I bought a wind trainer about a year ago but I’ve never actually used it because I was always afraid my adventurous little cat Nike would stick her paw in my back wheel. When I noticed a neighbor was throwing out a large roll of carbon fiber, my mind clicked: Disk wheels!
So this weekend I built up a couple of wheel disks to protect Nike from whirling spokes. Don’t get me wrong here: I do not want to pretend these are real aero disk wheels. They’re just carbon-fiber-looking wheel covers for kitty-safety purposes only. The fact that they are actually made of carbon-fiber is purely superficial – I could just as well have made these out of poster board.
Construction was pretty simple. I traced a big circle slightly smaller than the inner diameter of the wheel, and a smaller circle the size of the hub diameter, plus one radial cut to “dish” the disk. Naturally, as I was building them, Nike had to stick her nose in as well.
I attached the disks to the wheels using good old fashioned gaffer’s tape, which you can kind of see through the translucent carbon fiber sheeting. Finally I cut a little notch for pumping up the tire, and viola, it’s done!
I used a spare rear wheel for this, since my intention is pretty much to use this wheel only for indoor training. We’ll see how much I actually use it.