Tour Easy: Rewheeling

After 22 years and well over 30 k miles, I finally replaced the rear wheel rim on my Tour Easy, which went as smoothly as one could want.

The tire showed considerable wear and damage, with this gash dating back three years:

The pebble caught in this crater has worn flat on the outside and started cutting through the tire carcass into the tube:

Gotta love those Marathon Plus tires!

So my bike now has a new tire, tube, and rim on the back.

The old spokes looked OK and tightened up without incident. For the record, the Park TM-1 tension meter puts the drive-side spokes at 25 and the other side just under 20, with the total runout & wobble under a millimeter.

Having now replaced all four rims on our bikes over the course of two years, I sawed the three rims still awaiting recycling into samples:

Unlike contemporary bikes, our Tour Easy recumbents have rim brakes and those original rims are pretty well worn out; they’re not supposed to be concave like that.

All in all, more Quality Shop Time™.