Radial (spiral) lacing or rear wheel?

[Donovan]

I did a spiral lace on the front wheel of the wife's cruiser and I love the way it looks. I basically used the stock 3 cross spokes from a wheel that had a larger hub and did the spiral on her wheel with them. I'd like to do it on the back too, but I'm concerned about strength. It's a steel cruiser that often has panniers on the back full of my crap . So the bike is heavy. Obviously we don't go over any sweet jumps or pound on it like a MTB so I'm wondering if it would be just fine.

Thoughts?

 

[Rooski]

First off, from what I've read, a "spiral" is different than a "radial". The below pic is what people seem to call a spiral:

Now....... 99.99% of people will tell you to absolutely not do a radial on the rear, especially if the braking force is at the hub. I've read a few comments where people have successfully used a rear radial, but were also using rim brakes.

Personally, I feel a radial can possibly hold up well with vary casual riding (like a 3 mph flat terrain boardwalk ride at the beach), but the higher rotational forces of hammering up a hill, or worse, braking hard on a downhill, has the potential to lead to a disastrous situation when the wheel explodes. I think the hub's flanges would be the first failure point.

All I gotta say is, if you're curious to try it, do it on one of your bikes. Don't use your wife the "guinea pig"

 

[Donovan]

Yes. Spiral patern. The spokes are aligned but not in a radial pattern coming directly straight off the hub. My concern with this even on the front is the tortion on the hub itself. There is no crossing pattern on the spokes to balance tortional force. On the front, I'd say its pretty safe on a mild rider like a cruiser. The rear, even with the mild ride style you're still going to get a lot of stress accelerating with a heavy bike and when slamming on the brake. A true radial on the rear with good spokes I think I'd trust.

 

[blown240]

The issue I can see on a rear wheel with a true radial is standing up and pedaling, or heavy braking. The spokes would want to twist. And they may even want to pull out of the hub if you hit a bump hard, while sitting, because the load would be directly our from the hub center and not across the hub flange like on a 3 cross pattern.

If you did a spiral, where one side of the spokes spirals opposite the other side, it would almost be like a regular laced wheel. Say you had 32 spokes, 16 would "push" the other 16 would "pull", thats the same as a regular laced wheel. Thats how we did it at the shop I used to work at, and we never had issues.

As a side note, if your going for weight saving, and are using rim brakes. On the rear you can do a 2 cross pattern on the drive side, and a radial lace on the non drive side. This is how I did it on a 18lb full suspension bike I once built. Never had any issues.

 

[Colyn.]

So could you do a "spiral" on a cruiser bike with a 24x4 rear wheel with 7 speed and coaster brake if I did one set going one way and the other side opposite.

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[blown240]

Ya that should work pretty good.

 

[Colyn.]

Was going to get my wheels drilled to 72 holes (side by side) so I could do them like this but having empty holes every other spot would drive me nuts unless I could get them welded shut and smooth but on aluminium wheels I think it would be to much trouble. So for now ill have rthis set laced spiral and maybe order another set of wheels later on to slow work on....

This is what I wanted originally...

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[mikeeebikey]

for any radial pattern you use I'm going to strongly suggest you find good hubs!

 

[justride]

Jobst Brandt wrote a great book about wheels, and the whys and hows of lacing patterns, etc. Radial wheels with low spoke counts primarily save weight. Spokes are not aerodynamic - if you want fast wheels, you get deep rims.

There are radial spoke patterns for rear wheels that you can use, but most of these are done on machine built rims, with special hubs designed to take the kind of strain that puts on the hubs and spokes.

Colyn, I'm really liking the spoke pattern on your wide rims. Very cool!

 

[Donovan]

Coming back to this thread after a while. Thanks for the replies. I did that spiral lace on the front of the ladie's bike and it has worked well for the better part of a year now. It looks great and creates a cool look when riding too. Almost like a shimmer. I think for the front of any cruiser that isn't going off curbs etc it would be fine.
The only issue is the torsional stress on the hub because the spoke are pulling in opposite directions on either side. So all the left side spokes pull one direction and the right the other direction. This tends to try to twist the hub if you will. Still not brave enough to try it on the rear with 36 holes but I'd imagine if I were careful with not over tightening the spokes to true the wheel, it would probably be just fine.