Lateral Rollout question

[U5002]

I've heard the term lateral rollout used to describe trueness. At least I think that's what is meant by the term. However, what is considered significant lateral rollout?
For instance I saw a wheel advertised on Ebay as having .021 lateral rollout. Is this significant? Thanks.

 

[dhk]

Originally posted by U5002
I've heard the term lateral rollout used to describe trueness. At least I think that's what is meant by the term. However, what is considered significant lateral rollout?
For instance I saw a wheel advertised on Ebay as having .021 lateral rollout. Is this significant? Thanks.

Believe they are referring to the side to side wiggle in the rim. It limits how tightly you can set the brake calipers. Radial runout is the other key measure of trueness; the up and down hop. From just an efficiency and ride standpoint, seems to me the radial hop would be the more critical spec.

Concerning .021 runout, that seems very good...at least compared to the old wheels I run. I've got some new Velomax wheels and checked their website. They state they routinely see as low as .004 runout on their wheels, but that this is not as important as having even and optimum tension in the spokes.

In other words, if the wheel can be tuned to reach .021, or .004, but the spoke tension is uneven, that's not the best for strength and long life of the wheel. I'd certainly agree with that. Bottom line is that just quoting ".021" doesn't tell the whole story about the quality of the wheel build.

Dan