grumpus

It looks a bit tumbleweed in here, but just in case anyone has anything to say:
I will soon be building a hub motor into a rear wheel for a tadpole trike. While considering the build I started wondering just how important it is for the wheel to be "correctly" dished i.e. for the rim to be centred on the dropouts. The rim would be more evenly braced if it was centred on the hub flanges rather than the dropouts, but how much difference would this offset make to the handling of the trike, given that it doesn't lean like a bike? I was planning on lacing drive side all heads-in and NDS all heads-out for more equal bracing angles, but then I thought why not build it with regular half-in half-out and equal bracing angles, or all heads-in for widest bracing?

BlazingPedals

The Windcheetah has an off-center rear wheel; so I don't think it's necessary to be centered for performance reasons. But it still might need to be centered due to clearance at the frame-end of the chainstays. The spoke lacing questions might be better asked to a wheelbuilder. AFAIK, most if not all trike wheels are built using standard techniques.

grumpus

I hadn't thought of that, I was probably distracted by the monostay.
I have some clearance to play with, although not as much as I thought, I'd forgotten the new rim is wider than the existing one. I'll have to check how much wider the tyre will be.
I have plenty of experience building conventional wheels, but the motor hub in a 405 rim is different enough that I started considering other possibilities ... The spokes should be here in a couple of days, I guess I'll decide one way or another once I start lacing - I can always take them out and start again.

Leisesturm

A 405mm wheel is strong enough as is to not need anything special done re: dishing. Just build it the way the frame wants it built. There are zero dish rear wheel trikes and the frame has the offset necessary. I don't know if that is the case with the Windcheetah but, as I said, I wouldn't sweat it with a 20" wheel.

grumpus

Yeah but ... you're right, of course, 20 inch wheels are inherently strong, but that's partly why I thought something different might be interesting. This is not for a hard rider, it's just for meandering through the woods, and not far from home. I put little thought into building an e-wheel for my trike, and that's been fine so far. I'm getting frustrated by the slow delivery of the spokes, this should have been built by now.

Moe Zhoost

I agree that it's probably strong enough; however you have to keep in mind that the rear wheel of a tadpole trike handles a lot more side thrust than the same wheel on a bike. For this reason ICE trike build their wheels with no dish and offset the rear fork to center the wheel.

It's fairly easy to build the wheel if you know the offset spec of the rear fork. Just add a spacer of that offset thickness to the appropriate side when you have it on the truing stand. Mounting your existing wheel on a truing stand will do a lot to help visualize.