In 1885, the transportation landscape changed forever when John Kemp Starley designed the so-called “safety bicycle:”
This design persisted and for the entirety of the 20th century, and it even made it into the 21st, though by 2024 it was officially dead, having been completely replaced by the battery-powered stand-up scooter:
Ah well, the bike was fun while it lasted.
Of course, some of us still enjoy riding the old-fashioned safety bicycle, though increasingly we’re becoming something akin to Civil War reenactors or renaissance fair attendees. I myself ride a safety bicycle on a regular basis, although sometimes I like to negate the “safety” part by equipping it with a pair of ass-ploding Spinergy wheels–you know, just to keep it exciting:
[I’d remove the rim stickers, but I’m concerned they may be structural.]
The Spinergy Rev-X is arguably the most infamous bicycle wheel ever built, having acquired a reputation for spontaneous failure that has supposedly sent countless unwitting riders to the ER. As a champion of primitive safety bike technology such as steel frames and aluminum rims and wire spokes I’m naturally inclined to blame carbon fiber and cutting-edge bicycle for all the ills of society, yet as a contrarian and skeptic I’m also innately wired to discount or laugh off all forms of mass hysteria. This puts me in an awkward position: do I reject the Spinergy as a symbol of bicycle industry hubris and excess, or do I embrace it in order to thumb my nose at the “woosies?”
Well, it’s a tough call. On one hand, as someone who was an active racing Fred during the heyday of the Rev-X, I never personally witnessed or even heard about any spectacular failures other than those I read about in the newsgroups (remember those?) and if anything at the time the Rev-X had a reputation among riders for being heavy yet durable. But on the other hand there’s the famous “Spinergy Accident Reporter” website, which does make for some chilling reading:
Now, before we go any further, I should state for the record that I am a staunch advocate for traditional wheels:
You want a safe wheel? This is a safe wheel:
As far as I’m concerned, this is as good as a wheel gets, and if I were putting together a bike from scratch, I’d choose something like this every time, regardless of whether the bike were an upright rambler or flat-back road racer. In fact, even while I was still racing, I eventually gave up on “wheelsets” and went back to traditional wheels with 32 spokes. Oh, sure, when a bike arrives at my doorstep sporting a pair of superlight aero wheels I’ll absolutely ride and enjoy them:
But wheels like this are not my default, and in that sense I’m like someone who smokes socially, or who has a drink or two at a party but doesn’t keep any booze in the house–I enjoy it from time to time, but it’s not a lifestyle.
By the way, the Rolfs have been trouble-free so far, though they are dangerous in that every time I remove a tire I manage to nick my knuckle on the bladed spokes:
Anyway, it’s in the spirit of social smoking that I’ve been enjoying the Spinergys–and, as the failure website itself notes, Spinergy had sold 100,000 Rev-X wheels by that time. I don’t know if that means 100,000 individual wheels, or 100,000 pairs of wheels, but either way it’s a lot, and if they were really that dangerous we’d have lost an entire generation of Freds and weenies. As for why they’re dangerous, according to the website it could be sort of a perfect storm of “whirl-mode flutter,” bending, and torquing:
As the wheel rotates it develops a number of frequency modes: a) whirl-mode flutter is caused by the blade-like spokes interacting with the wind; b) the natural frequency of the spoke in bending (longitudinal to the blade): as the wheel turns the blades are alternately in high and low tension; c) Torquing of the blade-like spokes. These frequency modes, while perhaps individually benign, may cause a sudden catastrophic failure if they become resonant with one or more other modes. In the case of the bicycle wheel, the source of the energy that builds up is likely the pumping action of the wheel going up and down, as the bladed spokes are bent and torqued, as the wheel rotates. This bending and torquing is due to the different loads imposed on the bladed spokes as they assume different points of rotation. For example, at 10:30 and 1:30 the wheel would tend to sag somewhat as compared to when the spokes were at 12:00 and 6:00. A secondary energy source would be the interaction of the wind on the rotating wheel.
But of course the salacious part of the site is the crash reports, some of which read like the old Penthouse forums in that that they’re often a heady mélange of braggadocio that bodily fluids that leads you to question their validity as much as you’d like to believe them. To wit:
I was on a club ride in Connecticut August 10, 1999. I have been racing a bike for approximately 12 yrs. I am ranked as one of the great sprinters in New England. I know how to handle a bike.
Presumably he was also 6’5″ with a Lou Ferrigno physique and the phallus of an Azerbaijani plowhorse.
But then:
I just got away from the pack and I was about 30 sec. in front of them. I just came off a hill and was doing about 34 mph. I looked back to see were they were when I went off the road. I went about one foot off the road and as I was turning to get back onto the road the spokes exploded (the rim stayed intact). The wheel did not hit anything. I was sent about 30 feet through the air.
Without knowing his identity we have no way of confirming whether or not he was indeed widely known as “one of the great sprinters in New England,” but turning around to look behind himself and going off the road in the process is at odds with the assertion about bike-handling. *
*[Please note I would typically not make light of a crash, but I maintain the statute of limitations runs out after 25 years.]
Then there are the ones from the self-styled engineers who offer spurious technical analyses:
The other thing that you should pay attention to if you ride these wheels is the trueness of the wheel. I did notice that the wheel had become closer to true as the vibration got worse over the last month.
In order for the true of the wheel to change something has to be happening with the spokes. This web site surely saved me from a very bad crash. I had looked at the wheel at least a dozen times and found nothing wrong. But by looking with a bright light and pinching the spokes together about 4 inches up from the rim you could see the cracks open when you pinched the spokes. Thank You.
A wheel that gets more true as it approaches failure?!? DEAR GOD, WHAT HOPE DO WE HAVE?
And then there are the ones that are just abjectly terrifying, and feature everything from sudden spontaneous collapse of a nearly-new wheel to reconstructive facial surgery:
My Spinergy wheel failure is known to nearly every bike racer in San Diego. Thank you for this web site, I hope it helps to prevent these kind of injuries. I bought my Spinergys at Cycle World in San Diego on 3/13/97. As I bought them for racing only, I had only 3 races (2 time trials) on them when the front wheel failed.
This happened right in front of the feed zone, which made for many witnesses. There were also many team mates behind me (Swami’s Club), and friends with the SDBC Club. They all say that I did not hit anything, or anyone. The reason the Spinergy wheel failed will always be a mystery, as I have no memory of the crash. When my face slammed the ground, it tore off most of my ear. My face was laid open from around my eye, down the length of my jaw. This required considerable plastic surgery. My knee was ground to the bone, and is left with a horrid scar. I was unconscious for about 8 minutes. I was later given a bag of spokes, carbon fiber shards, a hub, and a rim.
That’s horrific, though to be fair a bag of broken wheel parts is a pretty good prize at a Cat 4 race.*
*[Sorry. Statute of limitations though.]
And yes, there are even mountain bike stories:
My client was riding his mountain bike on Northstar Mountain in Lake Tahoe, CA about July of 1997. He works in a bike shop that his dad owns. He races on an amateur level and instructs the local bicycle police force. He is an educated rider. He was taking his first run with a set of Spinergy Rev X Roks wheel which was newly purchased. He began to enter a turn on a single track run, when he heard a moaning sound.
The rider behind then describes how the front wheel collapsed and the bicycle simply fell to the ground throwing him over the handlebars striking a rock with his head. The spokes and simply given way, separating from the hub connection. The design appears to have caused the spoke failure. He suffered concussion with associated symptoms (bloody nose/headaches for following weeks) neck and back pain
.
Reading these makes me question both the wheels and stories, but mostly it makes me question myself. It’s like reading about alien abductions. Do I question the stories because I think there must be a more logical explanation? (Some prior damage in the case of the Spinergy failures, or the consumption of LSD in the case of the alien abductions.) Or do I question them because the truth is simply too terrible for me to contemplate?
I don’t know. But what I do know is that this is the most exciting show bike I’ve seen in awhile:
Not sure about the Faggin, but I’d say that bike is worth the risk.
