dirtman

Last year I picked up a large frame Nishiki Pacific Beach cruiser with the intent of making it into sort of a trail bike for use off pavement on some hard packed wooded trails and some gravel roads here.
The frame will take a 26x2.35 tire with no problem. I don't have the original rims and the bike was originally a coaster brake model.
The plan is to either run a three speed or build up a coaster brake wheel for it.
I'm a big guy, 325 lbs and over 6ft 2in tall. The bike has no provisions for calipers, the brake bridge is no where near the wheel in the back and the forks are tubular BMX style with no hole for a caliper.

I found a guy selling some vintage 26x2.125 FEMCO rims in black, they're a single wall rim but they look super beefy. The rim itself is over 2" wide.
Its these or a set of black chrome steel 26x1.75" rims that it came with that look a bit on the light duty side to me.
The Femco rims almost look like moped type rims.
The only thing I didn't like about them is that they're only drilled for 14g spokes and I was hoping to build wheels using 12g spokes.
I suppose I could easily drill the Femco rims to match the larger nipples though?

Dylansbob 

12g spoke rim is going to be a bit tricky to find.

I'd actually see if I could find someone closing out a modern 26" rim for strength. As long as you don't need the braking surface for rim brakes, a modern disc rim is almost always solid black colored with stickers that can be removed. It shouldn't look out of place compared to a heavier/weaker painted cruiser rim.

Strong modern rim and 14g spokes coupled with a good wheelbuilder should be pretty strong unless you're really hucking it at your size. I don't know if I"ve seen 12g spokes on cargo or tandems that are carrying similar weights

wesmamyke

Any of those gigantic Femco rims still available? I did find some hits searching for Femco, but not those specific models.

vintagebicycle

I don't see any problem with drilling the rim to take heavier spokes, we're not talking super close tolerances when it comes to spoke holes.
Just take the time to chamfer and deburr the holes after drilling. It will help to prevent future cracks or stress issues around the spoke holes. For added strength, use spoke washers, especially if you think the rider is especially abusive or heavy. I also like the lube the spoke nipple in and out when building a wheel, it'll help the spokes settle in place better and make for a stronger wheel.
I seem to remember seeing those super wide rims on something back in the early days of mountain bikes. Femco was always very similar to Arraya back then.
we always just sort of figured they were somehow related. The Femco brand first appeared on the early Bmx bikes, most with 105 spokes.
I also seem to recall they're were a few different versions of that rim that varied in width. I'm not sure if they changed the width or if they just had different sizes.

I built dozens of adult size cruisers with that vintage of Femco and Arraya rims. I used to like the look of that rim with a beefy 2.35" or 2.40" wide tire.

dirtman

He had a few boxes of new rims there but I only bought the widest pair figuring they're likely the strongest. He did have another pair that were marked the same but slightly narrower, as well as a box or two of 1.5" and 1,75" rims without the outer shape these have. Basically the same shape as a Weinmann 519. He had some Araya 7X type rims too with the dimpled holes.
At this point I'm not even sure whether or not I'll use the super wide rims I bought or not but I figured since I had driven there I didn't want to come home empty handed, and I figured if I didn't grab them I may never see another pair. I wasn't sure what they were, but they're such a beefy looking rim they likely have to be pretty strong. They certainly have to be stronger than the stock cruiser alloy rims I had here. I wasn't crazy about them being black but a bit of polish can fix that in a hurry if I decide I want polished rims. They have some shelf wear so it wouldn't be like I'm ruining a mint set of vintage rims either.

thumpism 

I drilled Araya 7X rims for oversize spokes on my homemade MTB in '83. Needed to do that because the hubs I'd found were already drilled oversize.