Wheel Building

[Radar]

Always steered away from wheels - seemed like a mystical black art. A cream crackered road rear wheel (don't get me on the subject of Dura Ace 10 speed hubs) which needs to survive a couple of weeks has spurred me into action. Amongst other things said rear wheel needed truing - normally this is a job I'd leave to Sam at the bike shop, but knowing that he'd condemn the wheel I had a go armed with Zinn and the Art..

I managed to true it, well good enough. Tricky mind as I had to do it on the bike not on a stand.

I assume this process would be easier with a wheel stand? Also one of my little helpers lost my spoke key. (Don't know what make or size) Looking at Park range do I get one of those three sided spoke keys or the pretty coloured ones (but what size?)

Those of you who build wheels - how did you learn? Book and trial and error? At father's knee? Course? Any recommendations much appreciated.

Any stand recommendations? Beyond the Singletrack article a month or so back?


I hope to build up a Pace RC50 front hub for starters. I know that spoke length is an important thing - so I think I'll go and see Sam to buy spokes, with a 'if (when) I make a hash of this can you fix it?' clause - this will no doubt involve biscuits.

Any other top tips?

Cheers
Radar

 

[cherrybomb]

I hope to build up a Pace RC50 front hub for starters. I know that spoke length is an important thing - so I think I'll go and see Sam to buy spokes, with a 'if (when) I make a hash of this can you fix it?' clause - this will no doubt involve biscuits.

Any other top tips?

Cheers
Radar

I had exactly the same idea with a NOS RC50 and NOS USA Sunn Cr18. I got spokes from the LBS (took the rim and hub in for them to measure) . They agreed to tension and true for me once I'd got it built up.

Next day it went back in as.....spokes, nipples , rim and hub all in a big bag! :roll: (Oh and a huge bag of Jelly Babies!

I'd recommend stipping down an old wheel and then building it back up before you start out with stuff you actually need. (But maybe I'm just really crap!).

 

[kaiser]

I've got a minoura stand and its ok but if I was buying, someone recently got one from aspire velotech and it looks the mutts.

Spoke sizing is the easy part, use either the dt swiss calc or theres a link on the sheldon brown website to another if your hubs not listed.

I also have the park spoke key and its fine but recommended in many places is one called a spokey, a plastic disc one.

As for building if you have a search I went through the same thing and a few folks helped me out, it may be worth having a search. Ultimately I ended up copying a wheel and using a few counting tips given in the thread and got it in the end. Have a read at the sheldon brown article, again I found it overly complicated but containing a few good tips. At the end of the day it is initially daunting but not too difficult, you may make several mistakes but its worth it, at the end of the day I'm very happy with my wheels and already have plans for several more pairs :roll:

 

[gump]

Plastic spokey are fine, nice and soft and don't scratch the spokes (like some monkey at CRC does..)

Sheldon has simple guide, all you need to start from scratch.
Never used a wheel jig, just brake blocks. Sure a jig will be easier though.

Not too hard, take your time, double check and all will be swell. Easier if you have one done next to you to check first time too.

Enjoy.

 

[lewis1641]

i found this informative and amusing...

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=qTb3x5VO69Y&feature=user

 

[retrojon]

I've got one of the 3 sided ones and it is annoying.
All the nipples I've adjusted have fitted the smallest side, so I put tape over the other two to stop me using them by mistake.

 

[utahdog2003]

I have a Park PS-2 that is as old as the hills and I would recomend one to anyone who does their own maintenance. A good truing stand makes working with wheels on any level, even building (which many time is much easier than wheel repair), a relaxing beer-in-hand experience. I like the Spokey wrenches the best, I've got about 5 of those suckers in 14 ga and 15ga. A nippled driver/speed wrench like the DT Swiss Proline Nipple Driver is a good idea too, as it cuts down on the lacing time greatly and keeps your wrists from wearing out. I've got the older style Speed Wrench from Bicycle Dynamics (?) and it's been great. I worked for a company that made Deep-V aero style nipple drivers for a while and I've got one of those too, although threading the nipple on a spoke and feeding it through the wheel works too. Tools make the difference in a big way. I built the rear wheel of my trials bike Monday evening (Mavic 217, 14gs DTs, Brass and an STX-RC 7speed hub...the 217 will be fine...I'm not Ryan Leech!) while drinking Honeymoon Summer Ale, sitting on the back porch and watching the baby paint with watercolors! Very relaxing way to end the day!

A few years ago I got a bracket made that attached a run-out guage to the arm of my PS-2, so that I could measure the amount the wheel was actually out of true and adjust the wheel as much as possible for true, that was really overkill as in reality the moment you take a trued wheel or a fresh built wheel out of the stand and put around the block you can disturb the true enoughh to read it on a guage and still not see it with the naked eye. The prongs of the PS-2 work just fine...that guage was just me being a gadget head again.

Jobst Brandt's book, "The Bicycle Wheel" is a good source for info on the structure of a bike wheel and how the whole thing works as a system. Brandt's method of lacing a wheel is a PITA, but the info in the book is great background for any cyclist. One step I don't think he mentions is, keep another wheel of the same build pattern next to you and use it as a guide for lacing. Most of us have an extra wheel we can use for reference!

I used to have people want to come in and sit with me while I built their wheels back in my shop days, and watch me and have me explain what and why I was doing what I was doing. I didn't much care, although I explained to them that the labor for building a wheel was based on time, and that I didn't mind the how-to discussion, but any time over-run would be quoted on our normal shop hourly rate. Usually meant that wheels built in this way were about 20 dollars more a set (or about 70 dollars total in labor for two wheels, as I recall) but the customers who were interested seemed to think that was fair, and in the end I think everyone was happy. You could try this idea...ask you favorite shop if you can watch and ask questions. It may take a while, as the mechanic will probably be covering phones and dealing with customers during the build, but you'll learn the most this way.

Stand, Spokey, Nipple Driver, Spoke Prep (for the nipple threads) and time. Enjoy wheelbuilding like any other part of bike mechanics. It aint nearly the VooDoo people think it is. Now...FIXING a badly damaged wheel...that's VooDoo that I won't even try to explain!

 

[retrojon]

RE the spoke length, there are calculators around. I saw one on the DT site a while ago.

 

[cherrybomb]

There's a good calculator that you download as an Excel database. Do a search for Spocalc2004

 

[gump]

spocalc is good - but like always - check the numbers against the parts you have, spoke count etc just to be sure