Scooterotica

I'm far from an expert but the gap worries me a lot. I would have thought that the studs should only serve to stop the thing falling off. The centralisation should be supplied by the rims sitting tight to the hub. Any up and down stresses will now all be taken by the studs rather than the body of the hub.

I'm sure someone with far more mechanical knowledge than me will know for sure if it's an issue.

i guess ill get a hub welded and recut to suit

anyone got any pics of the black rims

leigh

ArmandTanzarian wrote:... the gap worries me a lot. I would have thought that the studs should only serve to stop the thing falling off. The centralisation should be supplied by the rims sitting tight to the hub. Any up and down stresses will now all be taken by the studs rather than the body of the hub.

are there not some special nuts to use? do these fill the void around the stud ? otherwise that does look a bit shady... but why not make the holes the right size in the first place?? ??

The wheel nuts supplied with the rims are similar in shape to the MB head nuts but shorter and have a 12mm head. The void is filled completely by these nuts.

Took mine to local welders today to be built up on the inside ,then turned down to fit Innocenti rear hub and PM billet front which are slightly different sizes to each other.

J1MS wrote:The wheel nuts supplied with the rims are similar in shape to the MB head nuts but shorter and have a 12mm head. The void is filled completely by these nuts.

Nuts...
http://www.sip-scootershop.com/EN/Produ ... P+rim.aspx

Hmmmmmmm... I'd be a little surprised if this issue wasn't considered during the design phase, but you never know. Haven't taken a rim off a car in a while, although pretty sure the rim was centralised when doing up the nut, rather than the wheel sitting perfectly centered on the hub with nuts just holding it in place.

But... I'm certainly no expert and would be interested to know what one thinks.

dansuper wrote:Hmmmmmmm... I'd be a little surprised if this issue wasn't considered during the design phase, but you never know. Haven't taken a rim off a car in a while, although pretty sure the rim was centralised when doing up the nut, rather than the wheel sitting perfectly centered on the hub with nuts just holding it in place.

But... I'm certainly no expert and would be interested to know what one thinks.

I contacted AF with my concerns and this is the reply...

"Thank you for your feedback and concern. This is an area we are aware of and have considered altering the design for a future supply. However I’m confident there is no safety issue with the current design.

The reason I can be so confident is that nearly every bike we have in the shop at the moment including my own and our race bike has the same gap between rim and hub. I’ve quickly snapped a couple of pictures to show this. This is very common on SIL hubs and rims, I can remember being concerned about it with them some years ago. However this has been the case for a number of years with the replacement and sil factory standard rims and I have yet to have a failure associated with this design feature.

My main concern here is that the wheel nuts are tight. If there is any play on the wheel nuts, standard steel rims eat through the stud quite quickly and I have repaired bikes that have the tell tale elongated stud holes, polished smooth studs and rattle of loose rims. I have yet to run one of our new rims loose but I would not expect them to fair differently from the original pressed steel rims in this regard, they must be tight.

We have had these rims on my bike for some time now and Titch has been testing them on the race bike as well. I have full confidence that they are safe and a significant improvement over the standard split steel rim.

Best regards


Ben Kemp"

He did also say...

"I will not guarantee we will make this design change in any future batch as I do not believe this is a problem and I do not want to create a fitment issue on any hubs. I highlight this has been normal on the last production Lambretta's and has shown no problems in the last ten years. I would not fit them to my own bike or our race bike or sell these if I had any fear that this was a safety issue."

I think it's a good thing to debate all these things, and I don't believe it's ideal, but maybe we should all stop worrying?

How long before some nice resourceful soul produces some nice shanked turned 12mm nuts to take up the space?