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Originally Posted by November Dave
First, I'll contradict Peter P's assertion that bladed spokes flex more. You aren't taking the spoke out of a straight line when you stress it laterally, you are just pulling it harder or less hard. The stiffness of a spoke is a function of the cross sectional area of the spoke and the Young's modulus of the spoke material. Since most spokes are made out of the same material, cross sectional area matters, but section shape doesn't.
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Spokes act somewhat like the guy wires on a tower. The wires only carry forces along their length, so their bending stiffness doesn't matters. Hence, the shape of the guy wires doesn't matter, all that really matters for the tower lateral stiffness is the material (modulus), cross-sectional area, bracing angles, number, and length of the guy wires.
Quote:
Originally Posted by November Dave
The #1 issue that flexy wheels have ever exhibited to me is understeering in hard cornering. Lace a 32h Open Pro with a 16h front hub and go rip some corners and you'll see what I'm saying. It's awful.
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Remember the Roval Fusee Star wheels? These wheels had narrow flange spacing and a shallow rim, hence they were very flexy laterally. A Cat. 1 racer I knew who used them in cyclocross races said that every time she took a sharp turn on them, they felt like they were folding over.
Quote:
Originally Posted by November Dave
The "spin up" stuff has always smelled like BS to me.
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Wheel weight is not nothing, but it only affects "spin up" in relation to how the wheel weight effects the entire system weight.
Quote:
Originally Posted by November Dave
It was quite a while ago that I started thinking of wheels as "tire holders." Absent any notably bad characteristics - very heavy weight, profound lack of stiffness, bad build, unreliable hubs, etc - the differences between wheels are really down to the differences between the tires on them, and the pressure those tires are inflated to.
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This is pretty much how I feel. All I'd add is that rim (inner) width can also make a difference, but only in as far as how it effects the tire dynamics.
And as far as stiffness goes, it is possible to have too little stiffness, but not really possible to have too much. Or to put it another way, as long as the wheels have adequate stiffness, any additional stiffness makes no meaningful difference.