Replacing a rear hub doable at home ?

I don’t have access to a great lbs who will replace my hub the wheels arn’t fancy they are Bontragers from a Gary fisher Cobia but as light as my mavic crossrides and low millage, the hub a Shimano Deore that I already have the damaged hub has rusted due to being left 3 years and the cups are pitted.

Is replacing the hub doable at home with no trueing stand will I end up with a serviceable wheel I like to think my practicle skills are good but I have never attempted a wheel build.

yes, some old forks and some zip ties can be passed off as a truing stand.

It’s a good home DIY job. Will take a while the first time but follow an online guide and go steady and it’ll be fine. Upside down bike makes an adequate truing stand.

I’m sure someone linked to somewhere years ago about replacing the cups and cones from an old Shimano hub with those from a new donor hub. May be an option if you don’t fancy rebuilding a wheel.

You can do it, but it’s a faff. If time and faffage don’t upset you go for it. I’ve done a few but usually take the wheel into the LBS (Altrincham Bikeshak) to tension it properly after the first ride. Comments have included ‘it’s very straight but not round,’ but for £20 it’s all made good. It may be that I am both impatient and ham fisted.

i was planning to do something similar. remover the dt swiss rims off my slx rear and zee front hub and replace them with some wider sun rims. the sun rims are built onto some knackered old hubs but one thing i noticed was that the hub flanges were different therefore the the spoke length would have been different. the spokes on the dt swiss rims were in fact slightly longer than the ones on the donor wheels….for that reason i never went ahead with it.
if you’re planning to swap the hub with an identical one you should be ok but if its a different hub you may find that the hub flanges on the new hub may be too tall or too short meaning you will need longer or shorter spokes

Weirdly hub flange height doesn’t make that much difference. 10mm on flange diameter may be less than 2mm on spoke length. Bigger difference for radial but on a 3x its not much.

On a side note swapping rims is way easier than swapping hubs if you can reuse the spokes. Tape the new rim to old wheel then move spokes over one at a time.

A diy truing stand is easy to make. Buy Roger Mussons e book and it has plans for a wooden one.

Which deore hub is it? Some of them can be direct swapped with XT ones as the basic dimensions are the same (XT has better sealing). I did this with an M475 hubbed wheel from my commuter (replaced with XT M756).

Its a Shimano FH-M475 6 Bolt Disc Rear Cassette Hub – Black – 32 Hole

I dont belive the iner race/cup is replacable.

Found a discussion about it. Obviously things may be different now.

http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/shimano-deore-hub-cup-replacing

@jeff thanks for that i may look in to the possibility of a rebuild now.

If its a M475 then its a straight swap for the M756 using the existing spokes.

I wouldn’t fancy having my first go at wheel building with an old rim and spokes/nipples. It’s just harder to get right with more variables and seized nipples. Big Al at wheelcraft replaces the cups in Shimano hubs and has a big bin of hub shells to prove it.

I replaced my mtb rear rim and rebuilt it myself for the first time recently. Just used to zip ties, a set of calipers and the frame to true and dish it. It’s pretty satisfying and interesting doing it yourself so I’d recommend at least trying it. So far it’s lasted several rides including a trip to Cwmcarn without crumpling underneath me or going out of true. The Musson book is worth getting your hands on.