Breaking Spoke Blues

[OldPete]

If your buying decission is still open, investigate a Staton 12g spoked wheel for near $200. WHY?? Because the Staton hub uses 4 sealed bearings and it will never need servicing, even with a big n' on it. PLUS! The flanges on the Staton hub are spaced so that all the spokes, right side as well as left, are all the same length. So why is that important?? Because all the spokes will be tensioned the same, this makes for a MUCH stronger wheel vs one with spokes 4mm to 8mm longer on the left than the right. Because of dishing the left side spokes tend to be loose and flex. The Staton hub as well as the $300 Phil Woods hubs are set up like this. I have no idea why all rear hubs are not like so.

The Staton wheel takes a freewheel and he sells one of those for $20.
Oh! I think the Staton wheel is laced 3 cross. Call David Staton and tell him what you need. He is a nice guy and just might talk to you...even about GEBE.(i have a GEBE set-up)

I used a Staton hub and laced it 4 cross with DT brand 14g stainless spokes to a Mavic rim, then wire tied/soldered at the last cross. I now weigh 236, down from the 256 of 5 months ago.

 

[Roy Carpenter]

Thanks Pete

Thanks Pete for what I'm sure is some good advice on that wheel. That's something I noticed about my hub too....the flanges are even, and the spokes are all the same length. I wish I knew who made that hub...guess I'm gonna have to call my local shop, and ask the owner. He sold it, and the Rhyno rim to me to try and remedy my spoke problem. Didn't work though...lol. I'm just an 'ol hard head...can't nobody tell me anything..lol. For some reason, I just wanna hold on to my hub, and rim, and get 'er laced up. Psssst: Wish I could find some 10 guage spokes, and I would do it myself, or at least try, and let my local shop clean up my disaster...hehehe. I'm confident that the 10's will slove my problem. As stupid as it seems, it's worth it to me to keep my wheel, hub and gear casette, and pay this guy. I like the lifetime guarantee thing too....Might have him lace 2 wheels for me, and that way if I still break spokes, I can mount one wheel while the other is in the process of getting repaired...lol. J/K I just wish I would have ran into you guys 2 weeks sooner. That would've saved me a great deal of time.

 

[OldPete]

I really doubt your spokes are the same length lt to rt. A difference of 4mm is just .160" and that can not be eye-balled by most unless the spokes are removed. That difference in length can be felt when the wheel is properly tensioned and the spokes squeezed where they cross. The lt side will not feel as tight as the right.

10g spokes can be had here... http://www.buchananspokes.com/ They are good folks, they have laced up motyorcycle wheels for me many years ago.

Good luck.

 

[Roy Carpenter]

Ahhh...ok..They looked the same to me, but 4mm is not a big difference...I could have easily over looked it just by "eyeballing" the thing..he he. Before/If I ship it, I'll pull one of each and lay them side by side, L and R, and compare the two that way. I'm sure you are probably right though. Thanks for the link..gotta give that a look too. If I can get the spokes, then I'll have my bike shop do the rest. Heck...the owner is definitely a good wheelbuilder, and I think he'd do the job for less than $190.

 

[ocscully]

For what ever its worth, I believe you are going to find that that getting any spoke larger than 14g to work with the Rhino Lite rim is not a good thing. The Rhino Lite has single eyelets at the spoke holes and I'm pretty sure that the largest spoke nipple they will accept is 14g. Yes you can drill them out but this I believe will compromise the strength of the rim, to compensate for the loss of the eylets I would recommend using some small flat ss washers for the 12g/10g nipples to spread the load over a greater area of the rim wall. I know you don't want to hear this but, I feel that what you really need carry your weight would be a 48 hole rim and hub. Sun makes the Rhino Lite in a 48 hole drilling. Staton has a complete wheel made with the 48 hole Rhino Lite and 14g spokes for $55.00. Ol Pete mentioned also purchasing one of Staton Custom Hubs. I looked at them closely (the photos on their site) and I agree the hub does look like it should be bullet proof, I don't agree that they would build up as a dishless wheel. Staton may have hubs that will build up dishless but the photos of the hubs shown on their site would not. If you are really sold on the the 10g/12g spoke option you might try to locate an older Sun Rhino rim this rim had a thicker extrusion and would lend itself better to drilling out for the larger gauge spokes. I would start looking for one of these rims at shops specializing in Tandems. What ever way you go good luck with your project.

 

[OldPete]

ocscully,

I have built atleast 18 sets of wheels over the last 5 years, about half road and the other MTB.

I have built one rear wheel using a Staton hub, Mavic rim and 14g DT spokes in a 4 cross pattern. All spokes used were 267mm long. There is no dish because the hub is set-up with left hand threads on its left side for the Staton freewheel drive sproket. This moves the left flange towards the center of the hub.

Please offer a good reason to be against the idea of a dishless rear wheel. Then tell Phil Woods he has been doing it wrong for years. Then tell those that build expedition wheel sets not to use dishless rear wheels built with Phil Woods hubs that cost $300++.

BTW, the Staton hub's axel is 7.5" long. I will use a Staton hub on any future motorized bike build for me. I like it that much.

Note, the GEBE drive ring is set-up for 32 or 36 spoked wheels, so I doubt using a 48 spoked wheel would be a good idea. If the OP(Roy) was using a Staton system, I would highly recommend he use a 48 spoked wheel from Staton. The wheels from Staton appear to be laced 3 cross and with 12g that is not as big a deal as using 4 cross with 14g as I have.

 

[Alaskavan]

The only 10 gauge spokes I found were at JVD Wheels. Custom made. Tomorrow I will sic a search wizard on this. If she can't find them, they don't exist. What length do they need to be?

 

[OldPete]

The only 10 gauge spokes I found were at JVD Wheels. Custom made. Tomorrow I will sic a search wizard on this. If she can't find them, they don't exist. What length do they need to be?

I linked this several posts up.

http://www.buchananspokes.com/ The smallest they offer are 10g used on 50cc motorcycles. Better have the lengths needed right.

 

[Roy Carpenter]

Thanks for the tip Oscully, but that's just it...I must have a 36 spoke wheel to use the GEBE...Had I known that this would've been a possible issue when considering a GEBE system, rest assured I would have probly chosen a Staton. Sounds like I'm gonna need those washers...I just don't know exactly which size to get for those nipples...hmmm. As far as the wheels carrying my weight, they've been doing that for nearly 2 years, without so much as needing a spoke adjustment, and I've rode the heck out of that Schwinn. The only spokes I've broken were "driven" spokes on the back wheel which were engaged with the drive ring...I've broken three in the last 4 weeks after installing the GEBE. Alaskavan: I can get 10 guage spokes now, custom made, but they add up to $99.00 @ $2.75 each. By the time I get the spokes, take the bike to my local shop, have the hubs drilled, spokes laced, wheel rounded, trued, and properly tensioned, I may as well go ahead and pay The Wheel Master, in Auburn, WA, $190. He guarantees his spokes for life, not to break. I'll mention the washers to him though, and the eylets built into the rim. Hopfully he has ran into this before. I couldn't tell ya the length as of yet...I'll need to remove one spoke from L and R side of the hub, and measure them to know. The Wheel Master didn't seem concerned about the length...he's probly going to have them custom made.

 

[ocscully]

Ol' Pete,
I don't believe anywhere in my previous post did I say that there was any thing negative about building a Dishless wheel. I agree with you that the less dish the better and go to great lengths with all my bikes to achieve this. I've been building wheels for bicycles for 30+ years, hundreds of wheelsets over this period of time. Can we both agree that what makes a dishless wheel is the fact that the center of hub to flange measurment is the same for both the left and right side of the hub (assuming we are building with a rim where the spoke holes are drilled on center)? And can we both agree the the center of the hub is 1/2 of the over locknut measurment of any given hub? The hubs I see pictured on the Staton web pages all appear to me that the center to flange measurment for the right side of the hub is quite a bit less than the center to flange measurment for the left side of the hub. I admit I have never built a set of wheels using the Staton hubs and do not have their measurements in the data base I use for keeping track of all the wheels I've built, I'll be contacting Staton soon to get the hub data. As for Phil Wood Hubs and products, I have nothing but good things to say about any of their products. I've built may wheels using their hubs. I even have one of the Original Phil Wood Spoke Cutters that allows me to custom cut spokes to length and rerolls the threads. I checked the data base I use for spoke length calc. and looked at all the Phil Wood Hubs I have Data on and the only Rear Hubs I found where the center to flange measurment is equal are the Track and BMX Flip/Flop hubs. Now maybe you have some experience with Phil Wood Hubs that I don't have, and I'm sure there are hubs that Phil Wood makes that I don't have data on, but I still have to disagree with the impression you gave that all Phil Wood Hubs would build up dishless.
Now I have a question or two about the Staton hub that I hope you can answer for me. How and what sets the overlocknut spacing on this hub?
The photos I've seen seem to indicate that the axle is fixed in the hub using cir-clips on the outside of the bearings? but nothing I have seen shows what sets the centering of this hub. The Axle seems to have shoulders at the ends of the threads, is this the surface that the rear dropout rests on or do you get a set of spacers that are used for adjusting the final spacing for the hub?
I'm sorry you seem to have taken offence at my previous post. I was only stating my observations based on photos of the Staton Hub, and my experience building wheels for Clydsdale riders on Mountain & Road bikes. Granted I've never built a set of wheels that I know were for a motorized bicycle but I hope to correcting that real soon.