Fat bike wheels – what spokes?

Bought some 80mm rims, couple of hubs, dropped off to my LBS to build up the wheels. Confident they were.

Three weeks later the mechanic is crying. Assumption was that same side spokes would be the same length. Proven incorrect as alternate spokes come up through the rim by about 8mm.

What’s the answer?

Find someone who knows how to build wheels

sounds like scotroutes has it, unless there’s something very odd about the drilling of the rims

Oh, hang on. What rims? Someone else bought some weird shit that came with a warning about an odd spoking arrangement

Fat rims usually have offset holes, if you put the right numbers in the spoke calc then you’ll be fine.

We’ve discussed this before I think:

http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/lacing-a-fat-bike-rim

He’s built wheels for me in the past. Does seem a bit of a brain fade on his part, and I can’t see why it should be so hard. Will pop back today and see what he’s up to.

80mm rims, standard Surly generic pattern.

Three weeks later the mechanic is crying. Assumption was that same side spokes would be the same length. Proven incorrect as alternate spokes come up through the rim by about 8mm.

All he has to do is replace every other spoke with a shorter one. It’s a hassle, yes, but not hard.

Thanks for the replies. He’s a good guy, so I’m sticking with him. Does seem like a problem already solved in some detail – just a case of finding the answer.

Cheers!

Ha ha! Support your LBS eh? Three months in and I still have no wheels. He could not get his head around building them up, so he eventually found a wheel builder who said he could. Wheel builder is now complaining that I supplied the wrong rims. Sorry? “They’ve got parallel holes” he says, impossible to build. I ask how do Surley, Halo and those $400 Wal-Mart bikes get built then?

I’m all for keeping business local, yet when they make it this difficult to, you just have to give up on them.

I’ve recently built up a set of LB fat bike rims with offset drilling and used the results of one of the online calculation tools to work out spoke length and it was spot on.

I was a bit nervous due to the offset holes, never having built a carbon rim etc but for a professional how hard can it be?

Where are you? If it’s anywhere near Hove I’ll work out the spoke lengths and build them for you.

Otherwise, get all the kit back and phone someone who’s built a fat wheel before and post it to them. (Sideways, Fat69, Charlie, Strada etc – they all do this every day).

Hi wwaswas, thanks for the offer – may well take you up on it. Problem being the wheels have been sent away and he’s being a little bit secretive as to where. If they’d been in store I’d have got them back.

I think the complication here is that with some fat rims the holes don’t alternate side-to-side, they’re parallel.

Basically, the pulling and pushing spokes have to be different lengths.

It’s a bit odd to get your head around, but not hard really.

how do Surley, Halo and those $400 Wal-Mart bikes get built then?

because they use rims with a more logical spoke drilling

Are they like this where you just use alternate holes each side?

I thought it was these

That’s just standard offset drilling (with lots of rim removed) isn’t it?

Look similar. Not seen mine for ages though, but suspect they may well only have half the spoke holes Surley do as the larger holes are oval and may well be slightly larger than those. Hmm, am I in the wrong here, and my LBS actually Knights in shining armour for putting up with me and my German rims?

without seeing them (link?) it’s difficult to say but all the offset drilling does is reduce the length of the spokes a bit really.

The way the Darryls are drilled is so you can offset the whole rim to one side or another by lacing it using just one of the lines of parrellel holes rather than alternating.

That’s just standard offset drilling (with lots of rim removed) isn’t it?

which is simple until you want to build one with an offset hub.

Linky will not work for picture – too old. Basically my rims alternatively miss out on a set of spoke holes between the cut outs. On the Surly above, there would be 72 spoke holes, where my rims have 36 in total.

Happy to suck it up and apologise to my local LBS for dissing them on-line if I have gone off-piste wheel wise.

If they cannot build a fatbike wheel, they are not real wheelbuilders. They are assemblers who need it all spelt out for them.

Shock, horror! Got my wheels back and I must say they are superb. Well worth the wait, and I’m now back on friendly terms with my LBS, especially as they only charged me cost price. The wheels ended up being made by a team mechanic for Specialized.

Crack on with the build now then 🙂