3-Flanged Hubs Spotted

[An3]

During Saturday's race I've spotted a bike that seemed to have an extra hub flange on each wheel. I could not see if there were spokes attached to these flanges (as the bike was moving at the time) but it sure looked strange.

 

After a bit of Googling I've found that the hubs may belong to FSA RD-600 wheels.

 

"FSA's striking-looking RD-600 wheels have three hub flanges rather than the usual two, with the addition of an extra flange in the middle of the hub. The idea is to tuck a third of the spokes into the line of the rim so that they are sheltered from the airflow, improving the aerodynamics of the wheel."

 

Any comments on these?

Edited May 16, 2011 by An3

[Johan Bornman]

During Saturday's race I've spotted a bike that seemed to have an extra hub flange on each wheel. I could not see if there were spokes attached to these flanges (as the bike was moving at the time) but it sure looked strange.

 

After a bit of Googling I've found that the hubs may belong to FSA RD-600 wheels.

 

"FSA's striking-looking RD-600 wheels have three hub flanges rather than the usual two, with the addition of an extra flange in the middle of the hub. The idea is to tuck a third of the spokes into the line of the rim so that they are sheltered from the airflow, improving the aerodynamics of the wheel."

 

Any comments on these?

 

Another stupd idea that supposedly solves a problem that doesn't exist.

 

The perfect wheel is one with two flanges, plain old J-bend spokes and standard rims. However, boutique wheel companies cannot sell these and they keep on inventing stuff to make their wheels unique and noticeable.

 

Rolf re-invented the paired spoke design. Campag decided that three spokes clustered together will attract more attention. Mavic schemed to invent something called Zircon mined on Planet Orcon. Fulcrum decided that one odd spoke will sell more wheels and Shimano then decided to cross over their spokes from left to right. Spinnergy invented stringy spokes and dubbed them Spox. When that flopped, someone decided to put the nipples in weird configurations at the hub.

 

DT then decided to invent some odd spoke gauges that makes no sense and a a company piss-up the biggest drunkard at Crank Brothers decided that really long nipples - like in half the spoke's length - will be great to lunch on 1 April. That didn't make the grade and so the race started to see who could fit the least amount of spokes to a single wheel. That backfired on the customer who in his stupidity still supported that idiot company by rewarding them in buying the new improved version.

 

Now the latest craze is to fleece the customer by offering some inferior spokes that are painted. Customers don't yet know that paint chips and are blisfully considering these a real improvement on silver.

 

Bontrager gave us the offset spoke bed design and stubbornly sticks with it, no matter that non-offset designs are flourishing as they have for 100 years.

 

Me, I'm working on a 17 1/2 spoke design over four flanges. Arithmetically I have a challenge or two to cope with before launching next spring.

Edited May 18, 2011 by Johan Bornman

[Capricorn]

hahaha . love it when JB lets one of his marbles out..