I, just wondering if their is any ways to add some significant weight to a wheel. I know if my wheel is heavier I can get a little more momentum from it.
I was debating about stuffing some tuff strips (those thick plastic strips that you put into a tire to prevent flats) and an extra inner tube plus a nice thick tire to help me on my plight, anyone else do this or am I crazy?
I think I saw a thread on this awhile ago. Try searching.
Fill your inner tube with water.
But yes, you’re crazy; there is no beneficial effect from additional rotating weight.
So how come my friends 24" muni with much more weight in the wheel felt more solid and generated more momentum than mine? he tried mine out and said it was really light and didnt have the inertia like his.
Your friend’s wheel does not generate momentum. You generate momentum. Your wheel has inertia and your friend’s wheel has inertia. If one of the wheels is heavier than the other and that extra weight is at the perimeter, then that wheel probably has more inertia. It takes more work for you to increase the momentum in a wheel that has more inertia.
It is true that a heavier wheel will have more momentum than a lighter wheel, if they’re moving at the same speed. That means the heavier wheel will be harder to do anything with; speed up, slow down, turn, hop, go uphill, go downhill, etc.
There are some limited advantages of a heavier wheel, namely more stability and it just makes things smoother. Of course it it then harder to make corrections and if you find yourself going too fast you may not be able to check your speed and crash spectacularly on your way to class…
You may be crazy but you are in good company:p. I was crazy enough to add 3/4 of a pound of lead to my wheel. Here is the thread I started about it.
I think this is not the way to go. It makes the unicycle less responsive - not only to minor changes in the ground beneath you (i.e. smoother to ride) but also to your input for braking and turning (less nimble).
Far better to work on your riding skills than to muck about with the unicycle in this way. If the arrow misses, look to the archer, not to the bow.
How much do you weigh compared to the uni? I weigh around 165 pounds, which is several times as much as my uni - so when my uni needs a bit more momentum in the wheel to get it over an obstacle, I shift my weight.
I just read over my old thread and it didn’t have a bunch of the posts that I thought it did, I must have been posting in another thread.
Basically having tried it I agree that it is not a good idea. The crash that I mentioned left me with a badly separated shoulder requiring them to take muscle casing out of my leg to re-build the ligaments I wrecked between my collarbone and shoulder-blade. I still have a numb spot where they took the muscle casing from.
Part of the inertia that you are feeling with your friends MUni is the fact that it has less rolling resistance on soft and rough surfaces since it both floats and conforms to the terrain better.
hmmm… never thought of that.
That is a goods point, I guess with the wider heavier wheel it would provide much more stability than on the 26 x 1.95 I’m rolling in the rocks with. even with added weight I wouldn’t have the width, which would definitely present limitations.
I’ve tried several light/heavy tires on my 20 & Muni (24), and noticed several differences that required getting used to.
A heavier tire tended to roll over bumps better, more stable, maintain speed up hills (as long as I had at least a moderate pace).
It was also harder to make sudden turns, accelerate/slow down, harder to ride uphill (at a slow pace), and more tiring.
Mainly this meant I just had to ride it differently, but in case of my Muni, overall I preffered the lighter tire (2.6" vs. 3").