Singlespeed & Fixed Gear - Radial wheelbuild question

Quick question. In a radial front wheel, do you want to lace all the spokes inward? Outward? Alternating? Does it matter?

The answer must be obvious because I can't seem to find it anywhere...sheldon brown, jobst brandt....

Try here:

http://www.geocities.com/spokeanwheel/lacingrl.htm

You can do all three and there are advantages to each one.

that was quick. :)
thanks very much.

No problem. I just built a wheel with the spoke heads on the inside of the flange and I personally like it better than the much preferred outside the flange method.

What's the advantage to a radially laced wheel?

What's the advantage to a radially laced wheel?You can crack the hub flange faster...and then complain on the forums about what a piece of **** the hub is.

What's the advantage to a radially laced wheel?

Less weight, more aerodynamic, laterally stronger. Of course, those reasons are small, and many consider them to be insignificant, so lets get to the REAL reason... BLING!

I've got a radial front because I see no reason not to have a cool looking front wheel. Some people don't like the look, but I do, so thats what me bike gets. :) The rear is 3x, like normal.

Plus, I get to tell roadies that the few grams I save on the wheel has really affected the rotational inertia of my wheels, meaning I sprint and climb much faster than before. Plus, I get more 'feedback' from the wheel, which improves my handling and allows me near-superhuman swerving abilities. And the chicks dig it. Radial yeah!

To answer the original question, I laced mine heads out for narrowness, but either option is acceptable.

peace,
sam

You can crack the hub flange faster...and then complain on the forums about what a piece of **** the hub is.

I think thats more of a problem with low flange hubs, that have less material between spoke holes. I've only seen one picture of a cracked flange on a radially laced hub, but people keep bandying it around like it is proof. Hubs crack for various reasons.

Anyway, I don't mean this to become another 'radial vs tangential' thread.. Just build your wheels like you want. We are serious 'overbuilders' in this forum with rather extreme ideas about bike durability. I think most of our fixies could be raced in extreme downhill races and come out just fine. Sometimes its OK to do other things though.

peace,
sam

raise your hand if you've contemplated drilling your spoke eyelets larger so that you could use motorcycle wheel spokes?

*shamefully raises his hand*

I also confess to having contemplated respacing my frame to accept a motorcycle hub I found.

peace,
sam

I have spent hours at the site to which jinx provided a link.
I especially like Crow's Foot Lacing, which combines radial with tangential lacing and I have thought about having a set of wheels made in that pattern.
Crow's Foot looks like it has a lot of practical advantages but I never see it anywhere.
Does anyone have any experience with Crow's Foot Lacing?

http://www.geocities.com/spokeanwheel/lacingcf.htm

Not yet but talk to me in a couple of months. I've been bitten by the wheelbuilding bug something fierce and that is my next build.

You can crack the hub flange faster...and then complain on the forums about what a piece of **** the hub is.

Funny... I see people saying this all of the time but I've never actually seen this happen in real life. Seems like one photo of a trashed Campy hub on the internet gets everyone thinking this happens all of the time. Here's one to chew on, the all-hallowed Sheldon Brown thinks they are perfectly fine for a front wheel. Here's another, I asked Tony (IRO) if he thought his hubs would hold up to radial and he said he didn't see a problem with it. Although he did suggest I go for 1X. So far they haven't cracked but I'll keep you posted.

Not yet but talk to me in a couple of months. I've been bitten by the wheelbuilding bug something fierce and that is my next build.
Can you build me some wheels?

Funny... I see people saying this all of the time but I've never actually seen this happen in real life. Seems like one photo of a trashed Campy hub on the internet gets everyone thinking this happens all of the time. Here's one to chew on, the all-hallowed Sheldon Brown thinks they are perfectly fine for a front wheel. Here's another, I asked Tony (IRO) if he thought his hubs would hold up to radial and he said he didn't see a problem with it. Although he did suggest I go for 1X. So far they haven't cracked but I'll keep you posted.

Someone recently posted a fine picture of a Chris King also broken at the flanges. It does happen and many hub manufacturers will not honor the warranty if the wheel is radially laced.

I'm intrigued. Can you post a link?

Funny... I see people saying this all of the time but I've never actually seen this happen in real life. Someone asked what the advantages of radial lacing was. My reply was a smart ass way of saying "There are no real advantages to radial lacing". Lace your wheels anyway you want, it bothers me none. I give props to those who admit they lace radially for looks, because that's what it boils down to.

True, my reply came off a whole lot more smart*****ed than I intended. I chose radial because it was my first build, combined with the fact that I think it looks pretty cool. I do have to say, it was much less intimidating to lace my first wheel radial and it gave me confidence for lacing up the back wheel 3X. That being said, I don't think I'll go that route again but, like I said before, I don't think it is as dangerous as it is made out to be.

I'm intrigued. Can you post a link?

I can't locate it off-hand, but it was a lovely orange ano job. Here's one though:

http://svana.org/sjh/images/alpine05/fw1_med.jpg

On the other hand, here's one that appears to have been tangentially laced and also failed:

http://pardo.net/bike/pic/fail-009/ccf4.jpg

The point is not that radial lacing guarantees that your hub will break or that tangential guarantees that it won't. Radial simply puts greater stress on your hub and increases likelihood of failure for very little in the way of measureable improvement.

Someone recently posted a fine picture of a Chris King also broken at the flanges. It does happen and many hub manufacturers will not honor the warranty if the wheel is radially laced.
Bingo!

http://www.aplusbi.com/forums/ouch.jpg


Ok, so it's not King, but rather Tune, makers of REALLY light MTB and possibly road parts.

Sheesh. Radial on an MTB rear wheel. Even I'm not that stupid. :D

On a dished wheel, the non-drive-side can be radially laced because those spokes are substantially lower tension than the drive-side where power transfer actually occurs. In theory.

edit: and BostonFixed will site the fact that he's seen some do this on track wheels to which I say...Hmm... I see.

I was joking when I said that but when you really think about it your wheel is going to get its ass kicked when you hit a stump going 20mph. Drive-side or not.

I see what you are saying about road wheels though.

Actually, apparently the above photo is a road wheel, according to the person who originally posted it.

i love radial lacing purely for the aesthetics, especially half-radial lacing on rear wheels. when there comes a question of durability, i relate these two personal experiences:

1. suntour high-flanged track hub radially laced with double-butted spokes to a mavic cxp14, head-on high-speed (at night) collision into a barrier, enough to bend the steel fork back about 3 inches and ripple the down tube and the top tube. wheel was fine, didn't even need truing. (not me on the bike)

2. phil wood high-flange track hub radially laced with phil wood straight gauge spokes to a velocity deep-v, head-on high-speed (at night) collision into a car during an alleycat, enough to shear the carbon fork off on both side 2 inches down from the crown. wheel was fine, didn't even need truing. (me on the bike)

i'll be back with part 2, and why i won't radially lace suntours any longer......

http://www.strangersracing.com/images/harry_hooked_up.jpg
http://www.strangersracing.com/images/suntour_cracked.jpg

i love these hubs, and i hate destroying them. here's the story:

suntour superbe pro track hubs built radial in the front and half-radial in the rear with black wheelsmith DB14 spokes to black mavic cxp30's using silver (brass) nipples. i fn loved those wheels. this dude took three spokes out of my front wheel with his right pedal as he put me on my ass at kissena. limping across the infeild i consoled myself by thinking i already had the extra spokes, and i could rebuild them the next day. upon closer inspection, though, i discovered small cracks running outbound radially from about half the spoke holes on the front wheel. surpisingly, when i looked at the rear wheel, which didn't really suffer any impact in the crash, i found the same thing on the radial non-drive side. mtrfkr! when i returned home, i asked my friend to check his wheels, which i had also built with practically the same components, except the rims were silver cxp14's. this is the same wheelset that survived the head on collision into the barrier i described in my previous post. he found the same thing on his wheels. breaks my heart.

i build using a wheelsmith tensiometer, and i follow wheelsmiths recommendation of about 100kg. the only thing i can think would have caused the cracks is too high tension. anybody?

100 kgf isn't very high and I am, of course, inclined to blame the radial lacing. Usually the tension limit is determined by the rim, not the hub, so...

edit: On the other hand, I'm probably inclined to blame radial just because I'm a crotchety *******. Not only does it strike me as not particularly useful but I actually don't like the way it looks. I think it makes a wheel look all spindly and undernourished. I want a MANLY wheel!

Good conversation going on here.

I just wanted to announce that I'm mostly finished with my first build. Pro-Max SB hubs to Saavedra Aeros, radial and 3x. They just need some minute truing that I'm going to do on a stand at the shop.

I really enjoyed it and I definitely want to build other sets. And I have to echo Jinx's comment about lacing the front radially first making the entire process less intimidating.

*shamefully raises his hand*

I also confess to having contemplated respacing my frame to accept a motorcycle hub I found.

peace,
sam

Hmmm, now I've got visions of combining a spare MTB frame I've got with an old set of moped rims/tires in my shed. It'd be SS with drum brakes on both ends... maybe even make it fixed... oh this is bad. Definitely a franken-bike coming on.

These are beautiful. Yet, they do not look like intended for radial lacing. These were (radial front, radial NDS rear)

Is that a current model? The most beutiful road hub+spoke combo ever.

The point is not that radial lacing guarantees that your hub will break or that tangential guarantees that it won't. Radial simply puts greater stress on your hub and increases likelihood of failure for very little in the way of measureable improvement.Well put.

These are beautiful. Yet, they do not look like intended for radial lacing. These were (radial front, radial NDS rear)I find them ugly as hell, but they were definitely engineered to be laced that way. Part of the design.

Is that a current model? The most beutiful road hub+spoke combo ever.

Your post is under OP - if you are talking about Suntour posted above I like them very much, too but I do not think they are road. If you are talking about Shamals I have posted - no, they are not current model. I was able to transplant Gipiemme casette bodies to Campy HPW hub so I can run these bodies with Campy 10s, Shimano and fixed - the latter by inverting 2 out of 3 pawls of Shimano compatible Gipiemme casette body and blocking these inverted with screws going through holes drilled through the body just under the pawls.

Yeah, I lose style points by running dished fixed wheels, but I do not care much - I like the flexibility of running any of 3 wheelsets (Shamals and two different Gipiemme sets) with any of different drivetrains of my bikes.

Less weight, more aerodynamic, laterally stronger.

less weight because the spokes are shorter....Yes.

Not more aerodynamic though.

Definitely not torsionally stiffer unless used with larger diameter flange.

Laterally stronger? (not sure about this, I'll have to read up on this in Jobst Brandt's book)

Flanges need to be thicker on radially laced wheels. In fact, a lot of manufacturers specs specific hubs for radial lacing.

Bingo!

http://www.aplusbi.com/forums/ouch.jpg




Ok, so it's not King, but rather Tune, makers of REALLY light MTB and possibly road parts.

There was a thread about this at weight weenies. That might be the same pic. It turns out Tube makes specific hubs designed for either cross or radial lace. The guy who had the same failure as that used radial lace on the hub designed for cross lacing.

radial lacing doesn't cancel the Phil Wood warantee, does it? dang. can't afford that.

radial lacing doesn't cancel the Phil Wood warantee, does it? dang. can't afford that.

Not sure about Phil, but DT swiss for example makes a radial specific front hub that weighs 15% more than the cross-lacing front hub. The extra weight cancels out any miniscule weight savings you get from using shorter spokes.

Wow...I just saw they make a single speed hub. Not fixed though.

http://www.dtswiss.com/index.asp?fuseaction=hubs.bikedetail&id=24

edit: and BostonFixed will site the fact that he's seen some do this on track wheels to which I say...Hmm... I see.

Fresh from the window of bostonbicycle:

Photo proof for you:

http://img214.imageshack.us/img214/7293/p10101539ew.jpg

Aluminum Casati Track, half radial rear, full radial front, miche hubs, campy montreal rims....blah..blah..blah.

Sheesh. Radial on an MTB rear wheel. Even I'm not that stupid. :D

seriously. radial on a rear wheel in general

Fresh from the window of bostonbicycle:

Photo proof for you:

http://img214.imageshack.us/img214/7293/p10101539ew.jpg

Aluminum Casati Track, half radial rear, full radial front, miche hubs, campy montreal rims....blah..blah..blah.

What is the radial non-drive supposed to accomplish on a wheel with no dish? Or is that not a flip-flop or two sided (threaded) wheel? (can't tell from pic)

What is the radial non-drive supposed to accomplish on a wheel with no dish? Or is that not a flip-flop or two sided (threaded) wheel? (can't tell from pic)

the miche hubs are not flip flop. single side only. they are super nice, i just got a set. Going to Radial lace the front...
-jason

What is the radial non-drive supposed to accomplish on a wheel with no dish? Or is that not a flip-flop or two sided (threaded) wheel? (can't tell from pic)

What is radial supposed to accomplish in any event?

Oh, my bad.

What is radial supposed to accomplish in any event?

Oh, my bad.

as far as i am concerned, pretty much just looking sweet...without much of a sacrifice...regardless of differing personal opinions, point is, we can argue about the pros and cons all day, but when it all comes down to it, it is all just personal preference..

-jason

i just built myself a radial deep v 36 hole to phil SLR front wheel. why? it looks sooooooo hot. and for the riding i do, it works just fine.

On a dished wheel, the non-drive-side can be radially laced because those spokes are substantially lower tension than the drive-side where power transfer actually occurs. In theory.

If I recall correctly, Santa Cruz used to radially lace ALL their front wheels and non-drive side of rear wheels. Probably not the DH machines, but I distinctly remember gazing at photos of the Heckler with radial fronts and non-drive rears. They don't do radial lacing anymore.