At 09:40 AM 6/10/02 -0700, Max Heim wrote:
>on 6/7/02 10:54 PM, Dan Furbish at BarnOwl@world.std.com wrote:
> > and when cornering I can feel the flex or the not total control,
> there's a wishy washy feel to wire wheels when cornering hard.
>
>I extremely doubt you can feel the wire wheels flex... if you can they are
>in dangerously poor condition. ....
Oh?
Well I can add a few cents worth here. My MGA has bolt on wheels. The
first time I bought race tires (about 1994) I mounted them on the stock
stamped and welded steel wheels. The race tires are of course lots less
mushy feeling that the street tires, but I was encountering some
substantial amount of front end shudder on hard tight turns. For the time
being I was attributing this to possibly weak shock absorbers, but that was
ultimately not the case. I was also getting stress cracks in the steel wheels.
One year later I bought the forged aluminum wheels, and what a
difference!!! After that the nose of the car would just swish around the
corners in the same places on the same pavement with no noticeable bump or
shudder, and everything was much more controlable. The only difference is
that the aluminum wheels are very stiff, and the original steel wheels flex
like a warped phonograph record. (We all remember those don't we?) When
the steel wheel is substantially stressed and flexed in a hard turn, and it
hits even the smallest bump in the pavement, the tire will lose some grip
with the pavement, and the wheel will snap quickly back towards the
original flat condition. It then plants itself firmly back on the pavement
to take up the side load again, and subsequent ripples in the pavement make
it repeat the little dance. The aluminum wheels are so much stiffer by
comparison that they resist the flexing and eliminate the shudder all together.
Now you can speculate all you want as to whether 60 spoke of 72 spoke wire
wheels may be stiffer than the stamped steel wheels, but in my prior
experience the 48 spoke wire wheels are definitly more flexible than the
stamped steel wheels. Those spokes stretch and retract a lot like tension
springs, and the wheels can be in perfect condition when it happens. For
my money they would have to be 72 spoke wheels, or I wouldn't even try to
use the race tires on them. Even then I'd be a little skeptical, because I
haven't had the opportunity to try it. But by best guess is that almost
any aluminum wheel will be stiffer than any wire wheel, and probably would
make a noticeable difference in handling, especially on a slightly rough
surface.
$.03,
Barney Gaylord
1958 MGA with an attitude (and a bunch of broken steel wheels)
http://www.ntsource.com/~barneymg
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