🤔 Why Do Bicycle Spokes Matter? Things to consider before buying your next bicycle wheel.

🤔 Why Do Bicycle Spokes Matter? Things to consider before buying your next bicycle wheel.

Spokes are overlooked most of the times when cyclists purchase wheels. Their function is in fact much appreciable once understood correctly. Here’s a simple and basic overview of why bicycle spokes matter and things you should consider before making wheel purchases.

What Do Bicycle Spokes Do?

Spokes play a major role in holding the wheel together, distributing weight optimally, and thereby affecting the overall ease and flexibility of wheel movements.

What Are The Choices for consumers?

1) Material:

Common choices in spoke material are aluminium and steel, each with their own beneficial factors. Steel spokes have the advantage of strength, and durability to withstand rigorous rides. Aluminium spokes on the other hand have a lightweight advantage.

High end wheels like Spinergy are made up of special in-house patented material to combine optimal benefits required for spoke functionality. Each of Spinergy’s special PBO spokes is made of 30,000 strands of Polyphenylene Bensobisoxazole fiber, delivering 3-times the strength of stainless steel at just half the weight! The PBO spokes are covered with a chemical resistant, water / UV proof composite, in a choice of outer colors. These PBO spokes make Spinergy wheels lighter, stronger, and faster.

2) Number of spokes

Number of spokes determines a bike wheel’s stiffness and ability to handle tension and rigor, which varies a lot between road bikes, gravel bikes, and mountain bikes. Commuter/road bikes usually do well with lower number of spokes as they are usually not subjected to strong and sudden impacts faced by mountain bikes. Choices are usually 16, 18, 24, or 32 spokes per wheel. Mountain bikes usually have a larger number of spokes to ensure better weight and impact distribution to reduce stress to riders.

3) Round vs Bladed spokes

Most common spokes are round spokes, for value and price friendliness. However for racers, triathletes, and other competitors, bladed spokes offer significant aerodynamic advantages for high speed performance. Bladed spokes are a premium feature that comes with significant price advantage

4) Spoke Arrangement

Spokes can be arranged in radial or crossed patterns. Radial wheels have a significant speed advantage, as the spokes go straight from rim to hub without any crossing. Crossed spokes increase wheel strength, which is important for mountain bikes which usually have 2x or 3x crossed spokes for ultimate strength. This however increases the weight of wheels and affects speed.

We now welcome you to take a look at Spinergy Wheels, with significant performance advantage from their in-house, patented PBO spokes. Spinergy has specialized lines for road bikes, gravel bikes, and mountain bikes, wherein the number of spokes, arrangement, and design varies to optimize rider requirements.

 

 

📣 We have partnered with Rumbleship to offer Net Terms to dealers.
  • You can get NET 30 and NET 60 as our standard terms and NET 90 upon request on orders.
  • You can also use Rumbleship to just wire us immediately, no rates apply.

Ready to buy now and pay later? You can read all about it here.

Ride on!
Team ZEITBIKE


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