trangelia

Hi I've been wanting some new fixie wheels for my project, but the ones I want are either going to be really expensive through some dealers, or out of stock from others. So I was wondering if it would be easy enough for me to just buy the rims, hubs, and spokes, and just lace it together myself per sheldon brown's instructions. Perhaps try to true them myself for the first time, or just pay to have them professionally trued instead of having to have a professional wheel build. Has anyone tried this before? Does it sound doable? I'm pretty good at building things in general, and have access to a truing stand and all the tools I would need...

Thanks

reptilezs

sure you can do it. you must balance 3 things when building the wheel, even tension, radial and lateral true.

rhenning

As a warning only it is cheaper to buy the wheels than to build them yourself and that is from a person who likes to build wheels. Roger

FBinNY 

If you're going to go the build yourself route, consider the sum of the parts vs. the cost of a pre-built wheel. Often you'll find the wheel to be less than the sum of the parts, so not only is labor free, but they're even paying you not to build it. So from a purely economic syandpoint building may not make sense. The econmics change when re-building wheels, especially on high quality hubs. Now with the hub out of the equation rebuilding suddenly makes lots of sense.

You may choose to build you own anyway because it'll be a good learning experience. Here I'm with you 100%, but have a suggestion.

Instead of learning and practicing on newly purchased expensive parts, go find a junk wheel in the trash or a yard sale. You might have to buy a whole bike, but that's just so many more parts to learn with. Take the wheel apart and relace it, then practice truing and tightening per a tutorial. Do this a few times until you're comfortable with your new skill, then do it for real.

operator

I wouldn't recommend doing this. A wheel is junk usually because the rim is bent. In which case it won't be good learning material as tension will be all over the place to keep it true. Not relevant to a new wheel build.

FBinNY 

I wasn't suggesting buying a pretzel, but lots of reasonably good wheels are trashed or sold in yard sales, either because folks were tired of having them sitting around in the garage, or because one of the two wheels were bad and the bike wasn't worth fixing. There are any number of reasons that usable or truable wheels end up trashed. It shouldn't take a ton of work to find a decent candidate for practice, and far cheaper than trashing new parts during the learning process.

3alarmer

Operator:

Although I sort of have to agree with you that this is not
how I would like to spend my learning time (working on
surplused wheels), I spend four hours every Saturday
in a facility where we are pretty much drowning in a
sea of perfectly usable wheels, many of which require
little work, if any, to go on someone's bicycle.

This works out pretty well, since like most places these
days, we are visited by an unending stream of long
faced people who have learned the hard way about
the down side of quick releases.

In my limited experience here, FB seems to know pretty
much what the hell he is talking about, so perhaps a
little slack might be considered.

I look forward to my own inevitable chastisement, more
with a sense of wonder than one of masochism.

Most respectfully yours,
Mike Larmer

p.s. +1 on prebuilts are cheaper.

operator

Yeah so do I. Just differing opinions.

3alarmer

Operator amigo:

Let me spell it out for you.

Your opinion appears to be based on two assumptions:

1. That every tossed wheel is a basket case that
has too much acquired stress in the rim to work with.
I know from personal experience that this is in error.

2. That the OP is too stupid or inexperienced to know the
difference. This may or may not be true. But it seems
a bit presumptuous right out of the gate.

I'm not saying you don't know what you're talking about.
Personally i have neither the time nor ambition to work with
used rims. But I do show really poor people who have few
other transportation alternatives how to use them.

What I am saying is that you may have reached the stage
of crankiness where you might pause, take a few breaths,
and reflect on just why it is you choose to devote the
time and energy you do to posting here.

Life is short; dead is a long, long time.

Once again respectfully,
Mike Larmer

clasher

You can buy a pre-built wheel for less than the cost of parts and take it apart if you like, giving you the better pricing on parts and the experience of building it back up. If I didn't fabricate such esoteric needs for myself I'd have gone this route, but I broke down and bought some new parts to put together. I found sheldon's wheelbuilding page solid, and for more in-depth information I read most of Roger Munson's wheelbuilding book. I built up a wheelset from some good rims that had damaged hubs and a random set of hubs... ended up donating it to the local co-op.

Budget a few hours, preferably a nice quiet afternoon so you can focus and enjoy the time... stop if you get frustrated so you don't ruin stuff (this is mostly advice to myself here). I found the process more enjoyable after re-lacing the same wheel a few times just for kicks... now I just have to wait for my parts to get here... SA 5 speed hub and a dynamo/drum front hub... should be fun and challenging.

MrCjolsen

I learned how to build wheels in one morning by taking a wheel apart, following Sheldon's instructions backwards, and then putting the wheel back together.

I build or rebuild a few wheels a year. I think an amateur who carefully and methodically builds his or her own wheel is going to have a better finished product than the much cheaper machine-built wheel you get at a bike shop or online. That's why I build my own wheels.

Monster Pete

I decided to jump right in and have a go using an ebay-ed 3-speed hub and a rim from an abandoned wheel I found in the bike shed, though I did use new spokes. I followed Sheldon's article and, using nothing but a screwdriver, spoke wrench and my bike as a trueing stand, managed to get a reasonably true wheel that hasn't failed yet. Wheelbuilding/trueing is a useful skill for the home mechanic, and the best way to learn something is by doing it.

Retro Grouch 

Only if you ignore the satisfaction of having done it yourself and the satisfaction of learning a new skill. Why would anybody want to do that?

FBinNY 

There's plenty of room for opinions here. As Operator says, the junk wheel doesn't translate to a new wheel build.

My reason for practicing on junk is to help new builders get exposed to things that we tend to take for granted. Little stuff like spoke wrench fit on the nipple, aligning without putting new hops in, R/L tension/feel difference on rear wheels, even correctly phasing spokes and not flocking up the pattern when lacing.

Newbies tend to make newbie mistakes, even when following a manual. I figure it's better to get that behind them on practice junk. Kinda like training pilots in simulators rather than having them crash planes. When they've mastered a few basics they can work on the real thing.

trek330

After bad experience with cheap factory built wheels,Lazy LBS mechanics I decided to build a set of wheels for my Trek 330.Having 126 spacing limited my new wheel options and was another reason I went with homemade.I read section on wheel building in the Zinn book,On-line Park tool sections,Sheldon Brown sources,and "the"bicycle wheel" by Jobs Brandt.I practiced the art of truing on old wheels,bought Mavic Rims,found some great cheap Sunshine Hubs on e-bay bought some spokes and plunged onward.Of course I also invested in a truing stand and wheel tension meter for about $100.The wheels came out superb!The bike is a sublime experience to ride now and I have a great deal of satisfaction from the efforts!

Retro Grouch 

I agree. There's things that you can learn by working on a junk wheel but there are major limitations. You can certainly learn to lace the spokes by working on a junk wheel. I could teach an chimpanzee to lace the spokes. The real art of wheelbuilding comes during the tensioning and trueing process. To do that well you have to start with a rim that's both round and straight.

3alarmer

trangelia:

If you've got the wherewithal, I would also
call this your preferred option.

Mike