Bicycle wheel

A bicycle wheel is a wheel, most commonly a wire wheel, designed for a bicycle. A pair is often called a wheelset, especially in the context of ready built "off the shelf" performance-oriented wheels.

Bicycle wheels are typically designed to fit into the frame and fork via dropouts, and hold bicycle tires.

The first bicycle wheels followed the traditions of carriage building: a wooden hub, a fixed steel axle (the bearings were located in the fork ends), wooden spokes and a shrink fitted iron tire. A typical modern wheel has a metal hub, wire tension spokes and a metal or carbon fiber rim which holds a pneumatic rubber tire.

A hub is the center part of a bicycle wheel. It consists of an axle, bearings and a hub shell. The hub shell typically has two machined metal flanges to which spokes can be attached. Hub shells can be one-piece with press-in cartridge or free bearings or, in the case of older designs, the flanges may be affixed to a separate hub shell.

The axle is attached to dropouts on the fork or the frame. The axle can attach using a:

Modern bicycles have adopted standard axle spacing: the hubs of front wheels are generally 100 mm wide fork spacing, road wheels with freehubs generally have a 130 mm wide rear wheel hub. Mountain bikes have adopted a 135 mm rear hub width, which allows clearance to mount a brake disc on the hub or to decrease the wheel dish for a more durable wheel.Freeride and downhill are available with 150 mm spacing.

The bearings allow the hub shell (and the rest of the wheel parts) to rotate freely about the axle. Most bicycle hubs use steel or ceramic ball bearings. Some hubs use serviceable "cup and cone" bearings, whereas some use pre-assembled replaceable "cartridge" bearings.

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