How to Choose Bicycle Wheels

Video Transcript

Hi! This is Eric with Spin City Cycling here in Austin, Texas and I am talking to you on behalf of Expert Village. Today we are going to talk about wheels. As you can imagine, you can't ride a bike without wheels. They are very important to the functioning of the bike but there is also a lot of variety and types of wheels and you need to try to get the best type of wheels for the riding that you are going to be doing. Wheels come in different sizes depending on your bike and the frame. In general, mountain bikes have 26 inch wheels. In general, road bikes have something called a 700 wheel which is a little bit bigger than a mountain bike wheel. There are also bikes these days called 29er's that are mountain bikes that have more of a road bike sized wheel but you still have a knobby wider tire on there. Wheel construction is generally going to be aluminum or alloy wheel in terms of the rim. You've got the hub that sits in the middle of the wheel and the spokes attach the hub to the rim. All 3 of those components go into the make up of a wheel and there are different levels of quality in each of those. So you can get very low quality hubs, spokes and rims and get very high quality. Mountain bike rims are for obvious reasons much stronger, much stiffer and wider than a road bike wheel. Road bike wheels tend to be very narrow, very light and again, just adding to the overall low weight of a road bike. You also see fewer spokes on road bikes because they don't need to stand up to the same abuse you find on a mountain bike. In terms of hub design, the more expensive you go, the more sophisticated the bearing system gets. So on an expensive wheel you may have cartridge bearings that are pressed into the hub which are much more efficient and last longer and are sealed and are more resistant to water and corrosive elements that might damage your hub. Lower end wheels are going to have what you call loose ball hubs which have ball bearings with grease there that work well but are a little more likely to get damaged or corroded by the elements. So hopefully you've learned a little bit about bicycle wheels. Thanks for watching.

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