through a series of miscalculations with which I won't bore everyone, we've been riding our old Pogliaghi tandem more than I had intended, with the result that the nice tied-and-soldered sew-up wheels I put on the bike for casual rides, are getting a serious workout. They're lovely wheels, but too frail for the service.
My question is this: of all the sew-up rims made from 1965 to 1975, which were the most robust? I'm going to take a set of 40-hole hf hubs and have them rebuilt with sew-up rims, and I'd like the wheels to actually be strong enough to take the abuse they suffer on the Pogliaghi. I'd love to use a pair of 40-hole bow-tie Martanos I have here (need washers), and they always seemed pretty strong, but without ferrules, I wonder. Would Fiamme red-labels be the best choice, or what?
On a related subject, is it possible to get after-market solid axles for Campagnolo road hubs? Long enough for a road rear, standard threading for cones and nuts and track nuts. That's the other thing that worries me about these wheels: the hubs are standard road hubs, with standard hollow axles, and it's easy to imagine the rear axle snapping right in half under the kind of torque two tandem riders put out.
All suggestions gladly considered.
Thanks!
Charles Andrews SoCal
"What concerns me is not the way things are, but rather the way people think things are."
- Epictitus