Helpful Hints in Choosing a Wheel

Hubs
Most hubs now days use cartridge bearings or a cup and cone style bearing. Both styles can do a great job in keeping road muck out of your system and both can be very smooth rollers. Something I want to clear up right now before I go on is that a cup and cone system is just as good as a cartridge system when it comes to keeping the elements out of the bearings. The difference between the two is when you let your cartridge bearing go to the point of grinding, you just pop the cartridge out and put in a new one. When you let your cup and cone system go to the point were there is grinding, chances are you just destroyed your hub. Thus, you have an advantage with cartridge bearing in bad weather or for a neglectful owner. On the flip side, it is much easier to find tools and bearings for a cup and cone style hub, if you are doing the work yourself. Another advantage or disadvantage with a cup and cone system hub is that you can adjust your bearings, whereas adjustment is rare in a cartridge bearing system. Now, I say advantage/disadvantage depending on your ability in adjusting your cup and cone system. If you are good with your hands, this means you can have your wheels spinning with less resistance. If you are not so good with your hands, you can crush the bearing by making the cones too tight, or you can do just as much damage making them too loose. (They really aren’t that hard to adjust though.)

Flanges
Hubs today are using all sorts of different flange heights (the elevated point where the spoke attaches to the hub). You see hubs where it appears as if there is no flange and you see hubs with flanges of the same height or varying heights. What’s the difference? Flange height will change your spoke length depending on the height of the flange. In theory, you will have a stronger wheel with shorter spokes, but does it make that big of a difference to have a high flange over a low profile flange? Not really. Though, it probably does make a small difference. Hubs with varying flange heights are generally designed this way to help even out the already disproportionate levels of spoke tension on rear wheels, which would allow the builder to have a stronger wheel.

Freehub Body
Anther point of discussion with hubs is contact points in a cassette hub-body. This is a factor if you are a large guy who breaks the points of contact in a hub. I honestly don’t see how people break the teeth off their pawls or ratchet mechanism, but what do I know? My weight ranges from 140 to 165 lbs depending on how I’m training or how out of shape I am. The reason I think this is a silly discussion is the Mavic wheels only use two pawls and Campy only uses three. I think they’re plenty strong for most of us. Usually the problem with free-hub bodies are, that people don’t clean them and the pawls are not able to freely move or engage the ratcheting mechanism.

Spokes
There are a variety of different spoke materials out there. You will see carbon, aluminum, titanium, stainless steel and steel spokes for the most part. If you have a wheel with plain steel spokes you should definitely make a point to wipe them after every ride to keep them from oxidizing. The other spokes are a little more resilient to the elements.
Let’s go over why spokes are so important. The spokes on a wheel are incredibly important. First of all, the number of spokes, the material used and how it’s manipulated makes up a good portion of the wheels weight. Secondly, they are the source of wheel strength.
How spokes attribute to a wheel’s strength is as follows: Your rim determines how much spoke tension you can have in a wheel and your spokes are the load-bearers of the wheel. Whenever a person gets on a bike, the wheel becomes compressed and spoke tension is taken from the spokes between the ground and the dropout on the fork/ frame. When the wheel turns as the rider rides, the spokes regain their tension and the spokes now between the ground and the dropout on the fork/ frame become decompressed. This cycle is constantly attacking your spokes. Alternating between spoke compression and spoke decompression wears them down until they break because spoke materials can only be stretched “x” number of times before they fail. Now, the higher spoke tension a wheel has, the stronger it is, because it is harder for the wheel to decompress the spokes as a load is placed upon it. This is generally why hand-built wheels are more desirable than machine-built wheels. The number of spokes also plays into wheel strength because load bearing is distributed among the number of spokes in a wheel.
Now, let’s talk about manipulation. There are spokes out there with extreme levels of manipulation like the DT revolution and the Sapim CX-Ray. These spokes are strong when laced to a strong rim with plenty of spoke tension, and they are incredibly light. Some spokes are bladed and allow the spoke to cut through the air with ease, but act as sails in a crosswind. Titanium spokes are very light, but are harder to build with, as are other lightweight spokes. Aluminum spokes are generally unreliable with the exception of Mavic’s Zicral aluminum spokes. Carbon spokes are also generally unreliable with the exception of Spinergy’s PBO fiber spokes. The PBO spoke also offer a smoother ride than the other spokes with vibration damping fibers.
Spoke nipples work hand in hand with spokes, as they are the instrument that attaches the spoke to the rim or the hub, and allow the mechanic to apply proper spoke tension. Aluminum nipples are lighter, but brass nipples are stronger. However, it is rare that I see wheel failure from a nipple.

Rims
Last of all, we come to the rim. As stated earlier, the rim is what determines how much spoke tension can be used when building a wheel. The rim’s profile, eyelets, walls and material determine rim strength. To better understand this idea, I will go over the basic ways to view rim strength. The taller the rim is, the stronger it is vertically (more resistant to flat spots). The wider a rim is, the stronger it is laterally. Double-walled rims allow the manufacture to use less material in the braking surface and they aid in rim strength. This means a double-walled rim will be stronger and lighter than a single-walled rim. (We don’t sell wheels with single wall rims.) Eyelets are the metal rings around the nipples. These metal rings reinforce the rim and help the rim from cracking at the holes. When the metal ring goes down to the second wall, the eyelet reinforcement is even greater.
Taller rims generally are heavier, but roll much faster than a low profile rim. A high profile rim is much more aerodynamic than a low profile rim, but like blade spokes, tends to act as a sail in a crosswind. Short rims or low profile rims are generally lighter, allow for quicker acceleration, and are less weight to pull up climbs.

Conclusion
Now that you have been empowered with wheel knowledge, you should assess what type of wheel you are looking for and what type of rider you are, and then plug in all the variables that have been discussed to help you with your purchase.