In a message dated 9/12/02 9:43:11 AM Pacific Daylight Time, tom_s_dalton@yahoo.com writes:
<< Exactly the failure I was thinking of. I may have described it more generally as cracking on the inner face, but taken to the endpoint, that's what happened. As I recall it was not always after many thousands of miles. By the time I started riding, Ergals were semi-rare and hard anodized rims were getting popular. Given how few Ergals were around I saw a surprising number of these failures, and not always on well used rims. In point of fact, it may have been no more than three failures that I personally saw, but I don't recall seeing any other model tubular rim failing this way, including the models that were far more common. Was this because Ergals were fundamentally flawed? No, I don't think so. They were very, very light. As you pointed out, they were even lighter than GELs. >>
A point to remember. When Ergals first came out, standard spacing was 120mm 5
speed. At (then) 170 lbs., I was a little heavy to use Ergals on my rear
wheels. Like many, I moved to 6 and 7 speeds as they were available and
Ergals were not well suited to the extra dish in a rear wheel.
Don't forget about a book called "The Bicycle Wheel" by Jobst Brandt. His
theory about building maximum tension into a wheel (really worked with Mavic
clinchers) probably caused the early demise of countless light sew up rims,
that were particularly unsuited for 6 and 7 speed dish. I over-tensioned a
few with predictable results.
Stevan Thomas
Alameda, CA