All about bicycles, electric-assisted bikes, technology and safety in the press

The most common safety risks that we come across in our daily work around bicycle safety, technology and operating instructions are also published by us in articles in the leading German special-interest magazines TOUR (Europe's road bike magazine no. 1), BIKE (Europe's mountain bike magazine no. 1), MYBIKE and EMTB in order to make this information, which is important for the industry, available to a wider public.

For many years now, the Eurobike Show Daily, trade fair magazine of the annual Eurobike Show, has also given us the opportunity to publish our view of major developments in the cycle industry in full-page articles.

We also speak regularly in independent expert presentations about all areas of bicycle technology and the bicycle market. In addition, we are quoted by further special-interest magazines of the industry and the trade as well as increasingly by radio and television in their media reports, which shows us that we are spot on with our advice. The section "News" informs you about the latest news from our specialist areas. The reports and publications of this section are listed chronologically or according to areas of interest.

TOUR 09/1997
Reading time 0:40 minutes

Do brakes destroy rims?

No rim lasts forever: Brake shoes keep grinding the rim until it cracks. Reason to panic? No – but a reason to be alert. TOUR tells you when there is a danger.

Horror news scared mountain bikers at the end of the year: front wheel tubes suddenly bursting, brakes failing on fast downhills, knife-sharp rim parts endangering the rider's life and lots of dramatic crashes. If you believed the press reports, breaking rims were an imminent danger to every biker - and mountain bikes were especially dangerous. Also the alleged reasons seem easily made out. Shimano’s high-performance V-brakes and Magura’s Hydro brakes were revealed exemplarily as rim destroyers in the first instance. Finally, rim brakes in general were called into question as faulty designs. These sensational reports united with the borders between facts and speculations becoming less clear. Our investigations show, what the subject of rim failure really is all about.

First of all: It is not new that braking can harm and even destroy the rim. Bikers who ride a lot have known this phenomenon since aluminium rims were introduced for bike wheels in order to safe weight. In comparison with conventional steel rims, the surface of aluminium rims is softer - and increasingly exposed to the aggressive power of the new brakes. Nevertheless, breaking rim sides cannot simply be blamed on V-brakes or other models. The rim's wear depends on the way you brake.

Author: Dirk Zedler

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