Spoke Tension on Coker Wheels

Unicycles and Equipment
1

I’m rebuilding my stock Coker wheel to change to the 100mm wide hub and the Aero rim. Before I pulled off the spokes I decided to measure the tension in the stock setup for use in the rebuild process. I found that the average tension (using a Wheelsmith tensiometer) is less than half of what a normal cycle wheel would be. I know the wheel was true and working pretty well both on- and off-road, although it was flexing a bit more than I would have liked on the the uphills. Now I’m wondering:

  1. Should my stock wheel have been tensioned higher all along? Up to twice as high?

  2. Should I tension the new setup up where a normal wheel would be (say, 100 kg)?

I can imagine that the stock setup with the narrow hub is very thinly metastable and that one would keep the tension artificially low to help maintain wheel integrity. I suppose, too, that the new setup will be much more stable and could be tensioned higher for greater wheel strength. Does anyone have any experience or knowledge in this area?

2

Hi,

Not really an answer to your specific question but I found out the hard way that the stock Coker wheel is laced in a cross 3 pattern and the Deluxe Coker (which I rebuilt) is laced in a cross 4 pattern.

Bruce