Hulla-hoops

Looks good Paul will be good to see the finished article.

gibberjoe said...


I scored some good gear at the tip t other day. One piece was the 5 stared castor dolly off a secretarial chair. After scabbing the castors i was left with a very strong 5 spoker which i would say could fit landy's project with a bit of out of the square thinking.....possibilitys

Ive been racking my brain about how to make a mold for a 5 spoke wheel.
bugger me gibberjoe you just blew me away with that SOLUTION

well I finally got on with finishing the single rim fat project.
everything seemed to go together just fine.This time i used some strips of carbon in the hub layup, even though the holeyspoker really didnt fail too badly in that area. I used a slightly thinner cotton flock blend this time for the glueing as the dead wheel showed it to grip better than the stiffer mix.
the premade glass extension on the rim that you can see in the last photo did its job well resulting in a 30mm wide glueing area on the rim instead of the previous 10mm

the wheel came out round and fairly well balanced, AND I finally cracked the 3000gm barrier with a wheel weighing in at 2920gms.I have to be happy with this given the tyre and tube weighs in at 1995gms

no such luck with the weight stu, the rim is 2920gms,tyre and tube 1990gms
I fitted the tyre todayand huffed it up to 50psi. normally a wheel wil make a few noises as it settles in but this one just sat there and took it all.
I cannnot see or feel any flexing on the glass between the rims either.
It didnt need any rim balancing at all which will mean smoother running.
chook did some speed testing with the wheels I made for him , which were rather fascinating, perhaps he could post them here . the wheel looks rather see-through as I havent painted it so I can see any "changes"

Yes sorry Landyacht, I had forgotten about the results I got.

I just wanted the peace of mind that these wheels will take high speeds, cause as everyone knows I'm not a risk taking kind of fellow.

I mounted the 26" flat sided rim onto an arm with a 20mm stub axle and put the whole lot into my 6” bench vice and really swung on it to clamp everything up super tight.

For the revolutions per minute, I used the optical tachometer I have for reading the main rotor speed of my radio controlled helicopters.
So a bit of reflective tape was attached to the shoulder of the rim for the RPM sensor to pick up.

I used a polishing mop (like a very coarse pot scourer on a mandrel) in my air die grinder, to spin the wheel up to speed and just read off the RPM.
The 26" wheel had a strange sounding harmonic as it passed through 630 rpm and then settled down again with very little vibration till it topped out at 1165 rpm. This is as fast as I could get it to rotate as if I applied more pressure to increase the friction on the tyre it just slowed it down and the grinder had its tongue hanging out with no more power to be had.
When I worked it out that's 142 Kmh and it took 52 minutes to come to a complete stop.
I was very impressed.

I spun the "20 x 3" Fatti-o" wheel, (That I used on the front of the kite buggy) when I got home from Lake Lefroy and it was very lumpy for a start. The tyre wasn't seated evenly around the rim and had a high spot that I corrected by deflating it and slipping the tyre around the rim until it was even. It took 3 goes, as the sidewalls of this tyre are very soft and when it was inflated it crept out of position each time.

I gave it the spin test and this tyre was a whole new ball game. Even at 40 psi it grew in height by about 6mm at the tread centre and the “snake pattern” indentation of the tread on a pretty smooth tyre pumped an amazing amount of air.
Due to its smaller diameter I couldn't get it over 118 kmh and it stopped rotating in just over 18 minutes. A big difference and slowing due to the air disturbance rather than it's smaller 550mm diameter.

That's as far as I've got testing them.

I have now shifted the front wheel back 135mm on the kite buggy, which has increases the load on the front tyre by 680 grams compared to the before weight. So will be interesting to weigh it with me in it after the modification to see the increase on the front end.

Thanks for all your help Paul.

I wonder if the fatti-o tyre was the problem on lefroy.

No, I'm sure that I just stuffed up and made the front end too long.
I also reckon that with the "Fatti-o" rotating while travelling forward; will negate the turbulence from the tread issue.

I spoke to my mate that owns the local tyre fitters and he mentioned that some tyres that are designed for one way rotation (to eliminate hydroplaning, or side wall torque, etc.) can play merry hell to the steering on some cars when fitted backwards.

They also must be balanced in the correct direction of rotation, which stands to reason.
So we now need 2 spare tyres on our car to cover this????

Life is not all plain sailing eh!!!!

Enough of me stealing your construction thread.
Your rims are AWESOME!!!
I'm gone.