Campy high flange hubs laced to rims- should I cut them from their rims for resale?
 

I've got a couple of sets of 36 hole Campy high flange hub wheels that date back to when I trained and raced in the mid-1970s. I'm now riding more modern bikes and think they ought to move on to someone who will put them back into use. One set is laced up to a set of Super Champion tubular rims while the other is laced up to a set of 27" clincher rims. It's my suspicion that the cost to ship whole wheels may well prove prohibitive for most potential buyers leading me to consider freeing the hubs from the rims and selling them buy themselves.
Does this make sense to you more experienced seller/buyers? I've also got a set of Campy 36 hole low flange hubs of the same vintage that are buy themselves.

A second question is, might it be worth my while to spend some time polishing the hubs up?

Thanks or any informed replies.

Hugh

@Sciguy - My personal opinion is not to cut the hubs out. There are number of C&V members who still promote and use tubulars, myself included, and would prefer a complete wheel set. With spokes at about $1 each w/o nipples, I would prefer not having to spend the extra to build them up. This is with the assumption that the rims are true and still have a braking surface that is usable. If the rims are toast, save the spokes! Measure them and sell them too.

As for the 27" rims, It really isn't much different as there are a number of older bikes that are challenged, especially in the rear, to find calipers for 700c rims for a frame built for 27" rims. Of course if the bike was high end it likely had tubulars anyway.

You might spend 30 min to polish the hubs with mothers at the most. Your call.

Now checking the condition of the bearings is worth increasing the price of the hub if all is good and new lube. Then you can check the date on the cone. Better investment than polishing.

Loosen the spokes (important to do so first) and cut the spokes unless the spokes are in great shape and stainless steer. Clean, polish if you can and lubricate the hubs. That is the way that I would go. The Super Champion rims might also be worth trying to sell on Ebay. Not sure about selling the 27 inchers.

Thanks for the quick and well reasoned reply. I'm worried about the substantial jump in cost to ships boxes of greater than 1 cubic foot that USPS having shipped some cross country skis this past winter. I built both wheel sets in ~ 1974 and wonder if the nipples will be a bit tough to turn after 37 years;)

Hugh

"Date on the cone"?

If you sell the wheels for at least what the hubs are worth with the buyer paying shipping, both you and the buyer come out ahead. The buyer gets wheels at an attractive price and you save the labor of cutting out the hubs. You may also maximize your return by setting the price above what the hubs alone are worth, not too much more or you may end up with dead inventory.

I still buy 27" wheel sets.

I say.... never cut the spokes, that's something hackers do. Undo them. You didn't say if you had a freewheel still on the hub? Once in a while someone comes here and asks how to get a freewheel off a hub that was cut off the rim.

The only time you cut spokes is when they're galvanized, bent beyond reuse, or if the spoke nipple is completely seized and rounded out. Period.

-Kurt

Assumptions...
 

Price out the transport of the wheels on Shipbikes and you may find it's about the same as shipping only the hubs USPS?

....at the risk of sounding stupid, why ? What's the rationale ? I've been cutting out hubs from wheels that no longer work, and rebuilding them for at lest 25 years now, and have never had some sort of damaged hub flange or other misadventure with them in all that time. Am I tempting fate here ? I'm not going to reuse the spokes or rims, and cut at the innermost crosses with a short handled bolt cutter. They seem to work fine afterward.

What am missing ? Feel free to revile me as a hacker. I've been called worse. :)

Unless the rims are pristine, I would dismantle. I really enjoy overhauling and polishing hubs, an activity made so much easier when they're are not built up.

I sold a set of high flange Record hubs not long ago $120 locally. They didn't even have the correct, matching skewers. They made for nice eye candy on my bookshelf while they waited for a buyer.

The only time I cut spokes was a set of wheels with shot rims and tied spokes. Didn't see a way around it.

If you feel comfortable buying spokes at about $72 for a set of wheels, I don't see a problem. After a number of lean years and a "waste not, want not" kind of practice, I tend to keep good stuff and not destroy it to only replace it. I prefer DB spokes on my wheels. Most are straight gauge. Even then I would disassemble and maybe sell the unwanted spokes at half the price.
@Sciguy - my error, its the lock nuts that have a date on the surface toward the bearing, two digits. Unless disassembled and assembled with mixed parts, it will indicate the approximate year the hub was assembled the first time.

It's just that cutting a perfectly good set of stainless spokes in half is a needless (and expensive) waste. I always de-lace, measure, count, then wrap them with gaff tape with the length and quantity on them.

It's saved me a bunch and facilitated the building of a few really nice wheels for cheap.

-Kurt

Always disliked watching fellow-mechanics cutting spokes on built wheels. Cutting stainless steel spokes can be hard on cutting tools, for one reason. And, coincidentally or otherwise, those mechanics tended to be hacks in other ways (e.g., ruining customers' freewheels by neglecting to secure the freewheel removal tool in place with a Q.R. skewer).

There are people who believe otherwise, but my experience of building wheels starting in the 1960s has suggested that the same stainless steel spokes can be used on wheel after wheel after wheel without problems.

If they were my hubs (and I have a couple of pairs of tubular wheels with high-flange Campy Record hubs that I came across that had been set out for trash collection), I'd de-tension the spokes, remove them from the wheel, and measure their length. If a prospective buyer happens to need that spoke length for the new rims, shipping the hubs and spokes in the same package should cost the same or little more and would enable the buyer to save the $70 or so that new spokes would cost.

On Campagnolo hubs the inside faces of the cone locknuts are stamped with the last two digits of the year the hub was assembled. "72" = 1972.
Brent

Aha, that's an interesting bit of Campy trivia. Thanks for the enlightenment:) There may be some disassembly time in my future. It's a good mindless activity that can happen in front of the boob tube.

... first, even with spokes retailing at $1 per spoke, I've never, ever paid more than around 40 or 50 bucks per hundred. And that's for DT's.

With regard to wasting things, perhaps I'm in a different demographic, because I have an entire 5 gallon bucket of various bunches of varying lengths left over from previous wheel projects, that I'd like to use up before I die...and I know a guy here with a cutting and rolling machine for spokes who shorten to length for me when I ask him to. And many, (not all, but many) of the hubs I salvage here are from wheels built out with galvanized spokes anyway. Many are wheels I just don't know the history on...and I spend a lot of time building out a wheel set on an old hub. That said, I have certainly reused stainless spokes on occasion. I prefer to have some idea of the history of use, but if I have access to a certain length in used, then that's what goes in the wheel. Usually with new nipples

I get the cutting tool thing...I really do. People used to trash the cable cutter edges all the time at the co-op here, despite clear prohibitions posted on the handles. And I was the guy who had to get them re-sharpened. That's why a short handled bolt cutter , from Harbor Freight, is the way to go.

With all the never, ever, ever's floating around, I thought maybe I was missing some secretly damaging result to the hubs, which really is why I asked. Anyway, thanks for the responses

Is this true for Tipo and Nuovo Tipo hubs too, or just Record hubs? TIA

That's a great idea. Now if I can just find my my two notch freewheel removal tool.

What is your source!

I get the points you made in the rest of the post from above and happen to agree. I haven't built that many or as often as I will be. Purchased a Hozan thread roller a couple of years ago to support small length adjustments.

It would help if you had 2 things here.
1, pictures
2. your location in your info.

Here are a few pictures of the wheels. It appears that I built the clinchers up with galvanized spokes and the tubulars up with stainless.

https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...d35d7549a5.jpg
https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...fb07b396db.jpg
https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...8350d2d46d.jpg
https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...3c4fff48a5.jpg

...check Amazon. Multiple vendors in that price range for a box of 100 DT's, (may or may not include nipples.) What's weird about Amazon for spokes is that certain vendors will list certain lengths, and others will list other lengths, but nobody on that thing seems to carry a full range in all the common lengths.

One of the things Niagara was good for (when still alive) was a pretty full range of lengths for these at competitive prices.

There is probably some place that is still good for this...maybe someone else knows.

DT Swiss Champion 1.8 295mm Silver Spokes Box of 100

I see prices are all over the map now. It's a lot of work to roll 36 spokes using a Hozan. I wouldn't do it, because I'm lazy, and because I know this guy with the machine. :)

.
...I checked ebay, and it turns out they have a much better search engine for spokes, where you can specify length, and get comparison pricing. Better system. I vaguely recall discovering this the last time I bought a couple of boxes a couple of years back. There might very well be one best place now, to order online. But I do not know who it might be.

https://www.ebay.com/b/DT-Swiss-Bicycle-Spokes/177826/bn_1869827?mkevt=1&mkcid=1&mkrid=711-53200-19255-0&campid=5336728181&customid=&toolid=10001

..

I
I would agree as older bike guy I have not brought a new spoke in over 25 years and hand trued the last dozen or so wheels to come through my hands no problem. Even when I bust up wheels high or low end I unlace and save the spokes better hub parts.
As for nearly any vintage Campy Wheel set I wouldn't break them unless the wheel is taco bent.