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Cole Wheels Adds Sphere Spoke Alignment, Disc Brake Cyclocross & Road Wheels

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Cole Wheels introduced their new Dynamic Spoke Alignment hubs that run a straight pull spoke through a small sphere washer to eliminate bending stresses.

They say this helps the spokes last longer and let them run higher tension. The spheres allow about 3° of angle movement, which helps keep the spoke from bending too much at the hub during big hits, particularly good for mountain bikes.

In other news, they’ll have 650b and 29er carbon clincher mountain bike wheels, plus a 26″ carbon tubular. Their carbon road clinchers get wider 22mm rims as an option.

Also new for road, they have new disc brake-only wheels that have a disc specific alloy rim. It’s good for cyclocross, too. 135mm rear hub. Retail is about $550. There’s a disc-specific carbon rim in the pipeline, prototype pic after the break…

Cole’s naming scheme suggests this is a ‘cross ready Carbon clincher wheelset with a 30mm deep rim profile. This is laced up to one of their older hubs which is still straight pull but doesn’t have the new spherical setup.

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Stratosfear
Stratosfear
11 years ago

This should allow the spokes to spin about more freely. The wheels should come out of tension faster than an other straight pull spoked wheel currently on the market.

greg
greg
11 years ago

funny, all that work to allow spokes to pivot around 3degrees- as if the friction between the aluminum spherical section and the aluminum hub shell would even allow for that. if i was concerned about it, i’d use a small spoke head washer on it. spoke heads by design self-align quite a bit anyways, probably greater than 3degrees.

Naton
Naton
11 years ago

I believe the idea is to allow for the pivoting that can occur when torque is applied, not the static spoke tension. The cyclic loading would otherwise cause the spoke to break at the head. The blue anodizing on the spherical washers, or “spoke balls”, is to distract you from the fact that a j-bend spoke would perform exactly the same function.

Steve M
Steve M
11 years ago

Not quite sure what Cole means by needing three degrees of movement during ‘hard hits”. Three degrees of spoke movement at the rim is over a half inch. Why not just machine the hub so the spoke takes a straight shot at the rim like most everyone else does?

Dudemanguybro
Dudemanguybro
11 years ago

I TOOK APART MY WHEEL AND LOST ONE OF THE BLUE BALLS. CAN YOU GIVE ME SOME BLUE BALLS FOR FREE?

ChrisC
ChrisC
11 years ago

@Naton – They might be trying to address lateral deflection?

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