Wheel weight Limits

[Jean-Jay]

Check this out

 

http://www.rouesartisanales.com/article-4934445.html

 

[javadude]

Cool article, but those Campy weight limits are surely wrong. Where have you been lately tooHot, you still at Big Blue?

[Johan Bornman]

A little bit of science is dangerous, especially in the hands of a bicycling magazine editor.

I'm continually amazed at how naive some of these things are and this one is no different. My favourite two scenes in this little drama are the new take on inertia - at first it was bad, not a little bit is good and; how they seem to think that a wheel flexes when cornering.

 

They managed to make a lot of measurements but sprinkled it with little understanding, hence we now have a wheel rated as No 1 for bizarre reasons.

 

 

[Jean-Jay]

 

Cool article' date=' but those Campy weight limits are surely wrong. Where have you been lately tooHot, you still at Big Blue?

[/quote']

 

Hi Velo

 

Yeah all is well, i am still at the BIG BLUE

 

Ciao for now

 

[The Guy in Pink]

Cool article' date=' but those Campy weight limits are surely wrong. ? [/quote']

Not wrong, maybe misinterperated. Campy recommend a max weight of rider at 82kg. If more the recommend more frequent trueing of wheel and maintainance.  It's probably to cover themselves in the latigious American market.

[Sammajoor]

What is the weight limit on the Mavic Cosmic Carbonne Clinchers

[niterider]

JB, read the tests from http://www.rouesartisanales.com/article-15505311.html onwards. These guys do seem to know a few things.

[Johan Bornman]

JB' date=' read the tests from http://www.rouesartisanales.com/article-15505311.html onwards. These guys do seem to know a few things. [/quote']

 

We all know a few things. However, it is what we don't know and don't understand that does the damage when we publish. They simply don't understand how a wheel behaves when cornering. Lateral stiffness does not come into play when cornering on a bicycle or motorbike (unless you're doing a broadside, as is done in Moto X).

 

A bicycle wheel has very, very little lateral stiffness simply because it doesn't need it. When corneringon a bicycle, the forces on the wheel always remains radial. That is not the same on a car, where the load produces a radial force and cornering a lateral force.  That's why you cannot build a successful box-cart from a bicycle wheel, the wheel collapses around the first corner.

 

To then go and judge a wheel by its lateral stiffness and give it a score that's factored into an ultimate consumer rating is simply stupid.

 

I had a good look at that test. It produces some meaningful measurements and some silly conclusions.

 

I don't buy into their theory that rear wheel aerodynamics don't come into play and I don't buy into their theory that the 0-35% yaw angle is all that's encountered on a bicycle. I think a few of our Argus friends here would testify to the nuisance value of sidewinds on deep section wheels.

 

Further, a deep section rim is much stronger than a shallow box rim and therefore can support higher spoke tension and therefore less spokes can do the same job.

 

However, you can't go on making rims stronger and stronger and the spokes less and less. At tensions required to build a durable 24-spoke wheel the nipples and spokes already gall, making building extremely difficult (and therefore expensive) and tuning later on in the wheel's life virtually impossible. I therefore also don't go with their statement that "reducing the spoke count on a front wheel is not really a problem at all." It has limits.

 

Many other issues come to play in judging a wheel's quality. None of these were addressed by the testers.

 

My conclusion is that it is a shallow, meaningless test done by well-meaning people who don't have enough depth of understanding to be let loose on a gullible consumer.

 

Johan Bornman2008-03-11 00:15:02