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Friday, January 27, 2006
Wow, this was a big week. Our new Dos Niners came in and we received a very limited qty of our new Delgado 29er Disc rims. Both sold like crazy, but the rims sold in record time. 28 minutes to be exact! For those that didn't get any of the rims we put into stock yesterday, rest assured, we've got more in transit. Currently, they are due just after Valentines day. Our plan was to get them in and post some notes from our designer as the design is really what makes these rims special. Well, they have come and gone already, but I'm posting the notes from our designer anyway. Its good information. Read on... Now a word from our designer. When we approached the design of this new rim for Salsa we wanted something wide and light. We also wanted to improve upon the already great Salsa Delgado Cross. Two of our many concerns and criteria were how the tire mounted up and how the bead locked in place when inflated. We had learned on other rim designs that a shallow channel between the walls of the rim made it difficult to mount tires and take them off later. We had also learned from other designs that a deep channel with steep walls and a flat where the tire mounted made for a positive bead lock. So this is what we did with the new Salsa Delgado Disc Rim. Upon receiving prototypes I realized that it was extremely easy to mount a tire. The tire slipped right on the rim, tire levers and thumbs of steel weren't needed to get the bead of the tire over the edge of the rim. I noticed that when the tire was installed one of the beads would fall down into the channel and make it extremely easy to get the other side on. With a new folding tire it could be more difficult because the bead did not want to hold its shape. This was also noticeable when the tire was inflated. Sometimes the bead would pop over the edge of the rim or would not come out of the deep channel in the rim. I was worried about how this would be perceived by Salsa's customers. It took me several days to get over this. I was worried that our customer's would perceive this ease of installation as a rim that was out of specification and it would destroy what could be a great rim. I talked with several people that had installed tires on these rims and several others just to get some opinion. I had ridden tires as low as 20 psi and not had any tires pull off the rim and so had others. After beating myself up over it for several days and mounting every tire we had available I decided that it was a feature of the rims, inherent to how they were designed. It was not a rim out of specification or a design flaw. Here are a few pointers for installing tires, not just on this rim, but all rim and tire setups. 1. Mount the tire on the rim with the tube. 2. Inflate the tube to 10-15 psi. 3. Work the tire around the rim until the bead is evenly seated. 4. Inflate with care to make sure the bead is in fact seated and is not popping off the rim. I do this with all of the tires I install, doesn't matter if it is Salsa's rim or not. We work with a great vendor to provide our rims, there quality is excellent, but we can't control the variances in the 100's of tires that are available for all kinds of bikes. I have personally noticed that the mounting of tires varies from brand to brand. The pointers I am giving don't just apply to the Salsa Delgado Disc, but to all brands of rims and tires. I just wanted to let everyone know our intentions and some of the background information on this design. Ride & Smile - Joe Thanks for reading. Have a great weekend everyone. Jason Posted by Butcher : 1:09 PM 0 comments | permalink  |
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