Wooden RENOVO R1 road bike

[SWijland]

Yesterday UPS delivered the Cerchio Ghisallo rims straight from Italy. Here are two quick pictures of the rims. I will post better pictures Tuesday and I will also weigh the rims at that time.

First impressions: The craftsmanship of the rims is simply amazing! I can not even tell where the rims were joined together. The carbon inlay is very nicely integrated and despite what I expected, the rims are anything but flexy. I can hardly twist or bend them.





@dcj9: thanks for the tip. I just changed the name of the topic

[Dov]

This is amazing

[dcj9]

yes, amazing and surely deserves upgrading to the announcements section at the top

[SWijland]

As promised here a some better pictures of the rims and hubs including weights.

The rims weigh in at a little under 540 grams and the rim depth is around 22mm. The hubset weighs in at 425 grams without the skewers. With DT Swiss Competition silver spokes, the wheelset should weight just under 2 kg, which is pretty good I think. With tubular wooden rims and lighter spokes and hubs I could have built a really light set, but then again, weight is not my main issue on this build and I am not a big fan of tubular tires.

As you can see the inside of the rims features a carbon inlay. The inlay should make it possible to use the rims with high pressure tires. The rims are not hooked, so I am not sure if it is a good idea to use the rims with folding tires.

[HillRPete]

What brakepads will you be using? Cork, to stick to the organic theme? Leather?

[SWijland]

Because wood does not absorb heat, normal brake pads will 'melt' during braking. That is why I need brake pads for carbon rims. I will start out with cork pads from Bontrager, but I would also like to try out Swiss Stop yellow pads, since they seem to work great on just about any rim (carbon and alu). The one thing I am worried about with the Swiss Stop pads is that they will leave yellow stripes on the rim.

[CarpetFibre]

Awesome project - really interesting. What tyres do you plan on using?

I think you're right about the issue with the swisstops - It was the first thing I thought about before finishing reading your post. Swisstops tend to leave a yellow mark on a lot of rims. It wouldn't look great. See how the braking checks out with the cork pads first, definitely.

[SWijland]

I plan to use Conti GP 4000s 25 tires on the wheels. I know there a more stylish options available, but I simply love the GP 4000s. Until now I only used the 23 variant, so I hope the 25 will be even better.

[SWijland]

I was a bit worried about the hookless tire beads on the Ghisallo rims, so I did some reading on this concept. I stumbled across a topic on this forum about Lew Racing VC-1 clincher rims and apparently those rims use a very similar concept. I believe Lew calles/called it BSC technology (« Bead Seat Clincher« ). Roues Artisanales did an article on it a while back: http://www.rouesartisanales.com/article-20839536.html

The cross section of the LEW rim and a diagram of the concept looks very similar to that of my Ghisallo rims. Just check out the pictures below. I did find one bad review on the LEW rims on a German site, but I am unsure if that was due to the BSC concept or not. Adrien however tested it positive, so I am feeling a lot more confident to use the Ghisallo rims.

I will be able to let you know how everything turns out in about two weeks, when the wheels are built.

[jooo]

Really cool project.

Lots of newer MTB rims designed for tubeless set ups have virtually no bead hook. Although they are generally run at much lower pressures, the force exerted by the tyre is still quite big because they are much larger.

If I'm reading this correctly, the model you have with the carbon inlay can be run at pretty normal road pressures though?

[fstrmnky]

Very cool project, looking forward to watching this develop & reading multiple ride reports over time.

Seems like getting a flat might be interesting because there is no longer a hook to retain the bead at low pressures?

[SWijland]

The only issue with this kind of rim design is indeed that the tire can roll of when the inner tire blows. This happened in one of the negative reviews I found on a German website. Apparently the inner tube inside his front LEW wheel blew on a mountain descent, probably due to overheating or too high pressure. As a result his outer tire rolled off and he totally ruined his rim.

Luckily wood is not prone to overheating at all and I will be careful not to use latex inner tubes. I will also be running the wheels with 25c tires, so I will not need a very high tire pressure. The rims should be able to handle higher pressures though, according to the manufacturer.

[SWijland]

I just got word that the frame is almost finished and is only waiting for the dropouts to be installed. It should be finished somewhere next week. Nick was kind enough to send me a nice teaser picture:

[SWijland]

The guy who is building the wheels for me from Force Wheelz (http://www.forcewheelz.nl/) was kind enough to send me some 'work in progress' pics:

[sastre]

looks sick bet u cant wait .
would love two get a reall vintage bike and puts these whels on it.

classy