Road Race Wheels Cerca 1986

[Gummee]

Originally Posted by Chris

My first real race bike was built in ‘86. The sponsor built me a set of race wheels that was record hubs and gp4 rims. Tubies glued with Fastac.

Man did I love Fastac!

Re the OP: GEL 280 front, GL330 rear. 32/32 Unless the guy racing the wheels was tiny, then a pair of GEL280s

M

[John H.]

FIR Pulsar box section 32 hole.
2x14-15 front with alloy nips.
3x14-15 rear with brass nips on drive side.
Mavic hubs-

[bikinchris]

Also Galli and Assos rims.

[bikinchris]

Originally Posted by Gummee

Man did I love Fastac!

Re the OP: GEL 280 front, GL330 rear. 32/32 Unless the guy racing the wheels was tiny, then a pair of GEL280s

M

Early in my career, I built sets of wheels for a pair of twin 13 year old girls to race:
28 hole GEL 280 fronts with Titanium spokes and 32 hole GEL 330 rears with DT Revolution (or some other super light steel spoke) on Record hubs with Ti axles.
I wouldn't even test ride bikes with those wheels, since I weighed more than both of the girls added together.

[carpediemracing]

Originally Posted by jumphigher

Dont mean to hijack the thread but.. why are modern wheels so much stronger - what has changed?

I didn't read through all the answers but the short answer: stronger rims.

Back in the day I used to run 280g rim tubulars, which were probably 300-330g actual weight, but still, very light. Nowadays you won't find many rims like that in aluminum (any?) and "light" rims are 400-450g, which was as heavy as they got back then.

Such rims required a higher minimum number of spokes because the spokes were an integral part of the load rating.

However, with a heavier rim, the spokes do less weight bearing work and really just position the hub within the rim. With a 280g rim if you sat hard on an unlaced rim you'd bend it. With a 400g rim, less of a chance, and, nowadays, a 450g carbon rim can support quite a bit of weight without being laced. Heavier/stronger rims no longer needed the spokes to help support the weight, so you could find some crazy low spoke counts (down to 12 spokes for the aluminum Shamals, which weighed a lot in order to be strong enough), and even now you'll see 18 spoke front wheels (HED Ardennes type rim, of which I have a couple).

[Kontact]

Here's a shot from the '86 TDF. Hinnault's front wheel is clearly a 28 spoke. I can't see his rear well enough to say.

Originally Posted by Hindmost

One word: Extrusion. Another Paceliner once pointed out that prior to this, aluminum rims were essentially rolled sheet, welded into seamed tubing, then shaped into rims. The aluminum had to be soft enough for the shaping to occur. Low spoke count wheels were not an option with the resulting rims.

That happened a lot longer ago than 1986. All alloy clinchers are extrusions, for instance.

[carpediemracing]

My first set of race wheels (only wheels on my first ever serious bike) was a set of Campy Tipos with GP4s, 32H. Huge overkill on strength - I still have the front wheel, with 31 spokes (I rode it like that for years), somewhere in the garage.

My "best" race wheels in the 1990s were 28H Campy Record Crono rims, NR hubs, 1.8mm DB spokes. I still have a front wheel but the rears were a bit fragile, especially since one of my favorite tactics in a crit was to bomb through potholes/manhole-covers/sewer-grates since no one else wanted to go through them. The Record Crono rims were much rounder out of the box than any GEL280 I ever had so therefore had much more even spoke tension. For myself and through the shop I probably built 10 pairs of Record Cronos, maybe more, and maybe 4-6 sets of GEL280s.

My strongest "good" wheels were 28H FiR Isidis / whatever hub wheels I used Kingsberry and American Classic hubs, typically, and 1.8mm DB spokes up front, 1.8mm DB NDS / 2.0 DB DS in the rear.

I started converting to Zipp 340 rims, 24H Campy Record hubs, at about that time, and so the front wheels remained for hilly races (which I still did, now and then) for the fast descents. Otherwise I used Specialized Trispokes, Zipp 340/440s, Spinergys, and a proto rear disk wheel, depending on the course and my mood.

[jumphigher]

Thanks to everyone commenting on my 'why are modern wheels stronger?" question. I've learned a lot.

[tv_vt]

Another rim brand from those days: Nisi. Think they had an 'aero' V shaped rim, too. Wolber was around then also.

[bikinchris]

Yes, I should have remembered Wolber. I liked the look of the big white decals on the dark anodizing.

Low priced builds often had Matrix rims from Trek.

[Hindmost]

These are my time trial wheels I built and raced 30 years ago. GL 330's 32 3x. Spokes are 1.8/1.6 DT's. I used to weigh 170lbs, or so.

My current Eroica project is to be "Tout Mavic." I was imagining wheels for Lucho Herrera or Fabio Parra and was thinking 32 hole and 1.8/1.6 spokes again.

[oldpotatoe]

Originally Posted by Gummee

Man did I love Fastac!

Re the OP: GEL 280 front, GL330 rear. 32/32 Unless the guy racing the wheels was tiny, then a pair of GEL280s

M

I 'raced' on GEL280F, GL330R, 15/16 spokes, onto Hi-E hubs BUT I was 180 pounds or so so 36h...

[wallymann]

surely the TX profils were amongst the earliest viable aero rims widely available on the market. they were good enough that i still use mine on a regular basis, and they were built new in 1987 -- although have been re-laced to more modern hubs in the last ~5 years: F28(rad) + R32(3x)



in general, everyone nailed the options back in the '80s for race wheels: some combination of GEL280 - GL330 - GP4 (and equivalents) depending on the duty-cycle of the wheel and the owner's desire for durability vs lightweight-ness.

last year i built up some NOS 32H box-section Sun mistral clinchers on a set of disc hubs w/ 3X lacing for my gravel bike -- they looked the business, but failed miserably. i think the 2 big missing ingredients: lacking a strong cross-section (a-la not v-shaped) and not being heat-treated. even moderate rough roads they'd go massively out of true after one ride.

Originally Posted by tv_vt

Another rim brand from those days: Nisi. Think they had an 'aero' V shaped rim, too. Wolber was around then also.

nisi lasers...to die for!

[Tommasini53]

Your thread brings to point one of the biggest improvements in cycling; light and durable wheelsets.

80's era crits in the midwest were 28h 280gr Mavic rims, 3x, Campy high flange hubs, and Clement Seta Extra tires. Fantastic to ride on but wow, they were not durable. If you didn't dent the rim, a spoke probably pulled an eyelet through the rim. If you raced, you probably knew how to lace and build a wheel (or had a friend that did) because you were building several sets a year.
I'm not riding super light wheels, Campy Eurus, but they are a decade old and potholes and gravel haven't damaged them. great thread.

[stien]

It's circa not cerca