Elsewhere in this issue, you will have read Alan Cathcart’s tribute to the late Peter Williams, motorcycle racer and engineer. It would be accurate to say that, for most people, he was better known as a racer but to ignore his engineering talents would be to do him a disservice. For Williams quite literally reinvented the wheel!
Rummaging through a box of old magazines, I came across a copy of UK magazine Classic Bike from 2006 in which Williams wrote a short article on wheel building technology and techniques.
In the first part, he goes into some technical detail about spoked rims.
“If you look carefully, you may notice that some wheels have 40 spokes, some 36 and others 32. On each side of the lacing there are pairs of spokes. One of each pair converts the clockwise torque (turning force during acceleration) from the hub into tension to pull the rim clockwise. The other converts the anticlockwise torque (during braking) from the hub to pull the rim anticlockwise.”
This story is from the February 2021 edition of Bike SA.
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This story is from the February 2021 edition of Bike SA.
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