![Blériot XI](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e5/Bl%C3%A9riot_XI.jpg)
Wire wheels, wire-spoked wheels, tension-spoked wheels, or "suspension" wheels are
wheel
A wheel is a circular component that is intended to rotate on an axle Bearing (mechanical), bearing. The wheel is one of the key components of the wheel and axle which is one of the Simple machine, six simple machines. Wheels, in conjunction wi ...
s whose
rims connect to their
hubs by wire
spoke
A spoke is one of some number of rods radiating from the center of a wheel (the hub where the axle connects), connecting the hub with the round traction surface.
The term originally referred to portions of a log that had been riven (split l ...
s.
[ Although these ]wire
Overhead power cabling. The conductor consists of seven strands of steel (centre, high tensile strength), surrounded by four outer layers of aluminium (high conductivity). Sample diameter 40 mm
A wire is a flexible strand of metal.
Wire is c ...
s are generally stiffer than a typical wire rope
Steel wire rope (right hand lang lay)
Wire rope is several strands of metal wire twisted into a helix forming a composite
''rope'', in a pattern known as ''laid rope''. Larger diameter wire rope consists of multiple strands of such laid rope in a ...
, they function mechanically the same as tensioned flexible wires, keeping the rim true while supporting applied loads. The term ''suspension wheel'' should not be confused with vehicle suspension.[
Wire wheels are used on most ]bicycle
A bicycle, also called a pedal cycle, bike or cycle, is a human-powered or motor-powered assisted, pedal-driven, single-track vehicle, having two wheels attached to a frame, one behind the other. A is called a cyclist, or bicyclist.
Bic ...
s and are still used on many motorcycles. They were invented by aeronautical engineer George Cayley
Sir George Cayley, 6th Baronet (27 December 1773 – 15 December 1857) was an English engineer, inventor, and aviator. He is one of the most important people in the history of aeronautics. Many consider him to be the first true scientific aeri ...
in 1808. Although Cayley first proposed wire wheels, he did not apply for a patent. The first patent for wire wheels was issued to Theodore Jones of London, England on October 11, 1826. Eugène Meyer of Paris, France was the first person to receive, in 1869, a patent for wire wheels on bicycles.
Bicycle wheels were not strong enough for cars until the development of tangentially spoked wheels. They rapidly became well established in the bicycle and motor tricycle world but were not common on cars until around 1907. This was encouraged by the Rudge-Whitworth patented detachable and interchangeable wheels designed by John Pugh. These wheels owed their resistance to braking and accelerative stresses to their two inner rows of tangential spokes. An outer row of radial spokes gave lateral strength against cornering stresses. These wheels were deeply dished
''Daily Hive'', formerly known as ''Vancity Buzz'', is a Canadian online newspaper based in Vancouver, British Columbia. It began digital publishing in 2008 and became Western Canada's largest online-only publication by 2016.
In September 2022 ...
so that steering pivot pins might lie as near as possible to the center-line of the tires. Their second feature was that they were easily detachable being mounted on splined false hubs.
A process of assembling wire wheels is described as wheelbuilding
Wheelbuilding is the process of assembling wire wheels (generally a bicycle wheel, but including wheelchairs, and some cars). The components of a wire wheel are the rim, spokes, nipples, and hub.
Goals
The wheelwright must ensure that the whe ...
.
On automobiles
From the earliest days automobiles used either wire wheels or heavy wooden or pressed steel spoked artillery type. The development of the quick detachable hubs of either Rudge-Whitworth or Riley design did much to popularise wire wheels and incidentally led to the fitting of "spare wheels". After their wooden spoked artillery wheels proved inadequate many US manufacturers paid John Pugh of Rudge-Whitworth royalties to manufacture wire wheels using his patents. Artillery wheels fell out of favour in the late 1920s and the development of the cheaper pressed steel wheels by Joseph Sankey replaced wire wheels wherever the premium price of wire wheels was not justified by their weight saving.
1929 Cadillac.jpg, Cadillac
The Cadillac Motor Car Division () is a division of the American automobile manufacturer General Motors (GM) that designs and builds luxury vehicles. Its major markets are the United States, Canada, and China. Cadillac models are distributed i ...
Chrysler.model77.750pix.jpg, Chrysler
Stellantis North America (officially FCA US and formerly Chrysler ()) is one of the " Big Three" automobile manufacturers in the United States, headquartered in Auburn Hills, Michigan. It is the American subsidiary of the multinational automoti ...
'29 Ford Model A (Auto classique Ste-Rose '11).JPG, Ford
1932 Lincoln 507 Sedan pic4.JPG, Lincoln
1929Packard645DualCowlPhaetonWheelBackLeft.jpg, Packard
Packard or Packard Motor Car Company was an American luxury automobile company located in Detroit, Michigan. The first Packard automobiles were produced in 1899, and the last Packards were built in South Bend, Indiana in 1958.
One of the "Thr ...
File:1937 Rolls-Royce Phantom III Limousine (13451967025) (cropped).jpg, Rolls-Royce Phantom III 1937 high-quality centre-lock (wire) wheels ''streamlined'' by nave plates
File:110 ans de l'automobile au Grand Palais - Alfa Romeo 6C 1750 Spyder Supersport - 1929 - 002.jpg, Wire wheels on a 1929 Alfa Romeo 6C 1750 Spyder Supersport
Image:1957 MG A Roadster.jpg, Wire wheels on a 1957 MGA MGA can refer to:
Transport
*MGA, IATA code for Augusto C. Sandino International Airport (Managua International Airport) in Managua, Nicaragua
*Monongahela Railway, a former coal-hauling short line railroad in the United States
*The MG MGA, a pop ...
File:Vauxhall wheel - Flickr - exfordy.jpg, Rudge-Whitworth wire wheel on a 1922 Vauxhall
Vauxhall ( ) is a district in South West London, part of the London Borough of Lambeth, England. Vauxhall was part of Surrey until 1889 when the County of London was created. Named after a medieval manor, "Fox Hall", it became well known for ...
25
Sports cars
Before 1960, sports/racing cars usually had Rudge-Whitworth centerlock wire wheels equipped with splined hubs and a quick-release "knockoff" (central wing nut) locking cap[1.3.4 Wire wheels]
The center-lock wire wheel is traditionally associated with vintage sports cars and racing cars, and for those of us of advancing years the blood is still stirred by memories of split-seconds saved by the deft application of copper-headed hammers to eared hubcaps. We also remember...
page 5, Colin Campbell ''New Directions in Suspension Design: Making the Fast Car Faster'' Taylor & Francis, 1981, USA. . that could be unscrewed by striking a wing of the nut with a special alloy mallet or "knockoff hammer". Some jurisdictions, including the United States and West Germany, prohibited eared hubcaps for safety reasons in the late 1960s. In response, some manufacturers (e.g. Maserati) preferred to hold the wheel on the splined hub by capping with a single conventional unwinged hex nut requiring a special large spanner.
In the 1960s even lighter cast alloy wheel
In the automotive industry, alloy wheels are wheels that are made from an alloy of aluminium or magnesium. Alloys are mixtures of a metal and other elements. They generally provide greater strength over pure metals, which are usually much softe ...
s became usual—at first with splined hubs and knock-off caps—and now predominate. New versions of wire wheels are still made but often with standard hub bolt patterns covered by a center cap to fit without adapters.
File:257773 2030637598504 1021034280 2383948 6570269 o.jpg, Wire hubcaps as seen on a 1989 Cadillac Brougham
File:Ferrari wheel - Flickr - exfordy (1).jpg, Ferrari knock-on wire-spoked wheel
by Italian manufacturer Ruote Borrani, in Milan
Milan ( , , Lombard: ; it, Milano ) is a city in northern Italy, capital of Lombardy, and the second-most populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of about 1.4 million, while its metropolitan city h ...
On motorcycles
At one time, motorcycles used wire wheels built up from separate components, but, except for adventure, enduro or dirtbike
The six main types of motorcycles are generally recognized as ''standard'', ''cruiser'', ''touring'', ''sports'', ''off-road'', and ''dual-purpose''. ''Sport touring'' is sometimes recognized as a seventh category or integrated with the ''touring' ...
s, they are now mainly used for their retro appearance.
File:Curtiss V-8 Motorcycle.jpg, Wire wheels on a 1906 Curtiss V-8 motorcycle
File:Sans sou pap.jpg, Wire wheels on a French San Sou Pap motorcycle
File:DumontDunes 2005-04-25 paddle-tire.jpg, Wire wheels on a modern motocross-style motorcycle
File:WEC E2 enduro bike.jpg, Wire wheels on a modern enduro-style motorcycle
File:2000JackalV11.jpg, Wire wheels on a modern cruiser-style motorcycle
File:Harley-Davidson Monocylinder.jpg, Wire wheels on the first Harley-Davidson
Harley-Davidson, Inc. (H-D, or simply Harley) is an American motorcycle manufacturer headquartered in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, United States. Founded in 1903, it is one of two major American motorcycle manufacturers to survive the Great Depressi ...
motorcycle
A motorcycle (motorbike, bike, or trike (if three-wheeled)) is a two or three-wheeled motor vehicle steered by a handlebar. Motorcycle design varies greatly to suit a range of different purposes: long-distance travel, commuting, cruising ...
On bicycles
The first commercially successful use of wired wheels was on bicycles. They were introduced early on in the development of the bicycle, following soon after the adoption of solid rubber tires. This development marked a major improvement over the older wooden wheels, both in terms of weight and comfort (the increased elasticity of the wheel helping to absorb road vibrations).
In England, the engineer William Stanley developed the ''steel-wired spider wheel'' in 1849, an improvement over the cumbersome wooden spoked wheels then fitted to the tricycles that his employer was making.
Bicycle manufacturers build millions of wheels annually, using the common crossed-spoke patterns whose crossings of adjacent spokes are governed by the number of spokes in the wheel. Wheelbuilders of racing teams and in good bicycle shops build wheels to other patterns such as two-cross, one-cross, or no-cross (usually called radial). Many of these patterns have been used for more than 100 years. It is claimed that crossed patterns have more strength and stability, and that irregular patterns are art forms and have little structural merit.[
In the 1980s, cast wheels with 5 or 6 rigid spokes began to appear in the Olympic Games and in professional racing. These have advantages in specialized applications, such as time trials, but wire-spoked wheels are used for most purposes.
]
Spoke Tension and Tire Pressure
Typically, each spoke is pretensioned to about 100 pounds of force, on an unloaded wheel. When the bicycle is loaded with a rider, then the spokes below the hub have less tension. With every rotation of the wheel, there is repeatedly changes in the spoke tension that can contribute to broken spokes because of fatigue failures. Fatigue usually causes spokes to fail.
With the proper air pressure, the tire will absorb light bumps and vibrations and roll faster than a hard, inflexible tire at higher air pressures in the 120-130 psig range. Heavier riders require slightly higher air pressures.
Reaction to load
The reaction to a radial load of a well-tensioned wire spoked wheel, such as by a rider sitting on a bicycle, is that the wheel flattens slightly near the ground contact area. The rest of the wheel remains approximately circular. The tension of all the spokes does not increase significantly; instead, only the spokes directly under the hub decrease their tension. The issue of how best to describe this situation is debated. Some authors conclude from this that the hub "stands" on those spokes immediately below it that experience a reduction in tension, even though the spokes below the hub exert no upward force on the hub and can be replaced by chains without much changing the physics of the wheel.[ Other authors conclude that the hub "hangs" from those spokes above it that exert an upward force on the hub, and that have higher tension than the spokes below the hub, which pull down on the hub.]
Despite being composed of thin and relatively flexible spokes, wire wheels are radially stiff and provide very little suspension compliance compared to even high-pressure bicycle tires.
Gallery
Image:Speichenkreuzung.jpg, Bicycle wheel
A bicycle wheel is a wheel, most commonly a wire wheel, designed for a bicycle. A pair is often called a wheelset, especially in the context of ready built "off the shelf" performance-oriented wheels.
Bicycle wheels are typically designed ...
s with a radial spoke
A spoke is one of some number of rods radiating from the center of a wheel (the hub where the axle connects), connecting the hub with the round traction surface.
The term originally referred to portions of a log that had been riven (split l ...
pattern (left) and three cross (right)
Image:Harley-Davidson 9.jpg, Early Harley-Davidson
Harley-Davidson, Inc. (H-D, or simply Harley) is an American motorcycle manufacturer headquartered in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, United States. Founded in 1903, it is one of two major American motorcycle manufacturers to survive the Great Depressi ...
with wire wheels
Image:Portland Basin waterwheel- 5185.JPG, A suspension wheel at the Portland Basin Canal Warehouse
Note
References
External links
Astounding.org.uk
an analysis of the deflection of wire wheels.
Duke.edu
an analysis of the deflection of wire wheels (PDF
Portable Document Format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems. ...
format).
{{Powertrain
Wheels