Cycling: Wheel Building

I’m still working on getting the bike to peak perfection, this time with changing the front rim over. Never done this job before but I bagged a Sun Rims Singletrack for £5.00 on eBay and went for it. This wheel has been totally awesome it’s just so strong, the Sun Rims Mammoth has to be one of the best rims out there for strength, but still I got my other Singletrack now so finally matching wheels time !

One of the key things to do when building a wheel up is knowing exactly what spokes you need !

Edd, an easy to use spoke calculator

This was a bit of a challenge due to my M755 front hub which is rather ancient, so it was not on Edd’s hub database. I luckily found all the numbers on a forum post through Google and inputted them into the spoke calculator manually… at least my rim came up on the database search 🙂 As you can see once you put in all the details it tells you what to get (263.9 / 262.9mm). I decided to go with 36x263mm Halo black spokes off eBay which only set me back £12.99. I only need 32 spokes for this build but a few spares might come in handy ! I also got an 8way spoke key for £1.90 which is a must have for later…

Next was stripping the wheel down, which was done using a flat blade screwdriver going around each spoke nipple and loosening them off two turns as you go round the wheel. It’s a slow process but if you loosen the spokes off progressively it’s much easier than doing one at a time, because of the pulling stresses from the alternate spokes on the other side of the rim.

Cleaned up the old XT HB-M755 hub and kept the old spokes just temporarily. Just waiting for the spokes in the post now…

Here is the new wheel after about 2 hours of using the spoke key which drove my crazy ! The wheel is still not perfectly true but it’s not like I’m entering the Tour De France or something ! For some reason the spoke key really was not the best of fit on the spokes and started chewing up the nipples real bad, so a word of advice perhaps go for one of the better “Park Tool” spoke keys which cost a bit more.  For putting the spokes back in I just copied my back wheel which is obviously the same but I also used these two videos which are pretty helpful:

It’s very important to watch the truing video because It’s important to understand how the spokes are pulling the rim from left to right as well as inwards to the hub ! So I’ve switched back to my IRC Mud-Mad tyres as you can see, though I hate mud they are good for summer off-road and loose surfaces for the places I got cycling. I hope this post is helpful to anyone considering building a wheel or two 😀