Lester Wheels - Tube or Tubeless - definitive answer

[sunnbobb]

The subject of running Lester cast mag wheels tubeless has been much debated. Some folks claim that the lack of a tubeless designation on the rim means they should be run with tubes, others claim the have run their Lesters tubeless with no problems. Upon a web search, I could find no evidence of bead failure on Lester rims, however, the internet is always right, no? This question has bugged me forever. I thought to myself, "how hard would it be to get a hold of the company and find out?"

This turned out to be a little more difficult than I thought. But, being a Goldwing customizer, overcoming a challenge is the fun part. So the story goes like this.


Thomas J. Lester

tom2lowres.jpg

Born in the village of Klitchev, Russia, to master mechanic Samuel Meyer Lesternrck and his wife Phyllis Rebecca, Nathan Lesternrck was a second generation master machinist.

Nathan apprenticed for three years in a machine shop/blacksmith shop/foundry near Minsk. Upon completing his apprenticeship in 1902, Nathan Lesternrck went to work in the shop of Zalkind & Wellbushevitz, which manufactured sawmill equipment and steam engines. Nathan married Gussie Pollak whom he met at a wedding in Bobruisk. Consent to marry was conditional on their moving to America. Traveling through Germany to England, they reached Philadelphia in February 1905. Nathan learned English in night school and studied engineering in a course offered by the International Correspondence School.

Now Nathan Lester, he quickly found work making dies for punch presses. The he worked for a contractor working on the Fourth Avenue Subway and Manhattan Bridge. Later, working at a machine shop, he was soon promoted to assistant foreman. After a short stint on the Panama Railroad (he couldn’t tolerate the climate) he went to work for Mergenthaler Linotype Co. of Brooklyn, his first exposure to die casting. Within three years, he had advanced to the position of top tool maker. In 1910 another job in NYC had him developing pantograph machines to be used for machining dies. In 1912, Nathan joined the newly formed American Die Casting Co. in Brooklyn. In the next few years jobs took him to Mt. Vernon, NY and then Latrobe, PA where Lester was one of the four stock holders and developed a new type of die cast machine. The Latrobe Co. was one of the first to cast aluminum. He next moved to New Jersey where he developed the art of die casting automobile hardware and magneto casings for Liberty motors. About this time baby Tom was born

Now in hot demand, he moved to Worcester, Mass. to manage the Atlas Die Casting Co. After that he became a consultant and started patenting his designs. The family moved to Cleveland right around the time of the stock market crash. For a while, Nathan had his own tool and die shop. He began working with the Reed-Prentiss Co. to build the first Lester die casting machines. In 1935 opportunity knocked in a big way. The Phoenix Machine Co., a maker of ice machines had been sitting idle due to the newfangled refrigerator. Lester had ideas, Phoenix had the factory. They joined forces, and soon the Phoenix name was dropped and the new company became Lester Engineering. Now with his name on the plant thirty years after coming ashore, Nathan began building Lester die casting machines, a name still used today.

Tom was a precocious child, who by his own admission failed to excel in school. His father saw little hope in his youngest son, but Tom said his mother always believed her Tommy was meant for greatness. Inheriting the mechanical aptitude of his father and grandfather, Tom grew up around his father’s shop and learned the die maker’s trade at a young age. He apprenticed under his father’s master machinist Bill Schwartz. In the pre World War II era, a person with Tom’s training and ability was still highly regarded. Skilled craftsmen were still appreciated and recruited from the “Old World”.

As World War II broke out, Tom was drafted by the army. The day before his physical, he bumped into his father’s friend and husband of his sister Rose, Dave White. Dave asked Tom how he was doing, and Tom told him that it was his last day before going off to war. The next day at the draft induction center, Tom’s name was called ahead of all the others. They took him out of line, only to find Dave White waiting for him. As it turns out, Dave was with NACA (National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics) and he had the pull to keep Tom out of a uniform and back into a machinist’s apron. He had too much irreplaceable talent to risk losing overseas. Tom’s tooling and die making skills immediately paid off. NACA, which today is the NASA Lewis Research Center in Cleveland, put 22 year old Tom into turbine engine development. In 1942, Tom was figuring out how to make the first jet turbine blades. Drawing on his experience gained from his father and Bill Schwartz, Tom figured out the difficult machining operation and then set up a department of over 20 people to make the blades. In 1943, the army realized that Tom had never taken his induction physical and sent him back to the induction center. Like so many other tests in his early life, Tom promptly failed. He had a bad throat. Now he was unemployed and back at his father’s shop.

Towards the end of the war, Tom was approached by Howard and Maury Abrams, who owned Curtis Key. They wanted to start a die casting company and needed Tom’s skills to get started. Tom was given one third of the shares in the new National Molded Products Co. After a short time, the Abrams brothers bought Tom’s shares back. In November of 1946, with that money and a loan from his brother Bill, he bought three of his father’s machines and started the Lester Casting Co. He set up shop in Cleveland at 1711 West 33rd St. in the building that was formerly the Phoenix Horse Blanket Company.

Initially business was tough, requiring long hours and lots travel to find customers. As a newcomer to the casting business, Tom was only able to get the difficult jobs that the other die casters didn’t want. This rough duty was an opportunity in disguise as the difficult jobs challenged Tom and increased his proficiency. He was able to prove again and again that his company was where to go when the others failed. To this day, the Lester name remains the premiere name in die castings, a heritage going back to the old horse blanket factory days.

By 1954, Lester Castings was moved to a new building in Bedford Heights, Ohio. This facility continued to grow to 96,000 square feet. New customers continued coming and by 1968 annual sales had exceeded ten million dollars.

In 1966, Tom and some of his friends including Edgar North, Phil Hill and Benny Goldflies, began making tires for antique cars, under the name of the Lincoln Highway Tire Company. By 1968 they could produce 40 different sizes. Ultimately he and Ed North would become the Lester Tire Company. A steady supply of tires fueled the growth of the antique car hobby, a hobby which grew into a multibillion dollar industry. Lester tires still grace the wheels of many of the rarest and most beautiful cars in the world.

In 1970, Tom got to meet then Governor Jimmy Carter. Carter encouraged Tom to build a new plant in poverty stricken rural Georgia. In 1972, Lester Industries opened its new 30,000 square foot plant in Rome, GA. That plant grew to 117,000 square feet and is still operating today.

One of the die casting jobs that Tom was most proud of are the valve bodies used in modern automatic transmissions. They were originally made of cast iron and required much machining. Tom developed the tooling to cast the difficult shapes that would be needed. Valve bodies are still a big part of the current production in several of the Lester plants. The combined plants currently manufacture more than 20,000 valve bodies per day.

Continuing in the development of new ideas for castings, Tom started Lester Wheel Co. to manufacture aluminum motorcycle and bicycle wheels. Tom retired in 1980 upon the sale of Lester Industries to ITT.

After retiring, Tom started Lester Engines in Deerfield Beach, FL. Among other things they built high performance engines for Wellcraft boats.

In the early nineties Tom finally fully retired to his own private restoration shop at his home in Coconut Creek, where he enjoyed a simpler life than in the previous 70 plus years.

On August 1, 2004, Thomas J. Lester passed away.

Lester Mag Wheels

So, finding the answer via contacting the man who invented the Lester Wheel was out. It was back to searching the internet, and sorting through countless tubeless vs tube discussions. And then I struck gold.

On January 14, 1976, a patent was filed by Thomas Lester for cast motorcycle wheels. On September 13, 1977, United States Patent 4047764 was issued.
Patent 4047764 was for "Composite motorcycle wheel construction " described as follows.

"Lightweight composite motorcycle wheel construction characterized in that it comprises a wheel unit casting including concentric outer and inner rim and sleeve portions integrally connected together by angularly spaced spokes; and a hub unit casting having an interference fit within the bore of the sleeve portion thus to frictionally retain the hub and wheel units together against relative angular and axial movement while the bearing receiving bore in the hub unit is located and held coaxially of said rim portion, the wheel and hub units additionally being welded together to prevent relative angular and axial movement despite application of torque and axial loads exceeding the frictional resistance of the interference fit."

Within the patent application, Lester describes various problems with spoked motorcycle wheels, including this little gem..

"Wire spoke wheels, however, have certain disadvantages such as the necessity of using a tire inner tube, the necessity of periodic tightening of the spokes to avoid unsafe riding and handling conditions of the vehicle, the abrasion of the tire inner tube, and the danger of puncturing the tire inner tube by the head of a broken spoke. "

This reference does not mean that Lesters were meant to be tubeless, only that a cast wheel would not cause the same problems for tubes as spoked wheels.

And then...

"Porous metal is weak and prone to cracking or yielding in the high stress areas of the rim or in those portions of the hub which support bearing races, etc. Porous metal is further unacceptable in the rims of wheels used with tubeless tires since the sealing compounds normally used on rim surfaces do not seal this type of porosity. Moreover, porosity is unacceptable in any portion of the wheel which must be threaded to receive cap screws or other threaded elements."

A hint that he was considering a tubeless tire for the new rims? Read on..

"Nonetheless, there is great inducement to equip motorcycles with wheels formed from lightweight metal castings because there is a great need to reduce the unsprung weight of motorcycles. For example, a cast aluminum alloy wheel according to the invention can be substantially lighter than a wire wheel of the same tire size and permits the use of a tubeless tire. The elimination of the inner tube results in a further ten to fifteen percent reduction of total wheel weight."

And then, the holy grail...

"The radially outer surface of the center wall 14 of the rim has the usual drop center cross sectional contour for enabling the removal of pneumatic tires. The rim 6 is centrally apertured through a radially inwardly extending boss 21 having an opening 22 through which a valve stem is normally installed. The sidewalls and center wall of the rim form an impermeable barrier to air. With a valve stem installed in opening 22 and a tire mounted with its beads in airtight contact with the inner surfaces of walls 11 and 12, the air is retained by the tire on the rim without the aid of an inner tube, an important innovation in the use of motorcycle wheels."

"The foregoing description is intended to point out those features of wheel structure which render the motorcycle wheels described herein substantially advantageous over the prior art motorcycle wheels, especially wire spoke wheels. Wheels such as described will result in the elimination of inner tubes from the motorcycle tires. This will not only reduce cost but render the sidewalls of the tires more flexible with greater road gripping capacity. The wheel herein described is greatly improved over prior art devices with regard to the overall strength of the wheel especially in the spoke and rim construction. The side wall construction of the rim is of particular interest. A wheel as described herein holds great promise for substantially reduced manufacturing costs on a mass-produced basis."

So there you have it. Thomas Lester invented the Lester Cast wheel specifically to eliminate the use of tubes in motorcycle tires. I hope you have enjoyed reading this little bit of motorcycle wheel trivia as much as I enjoyed researching it. We may now bury the kitten, as we like to say around here. Now if finding the answer to the best oil were as easy...

I would like to thank Dale Adams for his excellent biography of Thomas Lester.

[Rat]

Most excellent .... RIP kitty .....

Gord

[roncar]

Hmmm... An interesting read on the history of Lester wheels, and the man behind them, but I had always thought Lester wheels were tubeless capable and don't recall any debate on that. I have never had my grubby hands on any, so personally have no info on any markings on tubeless capability or lack thereof.

Now the early Comstar used on the 78-79 Goldwings, Honda documentation says tube, however real world users run them with or without tubes. I'd love to see a definitive answer on that with documentation to back it up.

[robin1731]

Easy to distinguish if a wheel is tubeless or not. A tubeless rim has the raised bead on the inner part of the rim. A tube type wheel does not. The purpose of that rib is to hold the tire in place if the tire loses air.

To sort of get a mental picture. The bead of the tire would sit between the outer edge of the rim and this raised bead I am talking about.

[rogue1000]

Excellent Richard, thank you (as always) for your work on this. I have done both with my Lesters, depending on the tire and where I plan to head in the more or less design life of the tire, and of course, manufacturer's guide lines. Thinking that I'm going to be doing some off-roading this summer in some remote areas, I went with tubes in my tires, and will carry spares

[Brant]

Nice work sunnbobb.

Now the early Comstar used on the 78-79 Goldwings, Honda documentation says tube, however real world users run them with or without tubes. I'd love to see a definitive answer on that with documentation to back it up.

Yeah, me too.

[Recycled Roadkill]

I argued the Lester wheel thing with a local tire seller who installed a tube after I expressly told them to mount it tubeless. Eventually I got what I asked for but I haven't been back since.

[scootsx2]

Nice piece of investigative journalism. Well done.

[CYBORG]

well done. i have always run tubless in mine with no ill effects. proof that they are designed for tubless is always good info

[HOTT]

That was just an interesting read. Thanks Richard.
BTW I have a set. Tubeless, holdin' air. No problem.

[OO7EDDY]

Thanks Sunnbobb. I would hate to scratch the new paint to add a tube.

[Briang]

Where's the 'Like' button?

[sunnbobb]

x2 on the like. lol

[Pooch]

Excellent read, and thanks for taking the time to research and post it.
Having just mounted both tires and tubes on my 76, a flat tire on the side of the road is not something I want to experience. At least with the tubeless I could use a plug to get home. I also like the tire staying on the rim, so I can have better odds at coming to a stop, rubber side down.

[alwing17]

The factory in Bedford Heights,Ohio burnt down in 1979 and was not rebuilt...About a 30 min. ride from my house. Neat to know he started Lester tire as well. And the Lewis Research Center..NACA now NASA is 5 mins. from my house,and my Grandfather worked there for 25 years 1941-1966. It's possible my Grandfather worked with Tom Lester in those early years!