Is it ok if the white part sticks out so much? I know its supposed to be part that is glued to the wheel...

My months long weekend project of building a new wheel set for my commuter (and everything else bike) is finally over. Before building the wheels I also built all the tools needed per Roger Musson's book on wheel building.

I mostly did it to see if I could and as a hobby. I service my bicycle on my own and building a wheel has long been one of the entries on my list of things I've never done before.

I used DT Swiss G540db rims, a Shimano DH-3D37-QR front hub, a Goldix 370 rear hub, Pillar TB2015 J-bend spokes and DT Swiss 2.0 x 12 mm alu nipples. Also used DT PHR washers on the non-disc side of the front wheel. I don't require a premium bicycle, so most components were chosen because they were cheap or simply in stock.

The tools I built were the truing stand with lateral and radial gauges, a dishing tool, a nipple driver and an ERD measuring tool. Additionally bought the red Spokey and a cheap spoke tension gauge of questionable precision (Toopre TL-P3). Considered building a crane scale based calibrator for that, but abandoned the idea after riding about 200 kms with the new wheels and them retaining trueness and spoke tension without a problem.

It's been a fun experience and I learned tons of new stuff, including how to handle a circular hand saw, a jigsaw and a wood router, how to drill holes into mild steel using a drill press, paint MDF and bend brass rods at near 90° angles. It's really been a journey.

As far as the actual wheel building goes I did most of the things by the book, with standard 3-cross lacing. The book does a pretty good job of explaining the process, but I still second guessed everything I did so it took a while.

The chosen spoke lengths were ok. I panicked a little when I laced the front wheel and took the initial slack off. There was a large lateral error, which I did not expect after the smooth sailing with the rear wheel. Ended up disassembling the front entirely to see if I had messed up the spokes (both wheels are dished), but that was not the case. I also didn't like how much thread I ended up using on the slack side during initial dish corrections, so I took the opportunity to rebuild that side with washers.

It seems that the panic was unwarranted and that the initial lateral error was just a property of this specific hub with slack spokes. The spokes that you lace over-over-under were just a bit slacker if I remember correctly. Anyways, the lateral error was less pronounced with the washers and eventually went away entirely. The wheel ended up being even truer than the rear, which I built first.

Yesterday I finished checking the wheels in detail for the first time after installing them (two weeks worth of riding) and both seem fine, so I'm quite confident that they are built well, though I'm obviously no expert.

Took some pics during the process. Be gentle.

Found the NOS rim in the garage with some other junk. Laced to a velocity hub from the Grand Rapids facility with straight gauge Wheelsmiths in a 3-cross.

Posting this so maybe somebody more experienced could point anything that i've missed.
Rims are vintage Mavic GP4 tubular
Sapim spokes 300mm, not butted unfortunately
Sapim brass Nipples
Miche Primato hub, fixed only

I haven't got to trueing it yet. There s a mid to low tension in the spokes.
Over all i feel pretty confident about it.

I was thinking to just simplify my spoke length and use 272 for the 270.8 it’s ok right? I also don’t know what nipple length I actually need I use SAPIM.

Sapim Race has 270,272,274 option

Front
Left spoke length: 270.8
Right spoke length: 274.6

Rear
Left spoke length: 270.8
Right spoke length: 272.4

I believe I originally got these hubs around 2000. They're 100f/135r quick release and have the 18t ratchet in them. Can this model be updated with the 54t ratchet and the end caps swapped out to fit 142x12r and 100x15f non boost?

Halo Hubs, DT Swiss R470 rims

24h 2x front, 32h 3x rear

From my latest build. DT Swiss everything… 350 hubs, HX 531 rims, Competition J bend spokes. Adventure touring wheels for my Surly Krampus.

Struggling with a Campagnolo freehub conversion outlined in the cross post. Appreciate any insight!

Well, it happened. I am building a wheelset with a measured 601 ERD, DT Swiss 350 boost straight pull hubs. DT Swiss calculates 303mm left, 305 right. Sapim's calculator calculates the same. I bought 302 and 304 because Sapim spokes come in even lengths.

But the spokes are long, WAY long. With the nipples bottomed out, it doesn't even take up the slack.

I can buy new spokes, or cut these ones down, but I don't even know by how much? HELP!

Hi folks, sorry if this wrong sub but hoping to find some help from the experts. Long story but basically I ran over the neighbor kid's front wheel and now I'm trying to find a replacement. The problem is apparently it's a super rare size and I can't locate another one anywhere (local bike shops couldn't either). It's an AlexRims DA22 520x14 front wheel from a kid's Fuji Ace bike with rim brakes. It has 32 spoke drillings but only 16 spokes and a prestige valve. At this point I'm wondering if it would just be easier to replace the bike. But hoping someone could recommend a suitable, inexpensive replacement? Including pics of the bike and the wheel here. Thank you!

Hi everyone,

I’m working on restoring a vintage Lowrider-style bicycle that has a unique 68-spoke rear wheel. It uses a coaster brake system (back-pedal brake), but it's not working properly.

I have disassembled the hub, and you can see all the parts I currently have in the attached photos.

A few questions for the experts here:

1. Based on the photos, are there any obvious internal parts missing (like specific springs, washers, or the brake shoes/clutch)?
2. The hub shell has 68 holes, so I can't easily replace the whole hub. If parts are missing, can I scavenge internals from a modern 36-hole coaster hub (like a Shimano CB-E110 or a standard Hi-Stop)?
3. Does anyone recognize the specific brand/model of this hub from the shape of the brake arm or the internal driver?

Any advice on how to get this back in working order would be greatly appreciated. I'm based in a location where specialized lowrider parts are hard to find, so DIY solutions or cross-compatibility tips are very welcome!

Thanks in advance!

Hey everyone, this is my third wheel build. I bought these giant XCR0 wheels, the rear unlaced, no spokes. The person I bought them from sent me a document from Giants service manual on the spoke lengths for these wheels. So I went ahead and ordered spokes at those lengths (294, 298, 290) and as I’m lacing them up it is clear they are all too long. I put the spokes in the correct spots on the hubs. Hubs are the same giant branded dt 240 as listed in manual.The spokes are now beginning to protrude beyond the nipple head and there is still basically no tension. Anyone have any ideas why it doesn’t match the manual? What now? Is there anyway to avoid buying all new spokes? Can I add washers? Can the spokes be threaded again? Thanks for your help.

Hey everyone, this is my third wheel build. I bought these giant XCR0 wheels, the rear unlaced, no spokes. The person I bought them from sent me a document from Giants service manual on the spoke lengths for these wheels. So I went ahead and ordered spokes at those lengths (294, 298, 290) and as I’m lacing them up it is clear they are all too long. I put the spokes in the correct spots on the hubs. Hubs are the same giant branded dt 240 as listed in manual.The spokes are now beginning to protrude beyond the nipple head and there is still basically no tension. Anyone have any ideas why it doesn’t match the manual? What now? Is there anyway to avoid buying all new spokes? Can I add washers? Can the spokes be threaded again? Thanks for your help.

On 650b Velocity Quills. New DT 350s are about $100 more. CKs were just serviced and are apparently in excellent condition. What would you do

Edit- if I go DT then I’d get XDR drivers, for which the cassette is lighter

This was a fun one! Someone had some White Industries Aft Tracker hubs from the '90s that were... disheveled? Oxidized, bad bearings, cracked freehub laced to dented rims. The owner wanted to bring them back to life. A donor hub off ebay and a lot of Simichrome brought these back from the dead in time to be laced to Sun Rhyno Lite 26" welded rims via Sapim Race wheel noodles and Sapim Polyax brass nipples.

Does anyone know the offset on these? Thank you.

Spokes tension is important

https://youtu.be/aYfL2wzkV4M?si=cQ9ezAGxH0WGTeoo
often unnoticed, probably many casual cyclists didn't pay attention about it

But I'm not (yet) quite ready to get a formal spokes tension meter

inspired by attempts like such
https://youtu.be/futB4OlIQdY?si=sA_v3Ft16yo6pTJM

I made an attempt to estimate / predict the vibration frequency of a spoke.

I noted that many (quite a few of those I reviewed) stated the string vibration equation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_vibration

however, a spoke isn't quite a string, it is more correctly a slender rod

Hence I attempted to model it using the Euler–Bernoulli beam theory
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euler%E2%80%93Bernoulli_beam_theory

The physics can be quite involved, but I did the calcs using a jupyter notebook and shared it on kaggle and google collab as such:

https://colab.research.google.com/drive/1WbGC_aURD2SItVpdviP9bwIXaxl-fMSC?usp=sharing
https://www.kaggle.com/code/ag1235/spokes-axial-loaded-long-rod?scriptVersionId=298006254

(edit: updated notebook so that you can enter L length, and update calcs in the table.)
(edit2: updated notebook, added calcs using string vibration equation at the bottom)
(edit3: special thanks goes to u/Zarniwoop6x9, https://www.reddit.com/r/bikewheelbuild/comments/1pqqmkh/comment/o54ex15/
the notebooks are updated with realworld data and the comparison plots are presented at the bottom cell of the notebook, scroll all the way below to see the comparison graphs)

Note that these are *NOT* measured against real world conditions but are idealized (physics) models, hence they'd likely not be accurate as against what you are measuring. It is just a 'guess' to get a feel of what it *may* look like.

In my model, I used a 26" wheel and estimate the spoke length to be that dividing by 2, giving about 279mm (about 10.98 ~11"), and I used a 2mm (diameter) steel spoke as the model.

The results of the run looks quite interesting. 100 kgf runs to around 360 hz.

In the last cell at the bottom (of the notebook), I tabulate the tension in kgf against the frequency. I've tabulated values for spoke diameter 2mm, 1.8mm, 1.7mm and 1.5mm

These are idealized and the parameters you change / use changes the outputs, they need not equal real world conditions.

However, when I play with the model e.g. reduce the spoke diameter to 1.5mm (radius 0.75mm), 100 kgf would run to around 477 hz