# Phil Wood, bicycle legend, dies at 86



## goloso (Feb 4, 2004)

From the Merc:
*

Phil Wood, bicycle legend, dies at 86*

By Joe Rodriguez

[email protected]
Posted: 03/23/2010 05:07:05 PM PDT
Updated: 03/23/2010 05:07:06 PM PDT

When mechanical engineer Phil Wood took up bicycle racing at San Jose's velodrome, he became frustrated by wheels that quickly became wobbly. He had to clean and repack the ball bearings with grease after every race.

"He thought that was crazy," said his daughter, Donna Williams of Roseville. "He asked, 'Why doesn't somebody invent a wheel hub that doesn't need maintenance?' "

That somebody turned out to be Wood, and the company he founded on April Fools Day in 1971 still churns out the sealed hubs that revolutionized the bicycle industry by ushering in an era of high-performance, low-maintenance equipment.

Wood died earlier this month of pancreatic cancer in Roseville. He was 86.

According to Peter Enright, who bought Phil Wood & Co., in 1991, bicycle hubs and brackets had not changed much in over a century. They were basically ball bearings placed in a cup and held in line by a pressed-in cone, which loosened easily. Wood invented a grooved hub in which ball bearings could be held in precisely by a screw-on cap. Except for the cheapest bikes, most bicycles today come with sealed hubs and bottom brackets that keep in lubricants and keep out water and grime.

However, Wood did not patent his invention and never got rich.

"My Dad was an inventor," Williams said, "but he was not a businessman. He didn't care about those things. He just wanted to improve his inventions even more."

Phil Wood was born in Knightstown, Ind., on July 9, 1926.

After graduating from high school, where he excelled in mathematics, he was drafted into the U.S. Navy during World War II and served as a radio operator. Wood returned to Indiana after the war, where he married his first wife, Eve Steelink, and took up motorcycle racing. He even built his own dirt bike.

The couple then moved to southern California, where Wood enrolled at the prestigious California Institute of Technology, and promptly dropped out.

"That's because he felt he could do better on his own than how they were training him," Williams said.

Wood and his young family migrated north to San Jose, where he found a job in mechanical engineering with FMC. He helped the company design and refine the process of freeze-drying foods, a feat that changed how and what Americans eat.

He stayed at FMC for about a decade and, after the death of his first wife, remarried in 1959. He settled in Monte Sereno with the former Lavada Sowers, with whom he raised eight children.

After refining the sealed hub, Wood invented a machine that turned out stronger spokes for wheels and started producing bike pedals and other components. After selling the company, he and Lavada retired to Baxter, Iowa.

Still intellectually restless, he wrote a textbook on differential calculus and a book on the theory of Turks head knot , a continuously braided knot without end. He tutored local students for years, earning an outstanding achievement award from the local school board. After Lavada died in December, Williams moved her father to Roseville.


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## robwh9 (Sep 2, 2004)

goloso said:


> Still intellectually restless, he wrote a textbook on differential calculus and a book on the theory of Turks head knot , a continuously braided knot without end.


 Sounds like he was a man of many talents, and luckily for us, one of them was designing bicycle components. It's been 20 years since I last repacked hub or bottom bracket bearings. RIP


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## EbRockit (Feb 26, 2010)

Bummer. He was an icon .


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## Number9 (Nov 28, 2004)

Good article. I hadn't known that he was one of the early Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. I recently bought a Phil bottom bracket for my track bike. Good stuff still, despite the change in ownership. Condolences to his surviving family and friends.


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## CoLiKe20 (Jan 30, 2006)

you're one of the great ones, Mr. Wood.


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