Wheels MFG are best known for their bearing press set which, while not cheap, is much less eye-wateringly expensive than many other options out there, and a beautiful piece of tooling. At Eurobike, they were showing a couple of new tools, along with their range of bottom brackets and mech hangers.
That stepped drift fits many popular bearing and some push fit BB cup sizes, meaning you don’t have to buy a complete set of individual drifts.That section at the bottom of the handle is there because brass is self-lubricating, so will minimise rotational force on the drift and whatever you’re pressing in.Here’s the whole press. Beautiful!
Last year I decided to learn how to use a metal lathe and three axis mill, and in the process made my own bearing press out of an acme screw, some aluminium bar and brass rod. It was a first attempt, has a wonky cut here and there, and is nowhere near as nice as these. Funnily enough though, one year on I still haven’t turned an entire set of drifts from delrin. Therapeutic as lathes are (they really are!), making so many similar objects is tedious unless you’re experienced enough to work as fast and efficiently as possible. Wheels MFG’s stepped drift is a really clever idea.
They were also showing this nifty red anodised PF30 bottom bracket press.It’s a *distractingly* nice object.This is the full set that Wheels MFG have been selling for a while.Wheels’ Gert Hoekstra told me that some people buy this just to look at it. I can understand why.Wheels MFG also make a range of bottom brackets.Mech hangers too; here seen in their natural environment before harvesting.It’s a good booth if you like staring at shiny objects… like me.
David started mountain biking in the 90’s, by which he means “Ineptly jumping a Saracen Kili Racer off anything available in a nearby industrial estate”. After growing up and living in some extremely flat places, David moved to Yorkshire specifically for the mountain biking. This felt like a horrible mistake at first, because the hills are so steep, but you get used to them pretty quickly.
Previously, David trifled with road and BMX, but mountain bikes always won. He’s most at peace battering down a rough trail, quietly fixing everything that does to a bike, or trying to figure out if that one click of compression damping has made things marginally better or worse. The inept jumping continues to this day.
Like the look of their stuff, but their website has no shop facility that I can see. So guess they are being sold through a distributor….who is it in the uk?
Is he a really big Hoekstra?
Like the look of their stuff, but their website has no shop facility that I can see. So guess they are being sold through a distributor….who is it in the uk?
@russyh they’re distributed in the UK by Madison:
http://www.madison.co.uk/products/?brand=wheels-manufacturing
Some of the things above are so new they’re not on the Madison site and don’t yet have UK pricing.