I have made over 30 linkwheels. My success rate (success defined as me getting at least 3 properties prominent on page 1) is around 60%. I think this is due to differences in competition more than anything.
One wheel I made had 12 properties. All urls were basically the same, all titles and anchors essentially the same. All sites were made in 1 day. The wheel was successful after 2 weeks.
I feel that the inevitable index delay with web 2.0 properties (which can be up to 3 weeks) compensates for the obviousness of making many properties at once.
It is important to remember never to close the loop with your links. If A links to B and C, and B links to C and D, you are making it much easier for Google to detect you.
A better general scheme for your link patterns would be A links to C and D, and B links to D and E. This way, Google has to follow your linkwheel all the way round back to the beginning to discern an attempt at manipulation. This is why you should always place a break in the wheel.
At present, I do everything by hand. An average wheel takes 6-8 hours.
I have tried to paint your idea. One "problem"!?! From which Sites the Sites A and B will get the backlinks? Without close the wheel.
all you have to know is one thing.
THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX!
I made a linkwheel with 12 spokes for one long tail keyword. I did not close the wheel. In 3 weeks and with a little bit of coment spamming I had the keyword swamped, along with most associated keywords and even the product name itself. All these keywords have about 1000 searches per month each.They key is getting enough traffic to make money. Ranking for a keyword that gives scant traffic for 12 hours of linkwheel work isn't such a good deal. Maybe use linkwheels in conjunction with a constent generator? Make 1000 scraped pages?
But, but, but... the book says to "follow the instructions EXACTLY"Really, it does.
Ya.. pretty much do what everyone else is doing. Than in a few weeks/months once Google devalues most of those sites than we will see if "thinking outside the box" works.
Linking building in general is an art, and doing the same art everyone else doesn't work out so well, trust me.