, and the weight will (eventually) go … although, to be honest, I still have this last 20 pounds that just won’t go away no matter how much I ride … Sigh, sooner or later I’ll have to address the diet issue …
Unless you’re riding hard off-road, standard mountain bike wheels will do fine. If you should happen to have difficulties - frequent popped spokes or bent/broken rear axles would be the most likely (or perhaps “snakebite” flats, where the rim hits the outer surface of the tire hard enough to puncture the tube, the solution to which is simply more air pressure), go to a bike shop and get a better wheel built. The front will almost certainly not be a problem, so things you should pay attention to on the rear - get a freehub with cassette, don’t go with a freewheel setup, but do make sure it’s compatible with your rear derailleur. The freehub will reduce the stress on the axle compared to a freewheel. Get robust rims, and use the best spokes the shop has. And, possibly, get a solid rear axle instead of one with a quick-release.
Unless you weigh more than 400lbs, you aren’t putting more stress on your rear wheel than the rear wheels of most tandems are put through, and while tandom wheels are more robust than usual, it’s reasonably simple to come by wheels of that quality.