Will hanging bikes from hooks distort the wheels in time.

[Arnold Ziffel]

It might take 30 to 40 years but hanging a bike from a hook by the front wheel (or rope tied to front wheel, then tied to rafter..)
may cause the front fork to bend slightly as decades of hanging untouched, and the weight of the bicycle & gravity do its thing.

It will take a very long time, but it will likely happen if the bicycle is heavy enough.

What does happen is essentially what happens with a wooden bookshelf over time.
The middle point of the plank generally begins to Dip after years of the books on the shelf.
Same thing happens with acoustic guitars that are put away with the strings left at near tuned-playable tension, and
the guitar is not touched or played again for years, after being left that way..
You'll likely encounter belly bulging that could render the guitar possibly unplayable, as the forces of the string tension
work like a 13 year old kid's braces do in moving his/her crooked teeth. It does take about a decade with most acoustic guitars.
It is important to play an instrument somewhat regularly, at least about once a year, or if you're gonna stick it up in the top of the closet or an attic or storage building for two years without touching it, you should slacken and reduce the tension of the strings. Another tip, if you ever mail or ship a stringed instrument, you should slacken
and reduce the tension of the strings, as it may better survive the beating it will take in a Fed Ex, UPS, or USPS truck,
no matter how well you pad the box.

 

[Gully]

Good question! I've often wondered myself.

 

[49autocycledeluxe]

a fork in any sort of bike built since the 30's will NEVER bend from the weight of the bike. look at the force needed to bend one back.

 

[Arnold Ziffel]

Yeah, The wheels are fine, but hanging them for decades untouched does tend to bend the front forks.
The only cases you'll likely encounter are something that has been hanging untouched in the rafters of a barn or old garage for decades. I don't know why but the spokes and the steel round wheel seem to sort of equalize stress forces there, so that the wheel doesn't distort, but the overall bicycle weight seems to pull the forks, and it seems to bend forward, or pehaps a combination where the tube portion inside--secured within the headtube--near where the fork itself exits also..
I have seen this on a few 27" wheel 10 speeds Varsity-Continental, and Suburban/Collegiates and even more so from heavier old cruiser bikes with 26" 559mm wheels. You have absolutely nothing to really worry about unless you leave the bikes hanging for decades without ever riding them. It does happen every once in a while where families have lake houses, and/or rural getaway homes with a private pond and a barn and a few acres of land out in the country. The bikes get stored like that, the kids grow up, and buy newer bikes for themselves, and then for their children to use there, then after the original patriarch & matriarch both die, or decide to sell the property as they can no longer use or maintain this weekend retreat..... the contents of the barn, shed, cabin etc get disposed of, or find new owners. Typically this occurs more often with rural property owners because one simply has more land and sometimes multiple sheds, buildings and barns. Within the city, your lot is generally proportionate to the size of the home(dwelling) and although there might be a detached substantial sized garage, carriage house, cottage, bungalow, or pool house, one does not have unlimited storage space and thus most city residents routinely evaluate (prioritize) what needs to go, to make room for other possible things(new stuff). This keeps from having situations where you have stuff-gear-equipment-sporting goods-other junk, that haven't been touched in decades.

 

[sbarner]

Yeah, The wheels are fine, but hanging them for decades untouched does tend to bend the front forks.
The only cases you'll likely encounter are something that has been hanging untouched in the rafters of a barn or old garage for decades. I don't know why but the spokes and the steel round wheel seem to sort of equalize stress forces there, so that the wheel doesn't distort, but the overall bicycle weight seems to pull the forks, and it seems to bend forward, or pehaps a combination where the tube portion inside--secured within the headtube--near where the fork itself exits also..
I have seen this on a few 27" wheel 10 speeds Varsity-Continental, and Suburban/Collegiates and even more so from heavier old cruiser bikes with 26" 559mm wheels. You have absolutely nothing to really worry about unless you leave the bikes hanging for decades without ever riding them. It does happen every once in a while where families have lake houses, and/or rural getaway homes with a private pond and a barn and a few acres of land out in the country. The bikes get stored like that, the kids grow up, and buy newer bikes for themselves, and then for their children to use there, then after the original patriarch & matriarch both die, or decide to sell the property as they can no longer use or maintain this weekend retreat..... the contents of the barn, shed, cabin etc get disposed of, or find new owners. Typically this occurs more often with rural property owners because one simply has more land and sometimes multiple sheds, buildings and barns. Within the city, your lot is generally proportionate to the size of the home(dwelling) and although there might be a detached substantial sized garage, carriage house, cottage, bungalow, or pool house, one does not have unlimited storage space and thus most city residents routinely evaluate (prioritize) what needs to go, to make room for other possible things(new stuff). This keeps from having situations where you have stuff-gear-equipment-sporting goods-other junk, that haven't been touched in decades.

With all due respect, this is total BS. In order to permanently bend steel, you need to exceed its elastic limit, and that's not ever going to happen under the weight of the bicycle alone, no matter how long it hangs there. Steel does not creep or deflect gradually over time, no matter what kind of steel it is, or how much it seems to you to be common sense that it does. If you are seeing forks bent forward it is because, without you knowing about it, some Junior G-Man has taken the bike off the hook and jumped a few curbs with it, then quietly hung it back up.

Wood is an entirely different matter, which is probably why the examples in your first post were of wooden objects deforming over time. Typically what happens with wood is that its moisture content changes with the weather and the season, causing it to expand and contract. If it has forces applied to it, like spokes in a wheel or a bike hanging from a hook. this expansion and contraction may not be uniform, leading to permanent changes in its shape. I experienced this first hand with two bikes that I laced up with wooden sewup rims some 30 or so years ago. Neither of those bikes has had much use in the last decade, and one for much longer. Both have been stored in a heated and dry part of my home, neither has ever been hung from a hook. All four rims are now permanently deformed beyond anything I could true back up with spoke tension. What I found most interesting was that they seemed to ripple in at each spoke hole. Then I ran across an old British article that stated that you are supposed to de-tension wooden sprint rims before putting the bike in storage at the end of the season. the instructions were to loosen all the spokes evenly the same number of turns so that you could reverse the process in the spring and have very little actual truing to do (I doubt it would be that easy!) It does make sense, and my wheels certainly bear that out. I doubt this is as much of an issue with heavier wooden rims, and indeed I have a pair of wheels with such rims from the 1940s that are stored in the same room as one of the bikes and which remain true.

The point is, steel isn't going to permanently deflect unless you whack it really, really hard. Wood and whipped cream will exhibit entirely different characteristics. My advice would be to not think twice about hanging steel objects from padded hooks for up to seven generations, but remove your wooden and hybrid wheels from the bike before hanging them next to it.