equal spoke tensions at dished rear wheel?

Quoted message said:

duh: how to equal tension the drive and non-drive side spokes?
or nearly equal before we tangent off it that direction
ya know: step one, step two..
i was over at JBrandt.harrisbrown and...no clue?
Barnett?

OK,
Step 1: find a good local wheel builder.
Step 2: give him as much money as he wants to build your wheels.

I built a pair of wheels last year, using Jobst's book as my guide.
I'm kinda proud of having done it, and raced on them a full season
without needing to true them, but when a shop as good as Condor will
do the job for me for around GBP20 per wheel, I really can't be
bothered to do it again.

Kinky Cowboy*

*Batteries not included
May contain traces of nuts
Your milage may vary

Quoted message said:

duh: how to equal tension the drive and non-drive side spokes?
or nearly equal before we tangent off it that direction
ya know: step one, step two..
i was over at JBrandt.harrisbrown and...no clue?

When I build up a wheel, as it starts getting a fair amount of tension (no
spokes rattling around), I go around and pluck all the spokes on a given
side and tweak the ones that are high or low in pitch. Then I do the same
with the other side. Then check for roundness and lateral trueness.

Once I get to where they're all close in pitch and round and true, then it's
just a matter of adding tension all around, a half turn at a time, until
it's done. Final tweaks, get the dish perfect, stress relieve, go ride.

Art Harris

Quoted message said:

duh: how to equal tension the drive and non-drive side spokes?
or nearly equal before we tangent off it that direction
ya know: step one, step two..

You can't have equal tension on both sides _and_ have a dished wheel.
It is the left/right tension difference that creates the dish!

There are some rims with off-center spoke holes that reduce this
disparity, but that's the nature of dished wheels.

Sheldon "Impossibility" Brown
+-----------------------------------------------------+
| Always be sincere, even when you don't mean it. |
| --Irene Peter |
+-----------------------------------------------------+
Harris Cyclery, West Newton, Massachusetts
Phone 617-244-9772 FAX 617-244-1041
http://harriscyclery.com
Hard-to-find parts shipped Worldwide
http://captainbike.com http://sheldonbrown.com

Sheldon Brown said:

Quoted message said:

duh: how to equal tension the drive and non-drive side spokes?

Quoted message said:

You can't have equal tension on both sides _and_ have a dished wheel. It
is the left/right tension difference that creates the dish!

I assumed he was asking how to get equal tension for all the spokes on one
side. Maybe I was too optimistic.

Art Harris

Quoted message said:

duh: how to equal tension the drive and non-drive side spokes?
or nearly equal before we tangent off it that direction
ya know: step one, step two..
i was over at JBrandt.harrisbrown and...no clue?
Barnett?

can't do it. tension is a function of the angle the spokes make with
the plane of the rim. if the wheel's dished, angles are different left
to right, therefore tensions are different.

Not quite so fast. It is possible to achieve a tension bias to about 85% using a narrow offset hub or an off center drilled rim.

I ride the former, an American Classic 225 gram rear hub laced in the non-traditional radial drive side, 2 cross non-drive. Its large diameter hub shell transmits much more torque to the non-drive spokes, preventing problems normally associated with radial drive side lacing. Since all drive side spokes are heads in, the resultant spoke angles give non-drive at 90 kg force tension and drive is 105 kg.

Kinky Cowboy said:

...
I built a pair of wheels last year, using Jobst's book as my guide....

The special edition that also works as a truing stand and dishing tool? 😉

--
Tom Sherman - Pedantic Smartass

Quoted message said:

duh: how to equal tension the drive and non-drive side spokes?

You don't.

Quoted message said:

or nearly equal before we tangent off it that direction
ya know: step one, step two..
i was over at JBrandt.harrisbrown and...no clue?
Barnett?

The drive side gets the higher tension. The off side gets just enough
to true the wheel and produce the required dish.
--
Typoes are a feature, not a bug.
Some gardening required to reply via email.
Words processed in a facility that contains nuts.

Weisse Luft said:

Not quite so fast. It is possible to achieve a tension bias to about
85% using a narrow offset hub or an off center drilled rim.

I ride the former, an American Classic 225 gram rear hub laced in the
non-traditional radial drive side, 2 cross non-drive. Its large
diameter hub shell transmits much more torque to the non-drive spokes,
preventing problems normally associated with radial drive side lacing.
Since all drive side spokes are heads in, the resultant spoke angles
give non-drive at 90 kg force tension and drive is 105 kg.

Still too fast.

Your hub transfers virtually all of its torque to the left side if the
right side is radially spoked, which now means that using your parlance,
the "non-drive" is the drive side.

With respect to problems normally associated with radial right side
lacing, I have made and ridden two wheels built that way, one a Campy
and one a Bullseye. Both broke off a piece of flange, subtended arc
about 60 degrees, after less than 1000 miles riding. Never again. Those
breaks were not at all related to the torque that the hub shell must
carry with

I presume you have done this in an attempt to equalize left- and
right-side spoke tensions, a laudable goal. But the effective spoke
angle is not affected by whether the heads are in or out. The force
vector travels from the nipple to the contact between the spoke and hub
hole, a location which is going to be only slightly different between
the two orientations. Doing the math will show that an offset drilled
rim helps in much greater measure to meet your goal.

Radial spoking is pure eye candy, and I've done it a number of times.
But radial spoking in any wheel that is driven or braked from the hub is
far more likely to result in problems that interfere with. . .riding.

Ted

--
Ted Bennett
Portland, OR

Proof is in my wheels. Spoke tension is measured with the classic Wheelsmith tensionmeter which I calibrated with the same lot of spokes used. I used weights and a few jigs with a bench vise to do this since the chart didn't have DT Revolution listed.

As far as durability, the wheelset has had only minor trouble initially but this was not related to the lacing but rather running flat over a very rough road. I had initially tightened the spokes a bit too much, leading to slight instability of the rim. The rim seems better suited with the 105/90 kg of tension and as a reult, no truing has been necessary for the last 9000+ miles.

Due to the high elasticity of the spokes, about 70% of the torque is transmitted to the left side flange. The right side windup accounts for the rest. This was determined by FEA and after 10,000+ miles of use, stands up to practical experience. The right side flange of the AC hub is solid and very stout. Being a large diameter, it has exceptional strength for the 28 hole drilling I am using.

Weisse Luft said:

Not quite so fast. It is possible to achieve a tension bias to about
85% using a narrow offset hub or an off center drilled rim.

narrow offset means bad bracing angle on two sides, not just one. what
good is a "better" tension ratio if the lateral stability is
compromised? grossly inferior solution.

Quoted message said:

I ride the former, an American Classic 225 gram rear hub laced in the
non-traditional radial drive side, 2 cross non-drive. Its large
diameter hub shell transmits much more torque to the non-drive spokes,
preventing problems normally associated with radial drive side lacing.
Since all drive side spokes are heads in, the resultant spoke angles
give non-drive at 90 kg force tension and drive is 105 kg.

i used to have a ritchey ocr rear wheel with near even flange spacing
and offset rim. lateral stability was apalling. easily the most
shimmy-prone wheel i've ever ridden. i returned it.

Tom Sherman said:

Kinky Cowboy said:

...
I built a pair of wheels last year, using Jobst's book as my guide....

The special edition that also works as a truing stand and dishing tool? 😉

Leaving aside your little joke, I used the cheap Minoura kit which
includes a folding table top truing stand and folding dish tool. Even
with these cheap tools, it would have been cheaper to get a good
wheelsmith to build them for me, which was the point of my post.

Unless you're going into the business, building your own wheels is a
vanity project.

Kinky Cowboy*

*Batteries not included
May contain traces of nuts
Your milage may vary

datakoll-<< duh: how to equal tension the drive and non-drive side spokes?
or nearly equal before we tangent off it that direction
ya know: step one, step two.. >><BR><BR>

If the flanges are not the same distance from the center of the hub, cannot do
it. By using a hub with an offset left flange toward the center and a rim with
offcenter hole drillings, you can get pretty close.

Peter Chisholm
Vecchio's Bicicletteria
1833 Pearl St.
Boulder, CO, 80302
(303)440-3535
http://www.vecchios.com
"Ruote convenzionali costruite eccezionalmente bene"

A usually reliable source asserted:

Quoted message said:

Unless you're going into the business, building your own wheels is a
vanity project.

I strongly disagree. Self-reliance is not "vanity."

Building wheels from scratch is the best way to learn to repair/maintain
them. That is a skill that can be very valuable to a cyclist,
especially to a touring cyclist.

http://sheldonbrown.com/wheelbuilding

Sheldon "True" Brown
+-------------------------------------------------------+
| Do what you can, with what you have, where you are. |
| --Theodore Roosevelt |
+-------------------------------------------------------+
Harris Cyclery, West Newton, Massachusetts
Phone 617-244-9772 FAX 617-244-1041
http://harriscyclery.com
Hard-to-find parts shipped Worldwide
http://captainbike.com http://sheldonbrown.com

Weisse Luft said:

Not quite so fast. It is possible to achieve a tension bias to about
85% using a narrow offset hub or an off center drilled rim.

I ride the former, an American Classic 225 gram rear hub laced in the
non-traditional radial drive side, 2 cross non-drive. Its large
diameter hub shell transmits much more torque to the non-drive spokes,
preventing problems normally associated with radial drive side lacing.
Since all drive side spokes are heads in, the resultant spoke angles
give non-drive at 90 kg force tension and drive is 105 kg.

Tony Oliver also recommends this method, for the same reason, in his
book "Touring Bikes"...but goes on to qualify that it is only suitable
for lightly stressed wheels such as time-trial bikes, which often have a
bottom gear as high as 53 x 21 or 53 x 19.

IIRC Hi-Lo hubs were also intended to address the problem of unequal
spoke tensions, but seem to have died out.

Qui si parla Campagnolo said:

datakoll-<< duh: how to equal tension the drive and non-drive side spokes?
or nearly equal before we tangent off it that direction
ya know: step one, step two.. >><BR><BR>

If the flanges are not the same distance from the center of the hub, cannot do
it. By using a hub with an offset left flange toward the center and a rim with
offcenter hole drillings, you can get pretty close.

Moving a few-mm wide spacer (or juggle spacers for the equivalent) from
the right side axle to the left is another option, or at least used to
be in the freewheel days. I bought a touring bike in 1977 (Centurion
Pro-Tour*)with 125mm spacing but a five speed cluster. By shifting
spacers as above, the mfr. had produced a nearly dishless wheel.

[* Centurion was a label of Western States Imports. They dropped the
label in favor of "Diamondback" some years later. Now I'm not sure if
the company is still around]

Mark Janeba

On Wed, 29 Dec 2004 11:12:16 -0500, Sheldon Brown
<[email hidden]> wrote:

[snip]

Quoted message said:

I strongly disagree. Self-reliance is not "vanity."

[snip]

Quoted message said:

Sheldon "True" Brown
+-------------------------------------------------------+
| Do what you can, with what you have, where you are. |
| --Theodore Roosevelt |
+-------------------------------------------------------+
Harris Cyclery, West Newton, Massachusetts
Phone 617-244-9772 FAX 617-244-1041
http://harriscyclery.com
Hard-to-find parts shipped Worldwide
http://captainbike.com http://sheldonbrown.com

Dear Sheldon,

You've been listening to Waldo again.

Say, why don't we get together for dinner at his place
tonight? I eat there most of the time, and he won't mind
another guest. It's free, it's better than beans and
woodchucks, and we can borrow his books afterward. I have
just as many books as he does, but even I get tired of
reading the same author all the time.

Dave Thoreau

[email hidden said:

"]duh: how to equal tension the drive and non-drive side spokes?
or nearly equal before we tangent off it that direction
ya know: step one, step two..
i was over at JBrandt.harrisbrown and...no clue?
Barnett?

Dear Gene,

It's actually quite simple.

As everyone points out, you can't have the same tension on both sides because dishing requires different total tension on each side.

But you long to hear the same pleasing note no matter which spoke you pluck, so just remove a few non-drive side spokes and tighten the remaining ones.

(You could achieve the same result by adding a couple of drive-side spokes and lowering the individual tension all around their side of the wheel, but parsimonious hub manufacturers rarely include extra holes.)

A complicated calculation might tell us how many spokes Weisse needs to remove to correct his 90/105kg tension imbalance, but trial and error will probably work just as well and far more quickly.

Carl Fogel

carlfogel said:

As everyone points out, you can't have the same tension on both sides
because dishing requires different total tension on each side.

Forgive the neophyte question, but doesn't longer spokes
on the left & shorter on the right help equalize tension?

Larry Coon
University of California