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How do I avoid denting my rim when going up stairs?


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I did a practice session of stair climbing on my Begode Hero HT. I was getting up 7 by the end. However, afterwards I realized I had put many dents in my rim. I was running 40 PSI as far as my electric pump measures. How are people avoiding denting their rims when going up stairs?

Edited by ursi
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Maybe I’m just an old fart, but I just don’t get the fascination with going up and down stairs. So jarring for body and wheel ,even with suspension.  I like ramps ok. 
Anyway, good luck with that. Too bad about the rim.

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18 minutes ago, OldFartRides said:

Maybe I’m just an old fart, but I just don’t get the fascination with going up and down stairs.

Well I am an old fart with you ! There's just no need for it round here - there is pretty much always a slopey, easier way down, and I find it very easy to avoid the places where there isn't. I totally understand reviewers showing it and whatnot, and people trying it to see if they can, or to 'complete' their skills, but I find myself avoiding stairs wherever possible - I have to admit, I still look for kerb flats rather than dropping straight off them, and I know I don't have to do that with a Master, but still do regardless a lot of the time, except where it makes my ride path more difficult...

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Tires wear out as time goes by. Why? Because of friction with the road. Rims shouldn't wear out. Why do they? Because they keep getting impacted. The solutions is to avoid the stairs! You can keep using them on the stairs, then you just have to replace them like tires after wearing out.

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On 5/22/2023 at 9:17 AM, ursi said:

I did a practice session of stair climbing on my Begode Hero HT. I was getting up 7 by the end. However, afterwards I realized I had put many dents in my rim. I was running 40 PSI as far as my electric pump measures. It is only rated for 32 so I'm not sure how much higher I can go. How are people avoiding denting their rims when going up stairs?

What tyre is this ? And how heavy is your Hero and you and your armour altogether ?

Edited by Cerbera
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Sorry to hear about your rim. 😞 That’s one of the reasons why I didn’t drop those stairs with you. My rim has been graced by one too many potholes in this city and I can’t afford to make it worse. 🤣 🕳️🕳️

Often you can straighten your rim and get it back to semi normal. If you need help the crew at ride one have done it a bunch of times. 

Edited by Hellkitten
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13 hours ago, Cerbera said:

What tyre is this ? And how heavy is your Hero and you and your armour altogether ?

Tire is stock I believe (CST knobby). I don't have a scale, but I'm gonna guess somewhere between 110-120 kg.

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  • 2 weeks later...

You can avoid denting your rims riding up stairs the same way people protect their rims when riding up or down stairs with their bicycles, mopeds, cars and scooters. 

I don't get the fascination of riding stairs with EUCs. I guess it's a trick riding thing copied from YouTube. What started as a convenient way of getting footage of suspension working ended up with manufacturers optimising suspensions for stairs and YouTubers assessing suspension mechanism by how well they perform in stairs. And now we are discussing how to protect rims for stair riding. Stairs are built and optimised for walking. For wheeled vehicles there's usually a ramp. And if not, it's probably not meant for riding. There's a handle on our wheels for the purpose of picking it up. 

If it's just a trick riding thing like what you do at skate parks, then just pump up the tire or accept that there devices are not built for that. 

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If we ride our wheels like that then we will tear them up. I had to learn that lesson the hard way too with my V10f. Even the new suspension wheels can get messed up by riding them too hard. All wheels have a breaking point, it's best to try to avoid the breaking point rather than to try to see what your wheel can take before it breaks. I am taking care of my wheel this time because I don't want to make another costly mistake by thinking it's unbreakable. Incidentally the king song 14d is pretty tough; I cracked the inner shell and the outer shells, and have taken it apart and put it back together a few times, this last time I hade to tape the outer shell together to make it fit perfectly. My 14D still works flawlessly after much abuse. I take special care of it now though. A new KS14D is still like $800, why would I want to be careless with something as expensive as that to replace?

Edited by earthtwin
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13 minutes ago, earthtwin said:

 it's best to try to avoid the breaking point rather than to try to see what your wheel can take before it breaks.

Yes, that. Like so many things in life - be nice to stuff, and it'll work for you longer.

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I don't understand how so many of you don't understand the appeal of riding stairs. Aside from the cool factor, which is subjective, you get objectively more freedom of movement. Imagine if you couldn't use stairs with your legs, wouldn't you prefer to be able to? It's a lot more convenient to have that option. 

That aside, I have come to the conclusion that riding up stairs just isn't really a safe thing to do. The influencers do it for videos, which makes it seems like just another advanced riding technique that people use regularly if they can - like going down stairs. But I have come to believe this is not the case.

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14 hours ago, ursi said:

I don't understand how so many of you don't understand the appeal of riding stairs. Aside from the cool factor, which is subjective, you get objectively more freedom of movement. Imagine if you couldn't use stairs with your legs, wouldn't you prefer to be able to? It's a lot more convenient to have that option. 

That aside, I have come to the conclusion that riding up stairs just isn't really a safe thing to do. The influencers do it for videos, which makes it seems like just another advanced riding technique that people use regularly if they can - like going down stairs. But I have come to believe this is not the case.

You break your expensive EUC faster like that.. I don't even jump big curbs (I know i could do it easily - i simply don't abuse my EUC.) Heck that one time i went "off-roading" i broke my axle welds.. Imagine if i ride stairs and did big jumps. I would need to repair my EUC weekly.

No thanks. I will better hop off 5 seconds and lift my EUC off/on the big curb. And save some $$$ from repairs. Also time in long run.

Or simply choose the path where i don't need to step off my EUC. (I got only 3 big curbs in my city. Rest can be driven..)

Edited by Funky
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22 hours ago, ursi said:

I don't understand how so many of you don't understand the appeal of riding stairs.

I didn’t really see the comments as saying whether they think it’s appealing or not. Just about the realism of EUCs not to be able to handle it. Do you see any other vehicles being commonly (or at all) ridden up the stairs either?

 

22 hours ago, ursi said:

The influencers do it for videos, which makes it seems like just another advanced riding technique that people use regularly if they can - like going down stairs. But I have come to believe this is not the case.

This applies to many other things related to riding as well. YT is just YT, real life is different.

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On 6/4/2023 at 2:28 PM, ursi said:

I don't understand how so many of you don't understand the appeal of riding stairs.

I definitely see the appeal. It looks fun as hell. Very, very tempting.

1) Not with a suspensionless wheel, though. Nope.

2) Willpower can overcome temptation when the stakes are high enough. :D 

3) I would love to be able to do stairs on an EUC one day. But I resist temptation for the foreseeable future.

4) I disagree with the analogies used by more experienced folks here (who you have wisely listened to). The reason all those other vehicles don't do stairs is because they have two axles, which means wildly inharmonious strikings of tires on different parts of stairs, and at different intervals, which equals shaken brains, loosened tooth fillings and other bodily and structural damage. An EUC has only one tire, so the strikings will at least be regular and rhythmic. Plus physics says the faster one descends/ascends stairs, the higher the frequency of the strikes, and the lower their perceived amplitude. In other words, a rapid buzz of manageable strikes vs. a slow series of thunks.

Also, hasn't anyone seen any of several James Bond, Mission Impossible or The Italian Job films? Motorcycles and MiniCoopers easily fly up and down stairs with no problem. :D

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I have never ever bent or dented any rims going up or down
any stairs.  But once i tried to run down an escalator
on inline skaters, it did indeed cost some dent ribs.

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52 minutes ago, Robse said:

I have never ever bent or dented any rims going up or down
any stairs.  But once i tried to run down an escalator
on inline skaters, it did indeed cost some dent ribs.

Remind us how light where you again. 68kg? (Dam I'm jealous of that son of a dog... I also wanna be a riding bone chamber. At least i got one thing going for me, i have that natural ballistic gel protecting me.) 

I also have not bent any rim under my 125kg heavy ass. I simply don't jump anything, or ride stairs, because i know i can't do it. Sure i can.. But i don't wanna repair my wheel after every ride.

So i simply don't do it. :D 

Edited by Funky
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  • 3 weeks later...

My guess is try to take a side-view video of your tire compressing on a stair run and adjust the pressure to make sure the tire doesn't compress too much (leaving yourself some margin). Also getting better with your speed and balance while doing stairs will allow you to be more graceful and thus cause less damage to your rim. However, riding stairs is always going to carry a high risk of damaging your rim (especially if it's either a soft rim or the tire doesn't have enough pressure).

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120kg rider at 40 PSI.... that is a bit on the low side for tricking.

My PSI formula (weight in kg / 3) = PSI for a compromise between saving the rim or saving the rider with a bias towards saving the rim.
For trick riding I always say add +20%.

So 120kg /3 = 40 + 20% = 48 PSI.

Or in my case...

75kg / 3 = 25 PSI + 20% = 30 PSI. And for going UP stairs I would still feel that to be on the low side unless I do everything correctly.
Same goes for skate parks.   

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  • 1 month later...
On 5/22/2023 at 10:17 AM, ursi said:

How are people avoiding denting their rims when going up stairs?

Out of my head I can see four simple preventative measures against rim denting: increase tire pressure, decrease speed, become more flexible in the knees, and keep the heels as light as possible.

As counterintuitive as it seems to be on first sight, but it's the weight put on the heel that forces the wheel to continue moving forward onto the stair edge instead of upwards and hence does the rim denting. Without weight on the pedal rear the wheel tilts forward, engages the motor and climbs up the curb. My technique to lighten the heel is by (thinking of) moving the knee up- and forward (in direction of the orientation of the shin bone when the knee is somewhat bend).

On 5/23/2023 at 4:45 PM, OldFartRides said:

Maybe I’m just an old fart, but I just don’t get the fascination with going up and down stairs.

To me, it's a fun exercise to figure out. As with most of these exercises (riding backwards, riding one-legged, riding a 360º on the spot, riding sharp half circles...), it widens the range of situations that I can master with the wheel. Riding up stairs is, in principle, just like repeatedly riding up a single curb (which I do somewhat regularly in "real life"). From this perspective, I find it surprisingly hard. So far, I can only do two staircases somewhat reliable (on a non-suspension wheel). I have a flight of relatively flat stairs that I succeeded going up a few times. So I know it's possible but there is still something to figure out and learn to climb the next curb more controlled and reliable enough to be able to continue.

On 7/6/2023 at 10:19 PM, Mike Sacristan said:

My PSI formula (weight in kg / 3) = PSI for a compromise between saving the rim or saving the rider with a bias towards saving the rim.

Shouldn't this heavily depend on the tire width?

Edited by Mono
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