Originally Posted by
John.W.Briggs
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Anyway, I was a big kid, 200 pounds, and I road hard enough that my legs got very strong. I found I was breaking a lot of spokes on the right side of my rear wheel. I didn't know why. Going up a steep hill near home, I stripped the threads off my rear hub. I remember being puzzled -- it was like losing a clutch! I was pedaling, but I just stopped moving. Maybe something had been defective in the threads, I don't know. But it was the motivation I had to get a new rear wheel. Somehow I found out about Hi-E Engineering, and I ordered one with a Hi-Lo hub. The spokes were radial on the low side (left) and 3-cross on the high side (right). But also, there were twice as many spokes on the right side, as I recall. I still have the wheel, and I'll post photographs of it.
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Cheers!
Nostalgically,
--John W. Briggs (and I shall return here soon with photos).
Jim Cunningham displayed a Graftek bike with Hi-E hubs at a semi-recent Classic Rendezvous gathering. Looking closely at my photos, I see that he also had a hi-lo hub where the right flange has twice the spokes as the left. The lacing pattern isn't the usual one... the right flange has two trailing spokes, two leading spokes, two trailing spokes, etc. The rim is an AVA tubular, and I don't notice any offset to the spoke holes.
I wonder how long it took to figure out how to make that lacing pattern work?
here's a
high resolution version.
Steve in Peoria