I fancy building a wheel up, mostly because I can’t find the combination of bits I want for the right pruce. Plus I’ve found a good deal on hubs, rims and spokes seperately.

I’ve never built a wheel before, but I’m pretty patient and good at this stuff. I thought I would probably need a wheel truing stand but they cost quite a bit of money! My LBS charges £5 a wheel for truing, would it be feasible for me to lace it and get it almost true then ask them to finish it? Or am I over simplifying it?

I just use my forks or frame, depending on which end I’m building for…

If you want some info, the Sheldon Brown website is a great resource for wheelbuilding.

You can probably get away with using the frame.

As for how go to you tube and look up wheel bud. Those by bike tube worked well for me – much nicer than reading about it.

Forks or frame works fine. Use a cloths peg and matchsticks to make a reference to true against

cool thanks guys. I have always used the frame before but thought I might need something better to get them properly trued. At the end of the day it can always be dismantled and re-built!

Download roger mussons wheelpro book, I have built about 10 wheels now, beware though, its addictive!

http://www.wheelpro.co.uk/wheelbuilding/book.php

£9 job done

wheel building has never been easier (he says as if wheel building was ever easy) with to days double rims and spoke calculaters.
Wheel spoke require the same tention through out the wheel this can be achived by simplely count the turns of the nipple for each spoke, this is best done by laceIng the wheel with all the nipples screwed down to the last 2 lines of thread then go round the wheel tightening the nipple 1 turn at a time on both side till starting at the valve hole and finishing there repeat twice now with helf turns then check wheel for tension if slack tighten again with half turns and repeat this process untill you are happy with tension.
NOW all being well and you used correct lenght spokes for eaxh side wheel should be true,dished and centred…
If you are using a mavic rim dont let the weld join fool you in to thinking your wheel has a hight spot!

Lastly the best lacing pattern is 1 over and 2 under. This how the spokes cross each other
Hope this helps or if you are local to essex il f do it for you

its not as hard as some people would have you believe, and £5 for a wheel true is pretty good value.
might be worth it to have the shop check em even if you do true them up yourself.
sheldon browns info is good too.

upturned rim braked rigid fork makes an ace truing stand

Thanks for the advice guys.
Its going to be Stans crest/olympic on DT revs spokes with hope pro2s in the middle (hopefully somewhere near the middle)

I’m looking forward to the challenge, I want to be able to fix/build everything on my bike. Ever since I got screwed by a bike shop on a awful service I have wanted to learn how to do everything.
Last week I changed shock bushings, some people said this was hard. It took 5 mins with a tool I picked up off ebay for £6!

Zoota – thanks for the info that will help me loads. unfortunately I am not near essex otherwise I would have taken you up on the offer! Although if anyone is near Leicester and fancies lending me their truing stand that would be extremely helpful!

Tom – im similar – wanted to make my own wheels and now able to do everything to fix my bike – definitely get a book such as wheelpro link above – I used that and made two 29er wheels 2 years ago. Apart from a little truing here and there they have worked fine!

Its a great feeling to say you build your wheels, and apart from preparing a new frame (ie facing off the bb, headset and disc brake bosses), I can now say I built my bike completely!

There isnt much of a saving unfortunately but satisfaction wins here!

Wheel spoke require the same tention through out the wheel this can be achived by simplely count the turns of the nipple for each spoke, this is best done by laceIng the wheel with all the nipples screwed down to the last 2 lines of thread then go round the wheel tightening the nipple 1 turn at a time on both side till starting at the valve hole and finishing there repeat twice now with helf turns then check wheel for tension if slack tighten again with half turns and repeat this process untill you are happy with tension.

This is false.

I started wheelbuilding when I realised that building up whole frames was getting expensive. Like others above, I can’t recommend Roger Musson’s book enough. More to the point he not only gives a pretty much foolproof guide to wheelbuilding but the book also includes guidance on building your own tools and truing stand. I have now used those tools to build 8 pairs of wheels.

The total cost of all the kit to build the tools and the stand was around 20ukp plus my time. Any competent bodger with a saw and a drill should be able to build the stand

disben,
I don’t know about no savings, I currently have the price as around 280. For the same build from Merlin it comes in around the 350 mark.

[quoteThis is false]
When using a spoke tension tool to check the tension of spoke on one side of the wheel you are aiming to have the spokes all similer tension and same for the othe side, if dished both side can have differnt tension but as long as the tension is the same for that side it will produce a straight wheel assuming every thing else is correct.
If this is not true what is the point of a spoke tension tool??

THIS IS FALSE
http://www.parktool.com/blog/repair-help/wheel-tension-measurement

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

@tom hughes i would advise checking these two site and cross referencing them
@ superficail if you would like to do them same you will see that my post is not false 🙂

Kind regards zoota

I just built my first wheel a the weekend, I have now built 3 as of last night.

Once you get the hang of it, it is not to bad. I bought the Roger Musson book (Wheel Pro), in that there is loads of good info from what tools you will need and how to make them to how to measure hubs and rims to calculate spoke lengths.

If you decide you want a stand have a look for the Unior one, it is very basic but quite sturdy, that in conjunction with the truing guides in the wheel pro book will see you right for a good wheel build.

The only bit i struggled with was final tensioning of the wheel, in the end I bought a Park tension meter from ebay and it helped me.
If you look in my posting history you will see a thread i started at the weekend about final tensioning of a wheel with some very helpfull info in it.

Things i have found from building my first wheels

Spoke key – the M-Parts Pro one on CRC is briliant for the money, you do not need to spend more than that on a spoke key

Nippe Driver – found this invaluable when building my wheels, if you can not be bothered to make one then Rose Bikes have the DT Swiss one at a good price

Spokes and Nipples – Rose Bikes are very competative on pricing for DT Swiss Competition Spokes (The double butted ones). Make you life easier in the future and just go for brass nipples.

Good luck

When using a spoke tension tool to check the tension of spoke on one side of the wheel you are aiming to have the spokes all similer tension and same for the othe side, if dished both side can have differnt tension but as long as the tension is the same for that side it will produce a straight wheel assuming every thing else is correct.
If this is not true what is the point of a spoke tension tool??

What you’ve said there is sort of correct. The false bit is the assumption that if you put x number of turns each nipple that all the tension will be equal throughout the wheel. If that were the case there wouldn’t be a need for a tension tool. Also you can’t say that if you equalise the tension in all the spokes, the wheel will be straight. Even on a brand new rim / spokes / hub they’re always a bit out of true after lacing / tensioning and need some correction.

Having only built 2-300 wheels so far I also feel zoota is talking crap. I could be wrong though.

What Zoota is saying vaguely makes sense, but the word ‘assuming’ is the key one!

To be honest the Sheldon article worries me a little too – we one had a customer who was a musician who’d ‘trued’ his wheel by making all spokes the same pitch. It was not happy!

You’ll get even tension with Zoota’s method on perfect parts on a radially laced, non disc, front wheel. Otherwise don’t follow that advice!

I’ve built around 6 sets of wheels using Sheldon’s guide, and so far, they’ve all happily survived a few seasons of DH racing…

What Zoota is saying is pretty much bang on in my book for Achieving the “base” build that you need to get to before the final tensioning.

If you get the base build wrong, you will have a nighmare finally truing the wheel.

The point about the Weld/Join is also true although I completely forgot about it when I did my back wheel the other day.

Once you have done as per Zoota and got the thing basically round and true, I would suggest to start with no more than half a turn for each adjustment and then re-check and dont expect to get it true with the first set of adjustments or you may end up creating more problems than you fix.

Get the worst of the sid-to-side done in the first pass, then check the “roundness” (up-down).

you should need to alternate bewteen the 2 at least a couple of times before you finish with 1/4 turn final adjustments.

Try to home in to the exact point of each imperfection and if it is BETWEEN two spokes then adjust just those spokes.
If the imperfection sits exactly on a spoke then you are adjusting THAT spoke, say, half a turn and 1/4 turn on the two spokes either side.

If the buckle is a gradual one then you will need to look at more spokes, not just the ones at the high point otherwise you end up with one spoke with too much tension. The formula for this is hard to quantify and is basically down to “Feel”

Agree that a frame is fine although a jig is well worth the investment as you will save so much money in the long run and the process is made soo much easier.

I built some wheels to sheldons guide, they were perfect……….

Untill I put them inthe frame, turned out the 20mm addapters added ~10mm of dish and specialized frames are offset to reduce dish, both things I already knew, but didn’t think about at the time, car park bodge truing to get them vaguely central and i’ve not had any problems since.

There isnt much of a saving unfortunately but satisfaction wins here!

I found I can save about £60/wheel buying the hubs and rims off CRC and the spokes from Rose Vs CRC/melin/LBS prices, most seem to charge £25 to build them, and CRC usualy have £15+ off on the rims and hubs, plus discount codes, and buying spokes from Rose saves another £8/wheel.

beware though, its addictive

Very true, I built a new rear as it was significanlty cheeper than getting the LBS to do it, then spent the change on new rims and spokes for the front.

Then decided the road bike needed new wheels.

Then decided the 29er needed new wheels

Then decided I needed a new hardtail, that would need new wheels too……..

Then decided the road bike needed new wheels.

Then decided the 29er needed new wheels

Then decided I needed a new hardtail, that would need new wheels too…….. 😆

I can execute a basic straightening of a wheel.
I have bought Roger’s book and building a wheel is on the List.

So, let me get this straight…. 😉

Armed with the Book, a spoke tension tool and some sort of wheel jig.
I should be able to get the job done ?.

Myself and a mate did this the other day – neither of us had any wheel; building experience, got the hubs, spokes and rims, stuck on youtube, and laced them up.

Few ****, but by the end we had two wheels laced, took them to the shop for truing, and were complimented on our first attempt.

Go for it, I say. It is reasonably straightforward.

Solo
Armed with the Book, a spoke tension tool and some sort of wheel jig.
I should be able to get the job done ?

I found a bit of patience and a beer are also usefull when building a wheel.

Another author/book you might find useful – Gerd Schraner, The Art of Wheelbuilding.

Lastly the best lacing pattern is 1 over and 2 under. This how the spokes cross each other-

The first two cross over then under ie the ones you have pushed through from the inside of the hub with the elbow on the inside of the hub

It is not hard to do IME and takes time and patience.

plucking the spokes is a decent method of testing evenness (if not an actual measure) of tension…

evenness on each side is the goal so the spoke are sharing properly

Thanks Peeps !.

😀

Question
are spokes for the drive side of a wheel and disc side shorter then the non drive and non disc side?
Answer: yes
so why is this? Any one!
Dont bother i already know and as this is the case when building wheels correctly equal turns either side will build a fairly true wheel.
you may need to adjust the dish side more but You will make that decision when your put the wheel in the bike frame or in your truing stand.
my first wheel build: aged 13.
My first job aged 14 in my local bike shop.
Time i have been in the cycle industry:17 years.
Wheels built: i couldnt even remmber.
Wheels built dead straight just using spoke key and tm1 tool: 3 this month.
Wheels built with spoke key and plumb line whilst a teenager: to many to mention.
Wheels built …… Well you get the message.

you could just cobble it all together and then take it to an LBS to tension it 🙂
wheel build £30ish true up £5ish

Download Brother Musson’s guide – brilliant.

I bought a cheapo jig (£30ish)and it’s pretty good to be fair, means you can sit in front of telly with it on the coffee table which is better than messing around using a bike frame/forks but obviously bike frame does the job. Issue with the jig I have is I find the tolerance guides could be more accurate, guess that changes when you spend more dosh.

After the first couple of wheels it gets easier and as said above very addictive.

I’ve had to deal with some horrific new rims in the past. The majority of my 26″ builds in the past were Mavic D521 silver’s and they used to come from the shop like eggs, wobbly eggs! Mind you, you could get them for £20 sometimes. Getting the up/down wobbles out then equalising the tension all round was a bugger. Having a strong grip to somewhat seat the spokes helps, although putting a tyre on and inflating it then riding it up and down the path works to seat it. Rinse and repeat till you’ve got it sorted. It’s also surprising how many frames require you to move the rim over because they just aren’t made universal. Swapping wheels between bikes for the day became a right annoyance.

Jig? the cheap way is to do the wheel in the bike (yes, it’s upside down bike time!) using Post-It notes and a ruler for measuring central spacing. One for the side, one for the top. Any wobble in the wheel simply pushes the notes away without scratching/damaging the rim like a hard object will.

Never rush when initially lacing a wheel though. Patiently copy a built wheel in front of you, counting carefully. Can lead to some frustrating moments. And always have plenty of spare spokes/nipples in that purchase to accommodate breaks when building as a novice, dodgy wheel builds, and then routine breakages. Better than going short.

Armed with the Book, a spoke tension tool and some sort of wheel jig. I should be able to get the job done ?.

Worked for me

@ tomhughes.
How did you get on with your wheels?