"still me" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
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Quoted message said:Wondering about the benefits of both.
I'm thinking of building up a set of wheels for my vintage ride to go
off road a bit. Not mountaineering, but maybe some reasonable dirt
trails, no racing.
I'm a tubie guy, but I'm thinking that my vintage Mavic rim are at
high risk, even with cyclocross tires. Some of the clincher rims I've
seen look to be much heavier duty. OTOH, I've heard a few stories
about the clincher guys having issues with pinch flats when the going
gets rough. Not sure how common that is.
Opinions ?
In 1976 I built up a set of off road/cyclocross sewup wheels and used them
on the mountain trails of Northern New Mexico and Southern Colorado for
about 3 years. I used the heaviest Mavic rim I could get for the front and
a 480-520g AVA rim on the back with 4x 14ga spokes on 36H Shimano 600 LF
hubs. They are still very usable after hundreds of hard off road miles
including some jumping.
I replaced the QR rear axle with a Zeus track axle (10mm x 1 - same thread
as Shimano) because I was bending the QR ones and getting wheel suck too
often.
I Ran D'Alessandro, Milremo, Wolber and Continental cyclocross sewups and
only had about 3-4 flats including 2 pinch flats - they can happen with
sewups too.
I used clinchers with 36H Super Champion Mod 58 700c rims for really rocky
trails and roads. This was long before MTB tires and knobbies were
available.
Wolber used to make 700c x 35 tires for "civilian" use on the Pave Region
in France and Belgium. They were really cheap tires with an antique design
thread and sidewall plus a poor quality cotton casing but they were the
biggest tires I could find. I had more flats with those than with the
sewups. They were designed for 45 PSI max.
To answer you question, it depends on the type of terrain you plan to ride
on. If it's mostly dirt and hard pack and you live in an area where
goatheads are not a problem then by all means go with sewups. The ride is
wonderful plus there's a much bigger choice of cyclocross sewups
available.
If you are going to be riding on rocks a lot then go with clinchers. There
are some cyclocross clinchers available but they are mainly built for dirt
courses.
Here's a picture of one of the 700c MTB bikes I built back in the day
(lugged heavy gage 531) and the kind of areas were we rode:
http://www.southlakesgroup.org.uk/roughstuffinginamerica.html
Chas.
