Today I Built A Wheel
I've been riding mountain bikes for fourteen years and have been maintaining my own bikes for close on twenty years. In all that time I have stripped bikes down, rebuilt them, repainted them, upgraded bits and repaired bits. One thing I have never done though is build a wheel. Until today.
I have always viewed wheel building and truing as a bit of a dark art - something you are born with the skills for and not something to be attempted by mere mortals. However, since getting what was left of my Kona back I am trying to get it back up an running by spending as little as possible. With that in mind I set about using the hub of my rear wheel (discarding the knackered rim) and the rim of my front wheel (discarding the knackered hub) and building a new rear wheel, thus saving myself the £45 for a new one.
The front was easy to dismantle, simply cutting the majority of the spokes to avoid the tedium of trying to undo all the nipples. With the rear though I needed to carefully take it apart, spoke by spoke as I was planning on reusing all the bits with the new rim. Unfortunately, the tea-leaf that took the bike had tried a bit of wheel straightening with a pair of pliers, mullering quite of a few of the nipples. This made removing them (and subsequently re-using them) a little tricky.
A little trick I saw ages ago on the Extreme Sports channel was that of taping the spokes together before removing the broken rim. This means that they are paired and laced as needed when you put the new rim in place, saving you the hassle of lacing the wheel. You can just about see the tape where the spokes cross in the image below.
Following the helpful advice on wheelbuilding from the slightly bonkers looking Sheldon Brown I was truing my wheel in no time. Unfortunately I don’t have a proper truing stand so an upside down bike frame had to suffice but it seemed to work OK.
The trick to a true wheel is to makes lots of tiny adjustments rather than simply cranking one spoke until it snaps! It took me a couple of hours in all but I now have a pretty true wheel. There is a tiny (less than 1mm) amount of vertical movement but laterally it is almost spot on. For a first attempt it looks pretty good and it is certainly better than when the bike was nicked. Hurrah!
Now all I need is a front wheel. Anyone got one they want to sell me?
Hopefully tomorrow I'll finish sanding the frame down (losing the grim yellow paint) and then I can paint it up and maybe start building the bike.
Well done that man…
Also - 10 out of 10 for the internet nutter find.
August 1st, 2006 at 8:41 amTa! I’m still quite chuffed!
August 1st, 2006 at 9:46 amnutter or wheel?
August 1st, 2006 at 7:52 pmif you’re swapping the rim then you could just tape a new rim to the old and transfer the spokes one by one.. just a little quicker then taping the spokes together.
Well done on your wheel,. it’s always nice to do them.
August 8th, 2006 at 3:09 pmOh and I am not all that bothered about vertical movement, I find some rims have major flatspots around the join which are impossible to remove, so as long as it’s true and evenly tensioned that’s good enough for me.
August 8th, 2006 at 3:10 pmI thought about taping the rims together but the old was was so pringled it would have been very tricky to get them side by side!
Got a bargain front wheel off eBay too, complete with tyre and tube, pretty much new and looks like it’s off a Marin (if the Ovation hub is any indicator) for 24 quid. Hurrah! Now I just need to find time to paint the frame and build it up.
August 8th, 2006 at 3:13 pm