achoo

I rebuilt an old Maillard/Rigida front wheel off my old Peugeot. Took me a bit over an hour. That wasn't hard at all.

grinningfool

Did you have a wheel truing stand or did you use the bike to true it ? What instruction book did you use ?

Retro Grouch 

Oh dear! Now you've got the jones too. There's no cure so just go with it.

TallRider

good for you! rebuilding an old wheel is one of the best ways to learn.

although here I have some questions for you:
1. did you completely disassemble everything and then put it back together again humpty-dumpty style, or did you simply de-tension all the spokes and then bring the wheel back up into true and proper spoke tension?
2. if the took everything apart and then put it back together, did you make sure the spokes went into the spoke-holes in the same orientation (you'll see that the spoke leaves an imprint into the aluminum hub shell, unless of course your hub is steel) and did you use the spokes which had come off the inside flange, again the same way? If you're not careful on this count, you'll put new grooves in the hub flange (weakening it more than necessary) and you'll have to bend the spokes a different direction when they'd already "adjusted" to the position they were in from the first build. Neither of these is a deal-breaker though, especially for the front wheel.

urbanknight

Yep, now you're going to ride only on wheels built by yourself.

Panthers007

Welcome to our club! LOL!

Now go for the rear wheel. A bit trickier than the front.

Congratulations, by the by.

maddmaxx 

Congratulations. Nothing feels as good as that first wheel.

achoo

I read Sheldon Brown's page on wheelbuilding, then built away. I don't have a truing stand, so I got the wheel pretty close to true with just by eyeballing it, and finished it off on the bike. It wasn't hard.

I replaced all the old spokes and nipples with new ones. The old spokes were plated (galvanized or chromed) and the plating was worn off and the base steel was all rusted and the spokes were starting to fail. I used my 3-foot-long bolt cutters to just cut the old spokes.

I haven't been able to ride it yet, though, because of problems with the rear wheel on the bike - my only "older" 126mm dropout one.

So the rear wheel is definitely next. Just not sure when I'll be ablt to get to it. The rear hub is fine, and the spokes and nipples are in pretty good shape. But the rim is a Wolber G2 (IIRC, I'm not going out to the garage just to check...) which is in great shape for being 10+ years old with lots of miles on it but seems to have extra high/deep sides that make getting a tire on or off without pinching the tube almost impossible. I trashed two tubes yesterday trying.

I don't recall which exact Shimano hub is on the rear wheel, but it sure would be nice to find a rim that I could at least use some of the 64 remaining 298mm spokes I have, since I got a box of 100 of those from eBikestop. And that'll leave me enough for another front wheel for one of my other bikes. Anyone know a rim/hub combination for a front wheel that uses 298mm spokes?

thorsteno

Congrats on the successful attempt. I just ordered spokes for my first wheelbuild last week. FYI, I learned DT sells by 100/box and Wheelsmith by 50/box. I went with Wheelsmith.

TallRider

maybe I missed it somewhere, but I still don't know if you put the new spokes on your front wheel into the same orientation on the hub as the previous spokes?
If your rear hub is a standard Shimano, the dimensions are pretty typical between most Shimano hubs if I remember correctly.
Get a look at one of the spoke-length calculation databases, find the Effective Rim Diameter of your old rim, and find a new rim with the same E.R.D. if you want to know your options for keeping the same spokes.