Shotland

What do you guys think of Philwood touring hubs laced to Stans ZTR 400 for touring?

I figure it's a killer combo. Any ideas?

fietsbob

never heard of them so I googled Stan's NoTubes ZTR Alpha 400 Rim - Wheelbuilder.com


I built a 48 hole Phil Wood hub and used Mavic's tandem Mod 4 rims.. in 1985. I am still OK with screw on freewheels

Even when 1 spoke broke . a tiny bit of truing and I was good to go for days till I borrowed the big wrench to unscrew the freewheel .



what will you do when that tubeless tire burps out all of the air? The strong tires for touring are not the tubeless ones
but suit your self .. bring spare tires


Now Im using a Rohloff Hub, they expanded their line to offer a 36 hole shell in addition to their prior 32 hole.

because people used them on tandems and rode over the Andes to Macchu Picchu and the like ..

Now I'm in a Place where hundreds ride thru every year .. nobody will have any more rims to fix that wheel .

An off the shelf machine built wheel gets sold when people mess theirs up or one of the bikes on the sales floor sacrifices it
and then gets replaced later ..

exotic hand builds will take a special orders so you rent hotel rooms for a week . while that happens ..

or the hub is removed and handed back to you to ship home.

MassiveD

It would be nice if the tire tube combo could be lightened a lot, but I am not sure that will happen with tubeless, in a way that would offer enough independence.

MassiveD

On the hubs, Phils are sorta the gold standard, however, once you go to cassette hubs there are some alternatives that might make more sense. I actually went for Whites. The Ti shell made more sense, than the Phil's weight. I would love to own a Phil built out on a 7 speed freewheel, which I think is a pretty hot set up. But most people want the more modern stuff, and for that Phil is not unique. The right Shimano (worst thing is they are always changing) is also a very good choice. The main reason folks make cartridge hubs is because it is easy in a small shop. Shimano has the best technology, but they change it up like a rat on speed.

indyfabz

I assume you are planning on using tubeless since you are considering a tubeless rim. I have a set of Stans on my road bike. In fact, I believe I have the very rims you mention. (I had the shop remove those hideous decals.) Have to wonder how tubeless would hold up long term under load. My Schwalbe Ultremos proved less durable than some other road tires I have ridden. Same was true for my GF, who only weighs about 105 lbs.

And not every puncture seals or seals in a way that alows you to maintain adequate pressure. While on the Bon Ton Roulet last month I poked a small whole in my rear tire while riding a shoulder strems with little rocks. The puncture eventually sealed itself but would open up at PSI over 60 lbs. Ended up putting a tubed clincher on to finish the trip.

What's the largest size tire the rim can accomodate, and what does the selection of tires in yoyr desired size look like.

While they certainly roll nicely, until I learn that druability has improved, I would never consider touring on tubless.

fietsbob

Punctures the problem you want to cure? Or just want super light wheels , Shotland?

Rifleman

I've got Phil Wood Hubs and spokes 40 front and rear laced to Velocity Chukker rims.They also built my wheels.Ive seen tubeless tires but there not my thing.




Kevin

sculbertson

The hub choice is a good one. Phil Wood makes great hubs but you pay for them. I'm not so sure about your rim choice as it looks like they max out at 32 holes, are pretty narrow, and only weigh 425 grams. If "killer combo" means durability for loaded touring, you might consider some more stout rims with at least 36 holes.

cyccommute 

I agree with using 36 hole rims but it's broken record time: Rims have little to nothing to do with the strength of a wheel. The rim floats on the spokes and provides little more than a convenient way to hold the spokes together and a place to put the tire. It doesn't offer any strength to the wheel.

Think of it this way: If you break a rim, the rim can be replaced and the wheel will continue to be usable.You could break and replace a dozen rims and never have a problem with the wheel. Break a spoke and the spoke can be replaced but the wheel's strength can become questionable. Break 2 or 3 or 4 spokes and the wheel is finished.

alan s 

This doesn't make any sense. It's obvious the rim provides a great deal of strength to the wheel. The spokes are important as well, but to say the rim doesn't provide strength is incorrect. The hub, rim, nipples and spokes working together are what provide strength to the wheel.

cyccommute 

If you really look at a wheel and think about the way in which the spokes are attached to the rim, my statement makes perfect sense. The spokes aren't "attached" to the rim at all but float on the spoke nipples. When you ride your bike, your weight and the bike don't "stand" on the spokes that are at the bottom of the wheel (nor the rim that is down there with them). The bike "hangs" from the spokes on the top of the wheel. If the spoke were a nut and bolt kind of arrangement...it isn't but imagine that it is...then the rim would do a lot more of the work of giving the wheel strength and the bike would actually stand on the spokes like, for example, a wooden wagon wheel. But we depend on tension to keep the whole thing together and the tension acts more on the spokes than on the rim. All of it works together like you say but some of the parts do more work than the other parts. The spoke (and nipples, I consider them one unit) do the bulk of the work of making a wheel strong enough to resist vertical and tangential loads for weight bearing and cornering. The hubs next then the rim.

Think of it another way. If the wheel is laced and not tensioned, the rim provides no support nor will it resist vertical loads or tangential loads during cornering. The rim will fold like a cheap suit. Even when tensioned, it's not difficult to deflect the rim to the point of failure. Lots of people "stress relieve" a wheel by setting it on the ground and pushing down on the outside of the rim. This can easily lead to a tacoed rim as the rim deforms. Others grab the spokes in pairs to stress relieve the spokes because it's almost impossible to damage a wheel that way.

Finally, as a thought experiment or, if you have access to steel rims an actual experiment, try building a wheel with steel rims and eighteen 1.5mm spokes. If the rims give the wheels strength, the steel rims should be more than up to the task of handling a heavy load with that few of spokes of that light a gauge. I almost guarantee that the wheel will be as unridable as cook pasta.

vik 

I've read so many Phil Woods hub failure stories that I would never spend the $$ for one myself.

Guitar Ted Productions: The Saga Of The Snow Dog And The Phil Wood Hub

I've done fine with Shimano and Hope hubs in 32H flavours [700c & 26"].

I've never so much as broken a spoke.

I get my wheels built locally by a pro wheel builder and I get them checked over about once a year.

Booger1

It does both (hand and stand).....If I have a rim with a solid center (1 spoke) is it hanging or standing?

Can't have one without the other,it's teamwork.

Phils hubs are pretty! Suppose to be great! I don't like sealed bearing hubs so I'll never know.

The only hub I would buy from Phil is his freewheel hub,so that I could make a zero dish rear wheel.

cyccommute 

So one guy had a problem with Phil Wood...which they seemed to have gone out of their way to fix...and you decide that they are crap? I've not heard of any Phil Wood failures and I know people who have used the same hub for nearly 30 years. Not the same brand but a single hub. The same can't be said for most Shimano hubs. Hubs don't go bad all that often but Phils are a step above the rest.

Yes, the whole wheel works together but most people choose a hub, choose a rim that they think is strong...it's usually just heavy...and then use any old spoke that they have laying around without any kind of thought put into how strong the spoke is or if it is up for the job. Some spokes are. Many are not. None of them should be chosen "just because".

Um...you won't get a "zero dish wheel" by using a freewheel hub. Freewheel hubs have dish just like freehub hubs do. They have to because you are squeezing a cluster of gears onto one side of the wheel but not the other side.

hueyhoolihan

way too much for PW hubs. there are much better values out there.

cyccommute 

That depends on how you define value. If cost is the only issue, there are cheaper hubs. If durability, serviceability and dependability are what you value it's hard to find something better. Thousands of mile without the need for services adds value as well.

A Phil Wood hub can be taken apart with a 5 mm Allen wrench. That's the only tool you need. If you need to replace a spoke on the rear wheel, the entire cassette and freehub can be removed as one unit so that you don't need a cassette lockring tool, chainwhip and large wrench to remove them as you do with other hubs.

BobG

Maybe not "zero dish" but a wheel built with the Phil freewheel hub has very little dish. The spacer on the opposite side of the freewheel is almost as deep as the freewheel. The pictured hub is a 135 mm 7 speed model. On the freewheel side I measure 44 mm from flange center to dropout. The spacer opposite measures 38 mm from flange center to dropout. That would result in only 3 mm (about 1/8") of dish. The flanges also have different diameters so the same length spoke is used left and right.

There was a defective batch of Phil Wood hubs back in the 90's. I had one that started clicking. Something to do with how the race was seated in the hub body. Thought it was just mine until I met other riders with the same problem. The replacement hub pictured is almost 20 years old and still going strong.

fietsbob

My hub was even older . I suspect it may have been the shell from a tandem front wheel when Phil made their unique Disc brake (it threaded on the left side )

as it was a stain less (sorta) steel tube with alloy spoke flanges .. 48 hole ..

Bike I had at the time was a 126 type so that was the axle-bearing assembly PW Co. pressed in..

Jonathandavid

"The concept that the hub hangs from the upper spokes contradicts all measured and computed behavior of bicycle wheels."

- Jobst Brandt, ​The Bicycle Wheel

cyccommute 

Brandt is wrong. There, I said it and I fully expect to be burned at the stake for it.

However, look at a wheel and how the spoke is attached to the rim or, rather, how a spoke isn't attached to a rim. If you build wheels, it becomes apparent rather quickly that there is nothing for the spoke to "stand" on. The nipple floats in the rim. If you crash the wheel into a curb, you can bend the rim and deform the rim enough to lose tension on spokes. If the wheel "stood" on the spoke, the spokes would deform as well but it is possible to leave the spokes completely untouched and have a bent rim.

It's easy to prove to yourself that the bike doesn't stand on the spokes as well. Get a rim (or section of rim), thread in a nipple, put the rim on the ground and push down on the spoke. Without spokes above it hanging from the rim, the spoke goes all the way through the rim and hit the ground. It doesn't "stand" on anything because the spoke never hits the ground. The spoke doesn't even "stand" on the tube or tire because the wheel doesn't need a tire to roll.

Jonathandavid

Brandt does not claim that the spoke pushes harder on the rim, but rather that the compression on the lower spoke increases, while the tension on the upper spoke does not. How the spokes and rim are attached is not particularly relevant to this part of his well-grounded essay.

BobG

I think cyccommute wins this debate. I just took an old wheel and released tension on the spokes to the point that they would freely flex. I put the wheel on to a bike on trainers and sat on it. The spokes clockwise from 9:00 to 3:00 tensioned. Those near 12:00 were taut. From 3:00 to 9:00 they were loose. Those near 6:00 were bowed. I'd think the same forces would be still be in effect under full tension.

cyccommute 

Where his idea falls down is that there isn't any compression on the spokes at all. The spokes are under tension but aren't under compression. If they were under compression, the wheel would "stand" on the spokes. Feed a single spoke into a rim and, holding the rim, let go of the spoke. What happens to the single spoke? It will fall through the rim. Now turn the rim over so that the spoke hangs down. Let go the the spoke. What happens? The spoke will hang in the rim.

Another way to look at this is to remove half of the spokes on a wheel so that the top half of the wheel has spokes and the bottom half doesn't. Hang the hub from the upper spokes and the hub will stay in the same relative position as when the wheel had all the spokes. Turn the wheel over so that the spoke are on the bottom and the hub will move downward as the spokes move though the rim. If the wheel stood on the spokes, the hub wouldn't move.

BobG's picture is a pretty good demonstration of this idea. The bottom spokes are only deformed because they can't move due to the tire. The rim is deforming under compression which pushes the tire up against the spokes and keeps them from just poking through the rim.


An analogy that is useful in determining whether or not the rim adds strength to the wheel is to compare the bicycle wheel to a wagon wheel and then compare to bridge types. The wagon is a compression system. The weight of the load presses down on the spokes of the wheel which press down on the rim so that the wheel really does stand on the spokes. As above, the spokes of a bicycle wheel doesn't press down on the rim so the wheel doesn't stand on the spokes. The wagon wheel is a like simple beam bridge while the bicycle wheel is like a suspension bridge. Increasing the strength of the decking on a beam bridge increases the strength of the bridge. But increasing the strength of the decking on a suspension bridge does nothing for making the bridge stronger. If you want to make the suspension bridge stronger, you need to increase the cable strength. Same applies to bike wheels.

When people say that they want a "stronger" wheel, I pretty sure that they mean a wheel that can carry more load. They think that a heavier rim can carry more weight. A heavier rim could undergo more spoke tension but that doesn't make for a stronger wheel. It makes for a stiffer one. I can take the heaviest aluminum rim and bend it out of plane...turn it into a pretzel, really...by hand. It much more difficult to compress the rim out of roundness by hand but I could deform it by adding lots of weight. I doubt, however, that a lighter rim would require much less weight to deform.

cyccommute 

Really good demonstration. The rim is deforming vertically under load more then it does when tensioned but even under lots of tension, the rim will still deform some.

Jonathandavid

Apparently, measurements of the stress on spokes reveals that the upper spokes do not increase in tension, while the lower spokes increase in compression when the load on the bike is increased.