Building your own wheel for the first time is something I now believe every keen cyclist who does some sort of maintenance should try at least once, and see it through from start to finish. Even if you don't do it completely yourself and get a specialist to finish it off (ie truing) it is still a very gratifying experience to have a wheel on your bike with components you chose and put together yourself.
This decision was made for me after an "incident" at Lee Quarry on my Banshee. Front wheel beyond repair, but still salvageable with the hub only, since you are not advised to re-use spokes once tensioned and the rim was, well, bent!
Ideally a Hope Pro 2 hub would have been on the bike since its classed as "bling" and a well known brand. This tied in with the fact that they are made in the north west kind of pulls you to keep local businesses going. This was but a pipe dream since the Hope hubs are a teensy bit out of my price range, and 2nd hand ones were going for a fair whack on eBay, which just goes to show their quality and following.
So, the alternative but by no means second best option, were Superstar Components (you will no doubt hear this mentioned quite a few times across my blogs!) They had a deal on their evo switch front hubs which were in red, which is a bonus since half of my bike is red already. So I snapped one up, after selling old bits n bobs on eBay. Next step was to source a rim. You cannot buy spokes until the very last as measurements from both the hub rim decide which length spokes you need, but I will cover that later.
After some eBay searching, I came across some El Gallo rims. Since the postage was nearly a fiver irrespective of how many you ordered, I ordered 2! This was on the off-chance I came into some money or I broke the rear wheel too. These arrived much to my delight, however I was not out of the woods yet as a crucial figure is needed from the rim in order for the spoke lengths to be accurate.. ERD, or Effective Rim Diameter, which, according to the infamous Sheldon Brown, is "This is the rim diameter measured at the nipple seats in the spoke holes, plus the thickness of the two nipple heads. The E.R.D. is needed for calculating the correct spoke length." link to the original information is here. In fact Sheldon Brown is the source of all cycling knowledge for me and a thousand others!
I had to obtain the ERD for the rim from the seller who in turn contacted the manufacturer as you cannot get this wrong or the spokes wont fit and/or the wheel wont be true.
Since the Superstar website included the measurements of the hub, that bit was done for me. All that there was left to do was use the information gathered from the hub and the rim and put them onto the DT Swiss spoke calculator website. It will ask you all the information you need and will give you the required spoke lengths for each side of the wheel. Do not assume the spoke lengths are the same on both sides as they more often than not are a few mm different. Also make note which side is which when building as it will soon become obvious your wheel will be one sided and not centred on the hub.
I ordered the spokes based on the results from Chain Reaction Cycles, another regular website that I visit for parts and spares who have a reputation and service which is second to none. After some advice I opted for the DT Swiss Competition Spokes in black. These came with brass nipples (stop giggling!), which are ideal for wheel adjustment after a few months/years since they do not rust or seize on the rim or spoke.
Once all the pieces were back home, I reluctantly began the lacing process. I will not go into why and wherefores as I will leave that to Sheldon Brown's Wheel Building page. So here is the progress of my first wheel build.
Thats it, done, around an hour after reading on how to do it, stopping to pick up nipples and spokes going everywhere, its done.. (or so I thought!)
The next day I took it to Paul Hewitt Cycles in Leyland who I have used before to true it. £17 (inc rim tape) later, followed by a little hint that I had laced it incorrectly! I had gone the wrong way and not followed the rim eyes which were sided. Lesson learnt!
So, that was the front wheel done, albeit after some relacing by Paul Hewitt!. For about 4 months, I had a rim in the house, with no bike to give it to, until I had started to build up the Singlespeed Townsend bike, and had more to sell on eBay, and since the items were selling well, I decided to buy the remaining bits for the rear wheel, however the rear hub was a lot more expensive than the front and took a lot more selling to get there, but get there I did.
The pictures don't look much different to the front wheel but I assure you its different. (plus I had learned my lesson and dont it right this time!)
And the result of the hard work..
