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Cast or Spoked Wheels.


alhendo1

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alhendo1

A question for the collective....apart from the visual difference what are the benefits/drawbacks of spoked versus cast wheels? Is there an advantage with spoked wheels that make them stronger or easier to repair?

For me I can see the visual benefits on certain machines but also that they'd be much more difficult to keep clean and I'd imagine more expensive to manufacture.

Is there a wheel size for example where it's undesirable to have a cast wheel ie large front wheels on enduro style bikes.....just curious. All answers appreciated.

 

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Just changed the tyres on the CRF250, they have to be tubed whatever (no beads). At least it was easy to do at home. Good to know I'm still cool after all these years😎 And the C90's got spok

Off road a spoked wheel can withstand damage better than a cast one - they also can carry tubed tyres which are better off road - if you dint the rim you will not lose pressure. I think they are light

When the Africa Twin came out, I so wanted one, but just had the "minor" problem of approaching the wife, to agree to me taking the money out of the savings account. A few weeks later, I had to g

baben

Off road a spoked wheel can withstand damage better than a cast one - they also can carry tubed tyres which are better off road - if you dint the rim you will not lose pressure. I think they are lighter too. A lot of people like them for aesthetic reasons but I just remember my youth and the horrible time  I had keeping the damn things looking good. The AT has tubed spoked wheels with tubes in which is supposed to send a clear message that it is a "real" off road adventure bike - if only it did not weigh as much as a small cow.

Edited by baben
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stephenmcg

Cast wheel will have tubeless tyre, spoked will have tubed.

a nail in tubed will deflate immediately.

tubelesswill be a bit slower to deflate 

i had puncture on transalp, even though I had special sealant for tubed tyres.

it did nothing.

i had a lucky escape.

me personally will never have another tubed wheel.

smcg

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Andy m

In the old days cast off road got dinged and failed. This set the fashion. These days you have to be riding MX to experience this problem. Cast work fine on anything over 250cc where the weight will defeat you before you break a wheel.

 

Today you will struggle to buy a tube type (TT) tyre in a road going type. When a TL with a tube fitted punctures, you are stuffed. You can't fit a plug and ride the next thousand miles, you can't carry a bead breaker to get the bead, designed to be airtight, off the rim.

 

Spokes are IMHO yet another PITA bit of fashion design.

 

As the Bullet is stuck with the ***ing things even after I changed to TT tyres I carry these on longer runs. Its 50/50 if they'll work.

 

40256496782_7b70425e0f.jpg

 

This is superior in every way but no use with fashion wheels

 

https://sites.google.com/site/pooratrek/tyre-repair

 

Andy

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Not sure Stephen is right there, you can get tubeless spoked wheels, so I think it comes down to what kind of riding you do. If you ride mainly on the road you can choose spoked or cast and have tubed or tubeless dependant upon what you think looks best and suits you. If your mainly off road then spoked is more durable and again you can choose tubed or tubeless.

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Stephen is right about one thing. You only have to have had one ‘blowout’ on a tube type tyre and it will colour your view of them forever! 

 

I quite like the look of spokes - but they’re bloody heavy. Converting my Triumph from spokes to cast wheels saved me a whopping 14 lbs of unsprung and rotational mass.

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Mikdent
14 minutes ago, Tex said:

Stephen is right about one thing. You only have to have had one ‘blowout’ on a tube type tyre and it will colour your view of them forever! 

 

I quite like the look of spokes - but they’re bloody heavy. Converting my Triumph from spokes to cast wheels saved me a whopping 14 lbs of unsprung and rotational mass.

 

Thats quite surprising Tex, on the face of it id have thought that spoked wheels were lighter.

 

Obviously some kind of optical illusion thing going on somewhere.  :ermm:

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45 minutes ago, Mikdent said:

 

Thats quite surprising Tex, on the face of it id have thought that spoked wheels were lighter.

 

Obviously some kind of optical illusion thing going on somewhere.  :ermm:

 

Indeed. I’m assuming it’s all the fresh air you can see between the individual spokes that makes them look ‘light’. 

 

It’s perfectly possible to convert (most, modern) spoked wheels to tubeless. And that was what I was looking into when I stumbled across the cast wheels going for a song.

 

Most punctures happen on a wet road, so a ‘fair weather Johnny’ like me should be safe anyway.. :) 

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TheEnglishman

Spoked wheels look the business.  The tubeless ones on my BMW R1200GS had terrible problems with run-out.  BMW didn't have the skills to sort them out - they just gave me new sets!  Once the warranty ran out I got a wheel builder to set them up properly and they were fine until the front one hit a wheel arch.  Some brands have problems with the spokes rusting and some cheap ones are, well, cheap.

 

I've hit a pothole or something on my SV and the front cast wheel has a ding in it.  Getting that repaired will cost almost as much as a replacement wheel.

 

So I guess for most of us it's really down to aesthetics.

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Mr Toad
6 hours ago, Mikdent said:

 

Thats quite surprising Tex, on the face of it id have thought that spoked wheels were lighter.

 

Obviously some kind of optical illusion thing going on somewhere.  :ermm:

 

They might be if they're the aluminium variety but the spoked wheels on the T100 are steel and weigh a ton.

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rainmaker

Apart from aesthetics, in theory, spoked rims should be more resilient to cracks/breaks as they flex a bit and better suited to rough stuff. In real world you have to do some seriously extreme stuff to actually need that extra strenght. 

 

Tubeless vs tube rims does not necessary relates to spokes or cast. There is no difference in production costs for cast wheels being tubeless, but that's not true for spoked and they are a bit more expensive. Africa Twin tubed rims are real annoyance and nothing but cost saving exercise from Honda. There's no single advantage of tubed rims against tubeless. 

 

And before offload brigade attacks me: you can put tube on tubeless rim if you really need so (why you would do that if your rim is not damaged is beyond my understanding). You cannot do the other way round though. 

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7 hours ago, rainmaker said:

And before offload brigade attacks me: you can put tube on tubeless rim if you really need so (why you would do that if your rim is not damaged is beyond my understanding).

 

:D 

 

7 hours ago, rainmaker said:

 

 

You cannot do the other way round though. 

 

It’s possible to convert spoke wheels to tubeless operation, but it’s a bit of a faff. There are ‘ready made’ kits from Japan for about £100. Loads of threads about this on Triumph forums with most folks sealing the spokes with ‘Green Loctite’ or using 3M sealant tape (4412N). 

 

Obviously one one needs to ensure that the rim concerned is the modern ‘safety’ type (MT) and not the old fashioned one (WM) without the tyre retaining lips.

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stephenmcg

Well there you go, a tubeless tyre with spoked wheels, I have never seen one advertised.

as tex says, you will only ever have one blowout on a tubed tyre, you will either survive and change bike, like me, or you won’t.

products will advertise that they can seal tubes, mine did not.

smcg in slightly thawing Glasgow

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Tonyj

I would hazard a guess that the majority of bike sold and ridden have tubes . knickers and twist come to mind . I accept that anyones personal experience trumps others who just read on but i don't get the resistance to the africa twins tubed tyres . my friends ktm 990 had tubes and he didn't die :0)

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Inner tubes didn’t stop me buying my Bonnie (and wouldn’t stop me buying an Affy Twin, either. Or a CB1100EX.. :) ) but I found a way to do without them. They’re just an added complication that I don’t need. 

 

I should say though, in the interest of fairness, that the tyre/tube combination I had never lost a single psi in 6 months. Maybe ‘old tech’ still has a place?

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baben
2 hours ago, Tonyj said:

I would hazard a guess that the majority of bike sold and ridden have tubes . knickers and twist come to mind . I accept that anyones personal experience trumps others who just read on but i don't get the resistance to the africa twins tubed tyres . my friends ktm 990 had tubes and he didn't die :0)

Last bike I had with tubes was a Yamaha YB100. Horrible thing it was but good fun too.

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alhendo1

Thanks to all who replied...that kind of clears things up for me👍

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Rev Ken
On 3/3/2018 at 16:52, Tex said:

Stephen is right about one thing. You only have to have had one ‘blowout’ on a tube type tyre and it will colour your view of them forever! 

 

I quite like the look of spokes - but they’re bloody heavy. Converting my Triumph from spokes to cast wheels saved me a whopping 14 lbs of unsprung and rotational mass.

Oh YES! I had THREE blow outs on my VIncent in three months! The first was my front tyre while travelling at speed.... (now national limits in those days!) I heard a 'poof' and wondered what it was until I came to a bend when I had to haul the bike round. I started to slow down trying to work out what the problem was and realised my front tyre wasn't it's normal uniform shape. I decided applying my brakes would not be a good idea as it would throw weight on to it, so I let it roll with the intention of bailing out when the rim hit the road. I was only going at about 10mph when it did and I was happy to park it on the grass verge before stepping off. Just a couple of months later my rear tyre had a blow out. Of course I braked heavily with my front brake (twin brake drums!) thinking 'this won't be too hard'.... wrong! The wheel rim hit the road at a lot higher speed, and I was all over the place until once again I took to the grass verge and came off at I guess about 20-30mph. Surprisingly neither my bike nor I suffered much damage (no protective clothing except for gloves and helmet in those days). I fitted a new Dunlop tyre and just a few days later it too failed. Fortunately I wasn't going fast and managed to come to a stop without further damage. Only this time it was a failure of the carcass due to poor manufacture. Dunlop offered me a new tyre free of charge - I didn't take up their offer!

 

Tubeless tyres for me - they deflate in a far more controlled manner unless the failure is catastrophic.

Edited by Rev Ken
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SteveThackery
On 04/03/2018 at 07:52, Tex said:

 

Obviously one one needs to ensure that the rim concerned is the modern ‘safety’ type (MT) and not the old fashioned one (WM) without the tyre retaining lips.

 

 

Can you explain more about that?  I read somewhere that people who convert their spoked wheel to tubeless, by sealing off the central groove where the spoke nipples go, are doing it wrong because the design of the rim is different between tubed and tubeless wheels.  Is that right?  And is there a safety or other implication?  And how can you tell if the rims are suitable for tubeless?

 

Edited by SteveThackery
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Easy enough matey. The old tube type rim (which will be size marked WM1 or WM2 etc) as found on old British bikes lack the ‘lip’ which hold a tubeless tyre in place (and stops it falling into the ‘well’ of the rim in the event of a puncture).

 

Modern tubeless (marked MT) rims have the extra lip. Picture it like this, viewed in section (from the outside in) there’s the outer lip (rim) then the tyre, then a (smaller) inner rim. Not very clear is it? I will try and find a picture..

 

Edit: Not easy to find a picture, but have a look at this - there’s some stuff there..

 

http://scootrs.com/moreinfo.cfm?Product_ID=1534

Edited by Tex
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SteveThackery
5 hours ago, Tex said:

Easy enough matey. The old tube type rim (which will be size marked WM1 or WM2 etc) as found on old British bikes lack the ‘lip’ which hold a tubeless tyre in place (and stops it falling into the ‘well’ of the rim in the event of a puncture).

 

Modern tubeless (marked MT) rims have the extra lip. Picture it like this, viewed in section (from the outside in) there’s the outer lip (rim) then the tyre, then a (smaller) inner rim. Not very clear is it? I will try and find a picture..

 

 

Ah, got it.  Thank you!

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suffolk58

When the Africa Twin came out, I so wanted one, but just had the "minor" problem of approaching the wife, to agree to me taking the money out of the savings account.:cry:

A few weeks later, I had to go to a conference about a hundred miles from home. I went on the uninspiring Suzuki Bandit, with the cast wheels, where the paint is falling off.

At the conference a guy arrived on a brand new Africa Twin. It looked so wonderful that I considered stealing it off him (not really).

At lunchtime we went out to admire all the bikes (except my Bandit) but discovered the Africa Twin had a flat front tyre.

We went back into the conference for the afternoon session, minus AT guy.

At the end of the conference, I headed back home on the Bandit, past AT guy, who was still waiting for the breakdown truck.

On my journey home I resolved not to buy an Africa Twin, until a tubeless tyred version was introduced to the market.

 

  

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Martin, I fully understand your concerns (as it’s exactly why I ditched the inner tubes on my Triumph) but I wouldn’t (and didn’t) let them stop me buying a machine I really liked.

 

It’s a morning’s work to convert to tubeless (although you, obviously, need suitable tyres).

 

 I think you’re going to have a very long wait for Honda to introduce a tubeless model.. ;) 

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Rocker66
3 hours ago, suffolk58 said:

When the Africa Twin came out, I so wanted one, but just had the "minor" problem of approaching the wife, to agree to me taking the money out of the savings account.:cry:

A few weeks later, I had to go to a conference about a hundred miles from home. I went on the uninspiring Suzuki Bandit, with the cast wheels, where the paint is falling off.

At the conference a guy arrived on a brand new Africa Twin. It looked so wonderful that I considered stealing it off him (not really).

At lunchtime we went out to admire all the bikes (except my Bandit) but discovered the Africa Twin had a flat front tyre.

We went back into the conference for the afternoon session, minus AT guy.

At the end of the conference, I headed back home on the Bandit, past AT guy, who was still waiting for the breakdown truck.

On my journey home I resolved not to buy an Africa Twin, until a tubeless tyred version was introduced to the market.

 

  

But then your bike could just as easily have got the puncture. The only real difference is that a tubed tyre could possibly have a sudden blow out. Obviously in this case it didn’t as if it did the rider would have known immediately rather than discover it lunch time.

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suffolk58

True Rocker, but the puncture repair kit I keep, with plugs and gas cylinders, should do a reasonable job to get me going again on my bike. To repair a tube, I'm not sure how to go about it. When I repair punctures on push bikes, I rest the bike upside down to get the wheel out. I'm not sure I could do that with a AT. :ahappy:

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