building my wheel

Jesus · Sep 3, 2004

Why don't you do it yourself. Get a book on how to build them and have fun. It's not really that hard, and is a LOT easier than people make it out to be.

If you take your time you'll probably be surprised how easy it is.

Jesus · Sep 3, 2004

Some people like to make it out to be this "magical" occurance, with the moon and stars in alignment, but it's just a wheel. If you can do all the other maintenance on your bike, this isn't much harder.

BUT, if your not the mechanical type, take it to an experienced shop.

Almost forgot. If your a hippie, DEFINATLY let someone else do it. Cause a brain is required!

I apologize in advance for the hippie joke, but it's been a while since I have picked on that socio-economic group. But don't worry, next time i'll pick on the gimpy.

buildyourown · Sep 3, 2004

You have to build a lot of them to get good at it. No amount of instruction will make up for that. Get a book and try it. Take you sweet time. Sit down on the couch with a beer and do it on the coffee table. The most important thing is to go slow. SLOWLY bring the wheel up to tension, and everything should end up reasonably round and straight without much fussing.

Jesus · Sep 3, 2004

buildyourown said:
You have to build a lot of them to get good at it. No amount of instruction will make up for that. Get a book and try it. Take you sweet time. Sit down on the couch with a beer and do it on the coffee table. The most important thing is to go slow. SLOWLY bring the wheel up to tension, and everything should end up reasonably round and straight without much fussing.

Well put!

OGRipper · Sep 3, 2004

Building wheels is not that tough but it is one of those things that gets much better with practice. I was a wrench for about 15 years and learned a lot from trial and error. If I were you I'd practice on some beater wheel before you jump into doing a wheel you need to rely on. If your LBS doesn't have much experience but you'll still need to pay them, you're better off doing it yourself or paying a shop that knows what they're doing. (Don't pay someone else to learn how to do it.)

Anyway, a few tips: There are a lot of different lacing patterns but I prefer regular old 3x. I also like to use spoke prep on the spoke threads. It's kind of like weak loctite and really helps the wheel hold tension. What I do is prep the threads, lace up the wheel, then put a drop of chain lube on the OUTSIDE of each nipple to lube the nipple/rim connection - be careful not to get lube on the threads. Then very slowly bring up the tension, especially if its the first time using a particular hub/rim combo and you're not positive about the spoke length. If you tighten too much you can get halfway around the wheel and find that you can't get the second half as tight, and suddenly your wheel looks like an egg. If you go slow you'll be able to bring up the tension evenly around the whole wheel. Check for roundness and side-to-side trueness as you go, doesn't need to be perfect until the end but make sure it's close, it's easier to make corrections early. Even tension is key to the strength and durability of any wheel. If you take your time it will pay off.

My approach is a bit old school, but my wheels last forever and after all, I am OG.

Good luck.

Matt D · Sep 3, 2004

buildyourown said:
Sit down on the couch with a beer and do it on the coffee table.

Probably not a good idea since he's like 12 years old. :thumb:

But he may be a hippie, he's from Ashville and all.

I would suggest having an experienced wheel builder walk you through it first, but it seems you don't have one. If Sideways will put up with you, maybe you should ask him?

DVNT · Sep 3, 2004

Jesus said:
next time i'll pick on the gimpy.

hey, what did i do?

OGRipper · Sep 3, 2004

If I smoke weed and have a messed up ankle, am I a gimpy hippie?

If so, bring it on Jesus!!! :eviltongu

zedro · Sep 3, 2004

Jesus said:
Get a book on how to build them and have fun.

whats with the books? this is the internet people.....its like suggesting a magazine shop to look at porn.

go look at Sheldon Browns website, lotsa info and procedure there. If you're attentive and patient it'll be fine. Oh and get a quality spoke wrench, otherwise you'll strip the nipple flats.

bmies · Sep 3, 2004

http://www.sheldonbrown.com/wheelbuild.html

I used this website and a couple others to build my first wheelset. They are still holding true after a few hard rides. Its not hard, just make sure you check yourself alot to make sure you get the lacing done correctly. Speaking from experience, it sucks having to pull the wheel back apart after you get offtrack w/ one spoke. Dont be scared to do it though.

zedro · Sep 3, 2004

oh, and re-tension the spokes and re-true after the first day of riding.

Kornphlake · Sep 3, 2004

zedro said:
whats with the books? this is the internet people.....its like suggesting a magazine shop to look at porn.

go look at Sheldon Browns website, lotsa info and procedure there. If you're attentive and patient it'll be fine. Oh and get a quality spoke wrench, otherwise you'll strip the nipple flats.

I'm suprised it took that long for somebody to mention sheldon brown. I used sheldon's website when I built my first and only wheel and it's been going strong for a year now. Be careful with the lacing pattern sheldon explains, there's something whacked about it if you're lacing a 32 hole rim and the valve stem will end up in the wrong place, it's better to just copy another wheel's lacing pattern if you're doing a 32 spoke wheel. I still haven't figured out why my wheel is off like it is since sheldon's instructions seem accurate for either a 32 or 36 spoke wheel, I just haven't taken the time to understand what I did wrong and then take the time to fix it. Do a search on wheel building and you'll find a ton of threads with lots of information.

buildyourown · Sep 3, 2004

I suggested the book because that's what I learned from. When I was a kid, we didn't have this fancy internet thing. And we had to steal our porn out of the dumpster behind the magazine store.

zedro · Sep 3, 2004

Kornphlake said:
I used sheldon's website when I built my first and only wheel and it's been going strong for a year now. Be careful with the lacing pattern sheldon explains, there's something whacked about it if you're lacing a 32 hole rim and the valve stem will end up in the wrong place, ....

whew, i thought it was just me being retarded. My first two wheels where i used the guide explicitly ended up like that, and i figured i just bungled it. The next (and subsequent) wheels which i built intuitively without the guide came out right.

OGRipper · Sep 3, 2004

Jobst Brandt wrote a book too, that's the method I use - you lace each side of each flange at a time, so for a rear I do inside drive, inside non-drive, outside drive, outside non-drive. It includes the old trick where you look through the nipple hole when you put the very first spoke in, if you get that one right you should be good to go.

Man, I'm having flashbacks to long summer days at a shop where I was the only wheelbuilder, we did lots of pro bikes and I used to spend entire days doing nothing but wheels...I used to work the whole "wheel building as an art form" angle, get myself set up outside under a tree, no interruptions...and a cold beverage of course...ahhhh...

ender · Sep 3, 2004

GET THIS BOOK! :love:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0960723668/qid=1094238120/sr=ka-2/ref=pd_ka_2/102-6730178-9926542

The Sheldon Brown info is good but, I found the step by step to building a common 3 lace wheel in this book much simpler.

It took me under a day 2 build my first 2 wheels and now it takes me @ 1.5 hours to do one! I only use the book now to make sure I haven't missed anything but, I can pretty much build one without. I'm definitely getting faster!

ender · Sep 3, 2004

zedro said:
oh, and re-tension the spokes and re-true after the first day of riding.

You shouldn't have to if you build it right although, it's good to check just in case you messed up the build. All the wheels I've built don't need tensioning and truing after it's maiden voyage. Most of the reason of this anomoly after the first ride is because most wheel builders don't correct the spoke line or relieve spoke stress during wheel building.

ender · Sep 7, 2004

me89 said:
yeh im deffinatly 17.

and im not payin them to help me learn how to build the wheelset. im paying them for the parts im doin all the labor. im really tight with all the mechanics and owners of epic so there letting me do this project for school. so thanks for all the info and i will deffinatly check out sheldons sight. and im to lazy to read a book about this. i would much rather use internet.

Read a book or read on the internet? Aside from $$ what's the difference?

I'm trying to make this easy for you and you don't have to read the book to build your wheel. It has step by step instructions and it makes it very simple. You should at least check it out because it's WAY more simple than the Sheldon instructions.

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