[AzCal Retred]

Wow, even the old drum brake Bullet has cool cast wheels available, a shame the 650 folks don't have that option...

http://www.2wheelszone.com/index.php?route=product/search&search=wheel

..and belt drive...

[stinkwheel]

The difficulty is sorting out the actual functional motorcycle parts from the dangerously badly engineered bling rubbish. Because there is a LOT of the latter out there. Extra wide swingarms made from flatbar are a good example.



It's hard to produce a dangerously bady made spoked wheel without it being obvious (although I've seen a couple that had unuseably off-centre drum machining and loose-fitting bearing seats and my last front had been laced incorrectly) but who knows what those alloy ones were made of?

[Adrian II]

Sintered rice starch?

There is that You Tube video taken by someone riding a cast alloy wheeled Bullet where the front wheel suddenly collapses, hello tarmac/black top.

In that instance the wheel was of a design that used a load of very thin section spokes. I'm working on the assumption that the cast ally wheels with fewer but thicker spokes are a tougher preposition. Hope I'm right for the sake of the new Meteor and Hunter models being sold now with cast alloy wheels, or my Not A Fury for that matter.

A.

[Bullet Whisperer]

The difficulty is sorting out the actual functional motorcycle parts from the dangerously badly engineered bling rubbish.

It's hard to produce a dangerously bady made spoked wheel without it being obvious (although I've seen a couple that had unuseably off-centre drum machining and loose-fitting bearing seats and my last front had been laced incorrectly) but who knows what those alloy ones were made of?

Those custom 80 - or is it 100? spoked wheels for Bullets are especially nasty, with all spokes one side facing one way and all spokes on the other side facing the other way. There is no way you can set any real tension up between one side and the other, as I found out once, when I was asked to move such a wheel's rim over slightly, relative to the hub. Slackening the spokes on one side and tightening them on the other did not budge the rim, and it is just the shear number of spokes which holds the rim 'true'. The mind boggles as to what could happen under heavy braking, or on a machine with a bit of extra power at the rear wheel ...
B.W.

[stinkwheel]

Yeah, those things look lethal. Radial spoked (none of the spokes cross). Radial spoking any wheel which is either powered or hub-braked is a stuipd idea because you have almost no resistance to the torsion forces being passed through the spokes to the rim from the hub. There is also a very real risk of them fracturing the flange on the hub, they're all pulling in the same direction and from the same side and could quite easily just crack it all the way round through the spoke holes. The only motorbike wheel I'd even consider radial spoking would be a front wheel with either no front brake in a Peter Fonda style or a very old rim-braked one.

I quite like an esoteric spoke pattern on bicycle wheels but I'll only use radial spoking on a rim-braked wheel. If I wanted the radial spoke aesthetic, I might be tempted to do a half-radial pattern, using a crossed pattern on the "power" side of the hub and radial on the other but I'd still be very wary of it. So like I'm building wheels for Mrs stinkwheels fixed gear retro-racer. It's having a radial front for lightness, it has a rim brake so the only torsional force in the spokes is the resistance of the wheel bearings. Also using a high-flange hub to reduce the risk of flange seperation. It's getting 3-cross rear with double-butted spokes because it'll be getting power in both directions from the fixed hub.

I did a half twist 3-cross snowflake on my own push bike which has a single speed hub brake. That's just for aesthetics but it's also pretty strong. It's a complete arse to true-up though and makes horrible creaking noises when you get on the brakes and load-up the trailing spokes. It would be really interesting to see if you could do a snowflake motorcycle wheel but I suspect you'd need to pre-form the spokes, then you'd never get them laced in.

[stinkwheel]

Hope I'm right for the sake of the new Meteor and Hunter models being sold now with cast alloy wheels, or my Not A Fury for that matter.

Presumably those aren't being manufactured by a bloke in sandals squatting next to a charcoal furnace in the streets of Chennai with a heap of green sand on one side and pile of random aluminium scrap on the other. Many of the aftermarket parts you buy from India are made in such a "cottage industry" fashion. Not to denegrate the skills these guys have to produce cast alloy parts with almost no equipment but the quality of the materials, the chances of inclusions and the lack of a controlled ageing/tempering process makes them an absolute lottery. I had three fork legs from ebay India snap thrugh the pinch bolt on the first or second tightening. They all looked the part and had been reasonably accurately machined but the grain structure on the breaks suggested there had been absolutely no post-production tempering/ageing process.

[AzCal Retred]

I may be mistaken but it's my observation that RE uses lots of small jobbers & suppliers and doesn't make everything in-house with attendant strict in-house controls. Building injection molded cast wheels is way beyond "street mechanic" tech. One thing that makes RE & Chinese bikes in general affordably cheap is this use of low price bidders. There's a reason machines from the "Big 4" cost 30% - 50% more. Funky cast wheels on 18-22 HP, 70 MPH motorcycles are way more survivable that on a Hayabusa. A set of these 3-spoke wheels bolted onto any of my Pre-Unit Bullets or a stock UCE (assuming checking proves the brake drum is round enough, the wheel is concentric, balanced, etc.) would be functional enough to allow tubeless tire usage. They'd probably be soft (and porus?) compared to higher cost pieces and likely wouldn't withstand much abuse, but they'd do the job for a mechanically sympathetic rider at about $300 a set.

Some groups here bemoan the lack of cast wheels for their favorite bike, even though those already exist in the performance aftermarket for $600-$1200 a set. Apparently factory wheels are supposed to cost the same as jobber-produced Bullet components, and they are also supposed to come in a wild variety to meet subjective requirements for "pretty". For myself, spokes are OK. If I had a zippy 45 HP machine that was able to touch +100 MPH and I had a real jones for cast wheels, $600-$1200 a set seems pretty cheap compared to deliberately courting a sky/ground experience. I can't see retrofittable factory RE cast wheels going for much less.

[stinkwheel]

I don't think those three spoke things for sale from a variety of Indian outlets are made either by or on behalf of RE. They are being churned out by local backyard manufacturers and I personally think you'd be taking your life in your hands if you fitted them to a motorcycle.

This guy seems to agree:
https://youtu.be/jaFWy0MMDrc

I know Mr H has offered a variety of alloy wheels over the years and I bet they also sorted through a lot of sub-standard rubbish before settling on some that were suitable for selling into the Western market. That will be despite having good local contacts.

[AzCal Retred]

I can't hear the audio. Were these random wheel collapses or impact related? The Pre-Unit has been out of production for about 15 years now, it was the only bike with the drum brake and never sported factory cast wheels, so RE obviously had no involvement here, just aftermarket engineering.

Operating aluminum injection mold tech is outside the box for "a guy in his shed". The 3 spoke wheel had hollow spokes, likely it was injection molded. Mold building other than one off is not a backyard skill, neither is the support hardware. There was someone with the necessary manufacturing facilities involved in the process, and that implies some level of engineering know-how. In any event, neither India or China are particularly worried about our product liability laws. Likely you wouldn't go racing on factory RE cast wheels if you were generating real speed.

The presenter is also selling genuine RE spares, so there is some obvious intent to present his factory product in the best light. It would be helpful to know more about the aftermarket wheels overall failure rates and the particulars of the wheel failures shown. Were they causes or effects of these accidents? I've seen conventionally spoked alloy rims fail too, but it's generally from crash related damage.

[stinkwheel]

What I could glean from that video is both were involved in a significant impact. I think they are both off a home market UCE 350. The RE wheel deformed, the "locally produced" one shattered to bits which suggests to me a combination of low grade alloy and lack of post casting thermal treatment. You'd be amazed what they can bodge up in a shed in terms of fabrication but heat treating aluminium alloy is a much trickier thing.

That's the thing, I've found a lot of Indian home market parts LOOK like the thing they are supposed to be but often with little to no understanding of how they are actually supposed to work. Like springs made of low carbon steel that bend insteald of springing or high stress aluminium parts that break rather than flex. Or a wheel hub that's had the drum machined to be concentric with the outside of the hub instead of with the bearing seat.  Most recently for me, a steel petrol tank that was painted on the inside with petrol soluable paint.

[Adrian II]

The Pre-Unit has been out of production for about 15 years now, it was the only bike with the drum brake and never sported factory cast wheels, so RE obviously had no involvement here, just aftermarket engineering.

There were some Indian home market 350 UCE Bullets which did keep the TLS front drum brake. I have a set of forks meant for one of these, it has the old-style drum brake sliders but set up to take the newer-style damping internals.

A.

[AzCal Retred]

" What I could glean from that video is both were involved in a significant impact. "

So it looks like a conservatively driven "daily driver" could successfully use them, IF tubeless tires were a burning desire. You'd just need to be aware that they're more fragile that the OEM spoked steel hoops. For myself the "Olde Skool" wheels are just fine, but I am ranked amongst the severely fashion impaired. 

"2 Wheel Zone" offers a cute belt drive conversion, but with as much mung & drool as escape my gearbox & primary seals I wouldn't hold out much hope there. 

[stinkwheel]

If I could fit any wheel I wanted to a bullet, I'd go for the tubless spoked ones where the spoke holes are round the outside edges ofthe rim, outboard of the bead seat.


The belt drive conversion is probably less of a problematic one. Turning the teeth off a sprocket/drum unit and bolting a different sized sprocket on is a fairly common and known modification. I have it on my trials bike. Not really much harder to use a pulley instead and have a front pulley machined to fit the splines (or weld one to a turned down front sprocket). My sprocket had a real tendancy to precess off but I've fixed that by using those nordlok washers on it. The belts they supply with those kits seem a tad on the feeble side to me and I think that's the weakest link in the (no) chain there, they could stand being about twice as wide based on other belt drive bikes with similar power output but there's very limited space behind the primary case to fit one in. You don't really need a tensioner either, Mrs stinkwheel used to have a GPz305 which had a belt tensioned in the same way as a chain and it worked fine.

I think you could probably do a homemade belt conversion relatively cheaply and easily

[Adrian II]

The rear belt drive conversion was developed by Jochen Sommer in Germany who is probably better known for his RE Bullet based diesel motorcycles, which he has somehow still managed to get TUV and Euro 6 compliant. Unfortunately it's only for the 4 speed pre-EFI models, not the 5 speed, otherwise Not A Fury could have had that as well as the Newby belt primary drive (and the alloy wheels).

A.

[stinkwheel]

Wouldn't the only difference between the 4 and 5 speed be the splines on the gearbox sprocket/pulley?

[AzCal Retred]

Looks like you just send 2 Wheel Zone $300 and the kit shows up on your doorstep. I admire that reverse straight pull spoke rim for tubeless use. It just HAS to be lighter than a cast wheel. I'm sure they aren't cheap though, with that specialized hub...

http://www.2wheelszone.com/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=1797&search=belt

REZ-1263 BELT DRIVE SYSTEM
Product Code: RCC-1
Availability: In Stock
$278.71

[Adrian II]

Wouldn't the only difference between the 4 and 5 speed be the splines on the gearbox sprocket/pulley?

I imagine so. Don't know if there'd be any additional clearance issues with the 5 speed box.

A.

[richard211]

I have been using a set of alloy wheels on my UCE Thunderbird which are branded as Royal Erado, I have done over 10,000 km with this set of alloy wheels and have not had any issues with them. They were around $100 when I brought them. The only reason I had changed the spoke wheels to alloy wheels were because, I was frequently breaking the rear wheel spokes.

 I still use spoke wheels on my IB/ AVL hybrid Thunderbird 350 and they never had any issues.


 
 

[Adrian II]

It was one very much like that one which was in the video I referred to earlier!

A.