Bike From Scratch

Now that I have my frame all picked out I figure the next logical thing to do is pick some wheels. I decided  early on that I wanted to learn to build a wheel. I don’t have a good reason for this other than it seems like the most complicated part of building a bike (aside from frame building), and if I can do that I can do anything (cue super hero music). Worst case it will be a good learning experience and I’ll be able to repair the wheel if I break a spoke or it comes out of true. Being more informed about how different parts of the bike are built never hurt anything either.

The first thing you have to figure out when building a wheel is what size rear wheel you need. Different frames have different spacing. Traditionally road frames / hubs are spaced at 130mm, and mountain hubs are spaced at 135mm. Or at least that’s what the marketing says and most bike shops advertise as such. What I’ve found is that a lot of touring frames use 135mm in the rear. Riv’s Sam Hillborne uses 135mm so that’s what I’ve got to build. It should be noted that you can bend the rear of steel frame (according to Zinn) to fit either hub. I’m not this brave and it does require special tools. Front hubs / forks are all spaced at 100mm, road or mountain so this is not an issue. In theory you could run a Dura Ace on your stump jumper or whatever. There are exceptions to this, for example the Surly Pugsly runs 135 on the front and back do accomodate wheel swapping. I’m sure other bikes (downhill maybe?) also have different from spacing. So measure or read a spec sheet, don’t take my word for it, but most of the time its 100mm.

An additional consideration you may have to make is disc vs. rim breaks. This isn’t an option for me so its not something that I bothered with. I’ve got a buddy building a Surly Big Dummy (which may get documented here too) and this is something he had to figure out.

I didn’t think too hard about finding hubs. Shimano Deore LX seems to be the biggest bang for the buck. My past experience, the internets and people I talk to all agree, they are pretty much the way to go if cost is a concern at all. They should last for many miles and are fairly easy to service because of their cup and cone design (requires a special wrench, but other than that…). I was able to find a front and rear for under $70 (us) by searching froogle (Google Product Search). In the future I may look into the phil hubs because I hear so much good about them, and maybe a generator hub (SON makes a nice one) for the front to power lights. But for now my needs are simple and run of the mill cheap LX hubs will get the job done.

The next choice I had to make was the rim. At first I’d been thinking the Sun CR18. It’s crazy cheap as its been around forever, most people on the Internet have good things to say about it. I was pretty much set on the Sun until I realized that I had some extra money to play with. I started weighing additional options and added the Velocity Synergy to list. I also had a conversation with Keven at Rivendell when I was ordering my frame and he suggested I take a look at the Mavic A719 due to my size (I’m about 200 +/- 10) and my desire to have something bomb/winter proof.

I chewed on this for awhile. One thing I started doing was looking at what rims the specality wheel builders were using. Turns out it was all three but Peter White had a pretty handy essay that helped me make my decision. Basically he says that top quality wheels from Mavic and Velocity tend to be perfectly round. He goes on to say that wheels from Sun are most of the time. Given that I’m doing this myself I figured I’d give myself the best chance at roundness, and put all the risk into screwing it up myself rather than the manufacturer.

This left me to decide between the Mavic and Velocity. Based on the conversation I had with Keven, and the fact that I wanted a little bit of a challenge I had I went with the Mavic. The Velocity Synergey comes in an offset design so the spokes on the rear can be the same length on both size and the wheel becomes easier to dish. I wanted to try it with a “normal” wheel the first time around so I went with the Mavic.

The only other thing left to choose for me was spokes. I went with the name I knew and picked DT butted spokes. The fact that they are butted (the center of the spoke is .2mm thinner than the out ends) allows them to flex a little bit more. For a heavier rider this is good because flexing is better than breaking. There is some discussion around this issue. Lots of people argue that its better in theory but doesn’t matter in practice. Since the spoke prices are nearly the same I figured why not. Peter White has something to say about DT spokes and how they changed elbow lengths, I read all this after I had purchased DT spokes and even after reading it I’m not sure I’m worried about it.

So at the end I end up with the following wheels.

Mavic a719 rims.

Shimano LX hubs (front and rear)

DT Compition Spokes (compition merley implies that they are butted, not that they are for racing)

Update: See part 2 here where I talk about what size spokes to use.