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Hi all, looking for abit of advice on wheel building/ repairs.
I'm not new to bike building and tackle all my in servicing etc but I've never had any dealings with wheels. This is mainly due to my thinking that only those trained in the dark arts can perform such tasks.
Whilst recently washing my bike I found a broken nipple in the rear wheel. On closer inspection most of the alloy nipples are failing in both wheels, eek! I've no idea how long they have been this way, but its pretty scary.
Having spoken to my local bike shop, they have quoted £120 to rebuild including new spokes and nipples, is this about right? Do the spokes need changing?
As a novice can I do this job at home, I was hoping to work round the wheel swapping old nipples for new or is it a lot more involved than that? (i expect it probably is )
Finally, the time and hubs ate worth keeping as they have had an easy life, but I can't afford £120 to put them right, so may end up having to sell as spares and buy a replacement cheaper pair, which seems a shame.
Any thoughts or advice chaps. Cheers
£1 a spoke plus fitting time. Two wheels could be getting up to £120 I guess, especially if they are going to have to, for instance, re-fit tubeless tyres.
FWIW, wheel building is something I'm determined to do for myself, so I've just invested in a stand and some tools.....
£120 not out of order. You can replace nipple by nipple and have a go yourself, might take an evening, def worth a try and you'll spend £30 odd to get them finished off
tips - loosen the whole wheel off before replacing. Screw each nipple on just to cover the thread. I used grease on threads for front wheel and drive side rear, oil non drive side (loctite can be added later). Worked on probably hundreds of wheels.
You don't need to replace spokes if the nipples are dying. 64 nipples plus building time should be no more than £50 max. That'd be what I'd charge (as long the tyres were off the wheels when it came in!)
Thanks for the replies chaps. I'm thinking I could give it a go first and at least change the nipples. The wheels are off my xc bike and don't take a hammering, so probably a good set to learn on and it give me an excuse to make a truing stand.
On a slight tangent is the wheel pro book worth getting?
Buy the Roger Musson wheel building book. It's £9 for the download and it'll tell you everything you need to know about building wheels.
Worth every penny!
Sounds about right if they are rebuilding the wheels and fitting new spokes as well.
Learn to do it, its not that hard if you have a bit of patience. You don't need a stand, Ive build wheels using cable ties and callipers to do the truing and dishing. You will need a tension reader, the park one is good and comes with decent instructions on tensioning the spokes.
I used this as a guide http://www.sheldonbrown.com/wheelbuild.html and had a built wheel to check visually I was lacing properly
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That's a very nice trick, like it. I used to use cloths pegs and a couple of matchsticks but that is much nicer.
Definetely try it yourself. It will be slow to begin with but once you gain confidence you will have learned a great new skill
You don't need to replace spokes if the nipples are dying. 64 nipples plus building time should be no more than £50 max.
This assume you can undoo all the nipples which I doubt you will with alloy
Wheelbuilding is not hard
That's probably a "worst case" estimate. You'd be fizzing if you were told it was going to be £30 (based on an easy job) and it turned out to be a lot more and the bike shop wouldn't know it was going to be more until they stared the job. Imagine they quoted £30, did £30 worth of effort and then told you? Would you pay them £30 for a partial job abd a set of partially un-spoked wheels?
schmiken - Member
You don't need to replace spokes if the nipples are dying. 64 nipples plus building time should be no more than £50 max. That'd be what I'd charge (as long the tyres were off the wheels when it came in!)
In any event cutting the spokes out and re-lacing is quicker, cleaner and safer for shops so that's why they do it.
Junkyard - MemberThis assume you can undoo all the nipples which I doubt you will with alloy
Yup. Re-nippling (he said, as if that were a real term) my Rovals is always a pain.
But that aside... Replacing the nipples, assuming they come off, is basically straightforward. Actually tensioning a strong, straight, round wheel is a bit less straightforward. Considering it costs me £15 a go to get it done by someone who's much better than me at it, I assemble the wheel myself but get it tensioned for me.
My local shop said they we're happy to sell me the nipples, but won't touch it afterwards, if it needs them to tension it. So guess its down to me then, especially as they have a 2 to 3 week wait for workshop time.
Would second Northwond's above comment. I have built a few wheels in my time, although awhile ago when I worked at a bike shop so had truing stand, tention gauge e.c.t all to hand. It's not too hard to just replace the nipples although would be very surprised if alloy nibbles come off easily. But to get a nice even tensioned wheel is the hard bit, possibly a little bit more so if your re using old spokes?
In short building a wheel isn't that hard, building a good one is more of an art. A really well made wheel will last so much longer (and be nicer to ride) and badly tensioned wheel will have you popping spokes all over the place.
You need a new LBS, that's a crock.
cynical
If you use lube on threads don't the nipples work loose?
Similarly if you loctite them on does that mean you can't adjust them if they go out of true?
Richard
lube needed to get correct tension i.e. high enough - they don't loosen then, except perhaps for NDS - weak loctite stops loosening but allows adjustment.