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One of the most common questions we get, what we're going to answer today is,
spoke wheels versus alloy wheels.
So spoke wheels essentially have three parts, there's a hub, on which the spokes are mounted,
the spokes are usually thick pieces of wire,
these wires are connected to the spokes through a rim,
and then of course, there's the rim itself, right,
an alloy wheel typically just has one,
so it comes out of a machine as a casting or forging or whatever
and it's essentially one unit. That's the difference between construction, you can already tell
that there's a reason why a manufacturer would prefer one over the other.
Most manufacturer who produce large numbers of motorcycles love alloy wheels,
because there's no manual intervention required,
I mean, you turn the machine on, you put the aluminium in and it comes out the other side
finished, right, after that it is just painting and finishing, and then it can go on to the machine,
and that means the production process can run faster. A spoke wheel is still more or
less hand assembled, I remember going to the Mattighofen factory at KTM
and there was a massive section where there were lot of these very cheerful old ladies
who were all sitting there tightening hubs and spokes and all of this kind of thing,
where all the rims that go on all of their dirt bikes were still being done by hand,
but, the nature of the beast also means that because the spokes connect to the rim,
there's usually a hole in the rim
and the hole in the rim means that most spoke wheels are not airtight,
and therefore they have to run inner tubes.
So most of the dirt bikes that you buy, even in the world today, still run tubes
and the reason for that is because the spoke design causes it.
Now at this point, you will point out that, for example, BMW, Triumph, et cetera, all of them
now have tubeless spoke wheel designs,
and the thing about that that I found out very funny is that there are so many patents on
the ways that you can mount a spoke to a rim, to create a tubeless spoked wheel,
there's so many patents in there that it's a really, really expensive thing to do, although
in terms of technology or manufacturing is not really that complicated a process
and that's why, you will still see very few tubeless spoke wheels and a lot of tubed spoke wheels.
Now, on the other side, the cast alloy wheels is a whole bunch of alloys from lightweight
magnesium based alloys to aluminium alloys,
but the biggest advantage they have as I said is they are one unit, that's also the
biggest disadvantage they have, because if you break any one part of the wheel,
you usually have to replace the entire wheel.
So cast wheels are much stronger, they handle higher performance machines really well,
they're more consistent in performance, the feel that you get from a cast alloy wheel is
a better feel than a spoke wheel
and that's very good for road-based applications where the consistency, the feedback
allows you to go much faster.
But a spoke wheel, because it has multiple parts, you can replace parts one at a time.
So in theory, if you dent a rim, you can unbend a rim or replace the rim without
really touching the spokes or the hub.
If you break spokes, you can replace one spoke at a time, if a nipple stops working,
you can buy more nipples and just replace the nipple itself
or the spoke it's connected to at best,
and if you break a hub, which is very rare, then you can just replace the hub
without having to do the rest of the wheel.
So, this is also the reason why their roles are chosen.
So the more performance-oriented road machines there are, you will see cast wheels because
cast wheels are easier to make, they're more consistent in performance,
and you get better feedback from them.
But when you start talking about off-roaders, motorcycles are going to difficult conditions,
then you start finding spoke wheels, because obviously, it's easier to fix.
There is a crossover point, thus, if you look at the 390 Adventure, which is supposed to be
a tourer with some amount of off-roadability, they are running cast wheels
and the reason why they can do that is because you can also make a cast wheel very strong
by giving it more material, which does make it heavier,
but then it will also be much harder to break.
The ideal hardcore off-roaders will obviously never use a cast situation, they will always
prefer to use spoke wheels.
How should this affect you?
Well, think about it like this, in India, when I started testing 20 years ago, most of the
machines did have spoke wheels with tubes, and we've all suffered the punctures.
So today, given a choice, chances are 99.9% of the time I would want a cast wheel just
because the tubeless tyre is usually lighter and fixing a tubeless tyre's puncture is much
faster and much simpler than having to deal with a inner tube.
But, if you're looking for hardcore off-roading, you are going to end up with a rim, with spokes,
with nipples, with hubs and a tube tyre which might be a little bit heavier,
fixing it can be a pain, but at least if you manage to damage the wheel, you don't have
to automatically replace the entire wheel you just have to replace one small part.
We can go into a discussion about cast alloy wheels versus forged alloy wheels if you want,
and if you want to do that, do leave us a comment.
If there's other topics you'd like us to discuss,
leave us a comment and if there's some aspect of spoke wheels and alloy wheels that you think
I should have spoken about but haven't, do leave us a comment.
Thank you so much for watching.
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