Originally Posted by
JonathanGennick
I'm not sure I had ever seen the Itera before. Interesting, the history of it.
The Itera's wheels are spoked with plastic, and I'm surmising not under tension. What about that? Does the design suffer over that of a metal spoked wheel?
One drawback particular to the Itera was that the rims were hookless, and for 27”/630 mm tires.
One drawback to the particular plastic used was that wheels could go out of true if the bike was left carrying some weight somewhere really warm.
And truing them is quite a production.
OTOH if true, they’d take huge amounts of abuse w/o damage.
One kinda-sorta drawback is how the rims interact with brake pads.
Regular brake pads mostly smear. And wear like you wouldn’t believe.
Took awhile to find some that worked.
What I’d consider general, unavoidable drawbacks are weight and air drag.
I’d be ready to accept that on a utility bike. Heck, I even commuted on Itera wheels for awhile. But I can’t see myself using wheels like that on a performance oriented bike w/o some significant changes.