BVC-CHAT Tire/spoke Advice

[Chris Menzel]

On Wed, Sep 26, 2007 at 09:26:43AM -0700, Matthew Hattaway wrote:
> I'll dittoJM, I have never had trouble getting tires onto rims even
> when they are without spokes.

That would be evidence of something only if you had (repeatedly) tried
getting the same type of tire onto the same rim before and after putting
spokes on it.

> If you are compressing the molecular structure of the metal, your
> wheel will crunch up into a wad of mess.

There's no such thing as a perfectly rigid body, Matt, as you well know.
Every wheel has a certain amount of give in most any direction, and
tensioning the spokes will certainly decrease the diameter *slightly*.
It was mostly only this point, and the importance of proper spoke
tension generally, that I was signalling agreement with in Jeff's post.
As to whether the difference in wheel diameter between well- and
poorly-tensioned spokes really makes more than a negligible difference
to tire mounting, I have heard only anecdotal reports and have not seen
any studies one way or the other.

-chris