Originally Posted by
iflyskyhigh
Just sitting here sweating my ass off in AZ and stumbled across this forum while looking for answers to burning questions.
I'm 6-04 and 228 pounds. I could probably be 10 pounds lighter if I starved myself, but I love BBQ so that's not gonna happen.
I ride 3-5 days week, maybe 100-150 miles on a custom built 2002 Serotta Legend Ti with the original Campagnolo Record 10 (albeit several cassettes, chains, and wheel sets later).
My old ass, but awesome bike is part of what brought me here. I'm trying to decide between a pretty major component upgrade or whole bike replacement. Not really a replacement cause I'm never getting rid of the Serotta, but more of a new addition. (to which forum should I direct this discussion?)
Bikes for big guys have come a long way in the past 17 years so I'm hoping if I go that route there will be some input to be had here.
Hi sky, welcome. And welcome to the others recently who found us and didn't get a proper welcome.
Your bike was built not far from where I live.
If you ride with decent form, that Serotta should be fine, even if it's got race wheels. I'm 6'1" now trending down toward 220 and have been riding a 2013 Trek Domane 5.2 for the past several years. This bike came with 24 spokes in the rear and 18 in the front and I put several thousand miles on paved rural roads before I built up another pair of wheels, mostly because I prefer tubulars. A large amount of that time I was actually pushing 240 nekkid. Throwing on all the winter gear needed for a Northeast winter I was probably well into 250 pounds. Did that many times.
Key will be (assuming proper frame fit which for you is probably 60" to 62") how you ride it. As I've said here before, ride light on it, meaning when you can't avoid bumps, get your arse up off the seat and make sure you're weight is centered fore-to-aft and on your pedals.
(The following may be known to you already, but I'm putting it here for others as well. I've built a lot of wheels including the all the ones I raced, toured and commuted on with 0 failures and very little tweaking once built).
Also make sure your spokes are evenly tensioned. If it were me, I'd first pluck each one like a guitar string and see if any seem way "out of tune" (
Sheldon Brown has a page on musically tensioning a wheel). If you get a wide range of tones I'd loosen up each spoke till it separates from the nipple, swipe it with some grease and thread it back on a known number of turns (3 or 4). After you've done one revolution of the wheel (start at the valve opening so you remember where you started), then start turning them down a turn or two till you've made another rotation around the wheel, assess their tightness, and continue again a single turn to each and go on till you they're about right. At that point you can either use a spoke tension gauge, or go back to Sheldon's page for the musical notes you should be shooting for (remember the drive side spokes on the rear wheel are tighter than the non-drive side). Consistent spoke tension is critical to wheel strength. Once you've evened up the tension then start the actual truing. Since rims are not perfectly true to begin with, once you've then finished truing them you'll end up with some variation in tension, but at least you've started from even ground and the variations shouldn't be to radical. If you do find you need to overly tighten or loosen spokes, you should probably be looking to replace the rim.