> Anyone out there had FIRSTHAND problems with 48 spokers in decent shape to
>begin with coming apart on the road. Any engineer types have a comment? I
>am a little worried about the extra stress the blower will exert though.
Carwise, I've no personal experience driving them. But I am gradually working
on my aunts MG which
has these type wheels on it (54 MGTF). I have noted a fair number of broken
spokes on each wheel.
Roughly 3-7 per wheel. Each broken out at the rim. Would I be willing to
drive it that way? Yes,
provided we're talking about get it running and gingerly drive it up and down
the farm lane.
I do not think it likely, or even particularly possible, to have the wheel
experience a
catastrophic failure because of its design. But if you neglect the wheel,
problems would progress
and could snowball. So, check your spokes often.
Engine power isn't a particular problem with spoke wheels. That's coming from
a motorcycle
background. I've had spoke wheels where you had to screw the tires into the
rims to keep them
attached because of the engines power. And had the engine rip sprockets apart.
The wheels would
hold up fine, as long as they were maintained. Let all the spokes get loose
and dump the clutch,
well, I think you can see the difference.
It's turning that's death on spoke wheels. Especially cars. Then you're
putting all kinds of
horrid forces on the spokes, and are far more likely to snap them. Vehicle
weight is hung from the
top spokes, spread out over quite a number of them (half roughly). Engine
power is distributed
over half of them as well (those that are rotating backwards). But when you
put the side load,
only a very few spokes are taking the load. If the tension isn't balanced
right, you can literally
have one spoke taking the load at a given moment of tire rotation. And that
will snap a spoke
quite rapidly.
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