Handbuilt wheels... the big thread

cycleclinic

Let me explain. If you increase the nds bracing angle for an 11speed hub where the ds flange centre has to be at most 17mm from centre, you increase lateral stiffness. Do while the tension on the nds spokes is lower the tension changes caused by side loading is reduced. So moving that flange in wards may increase the nds tension but at the expense of lateral stiffness so side loads cause bigger tension drops. The tension drop is directly correlated to a length change in the spoke which is the cause of fatigue. The only good way to improve tension balance is to use an asymmetric rim which I do use but its not essential either or to move to 135mm old and put the ds centre of flange 20mm from centre of the hub.

Many worry about tension balance but don't. I have been testing there simply is no gain with 1 speed 130mm old hubs by keeping the nds centre of flange 35mm from centre of the hub. You are simply loosing lateral stiffness.

I have three sets of wheels with hubs with the nds flange 49mm from centre (Two sets are on miche super tye hubs and one is on miche swr hubs) . That's a 33% tension balance.

To make matters worse I fitted tubeless tyres. The rim is a 24 spoke v1 sl23 so was not put under high tension to begin with. Guess what it's reliable. The nds spokes have low tension but do what. The wheel is do stiff that they can't go slack under high loads.

A good rear hub has a min of 54mm centre to centre of flange spacing. That allows a stiff rear wheel. For the miche it is 55mm for the hope hubs its 51 or 52mm.

This is why I test things and do do miche albeit they have a rig for this purpose.
Miche own tests have found that spoke life is not compromised with hubs with this kind if geometry which is what I figured out. The up side is you get a laterally stiffer for no penalty.

I am not saying you can't build a hood wheel with a hope hub you can. But to if your picking hope hubs for the improved tension balance you are using the wrong criteria for your hub selection.

cycleclinic

you cant respace miche or novatec hubs. for 135mm OLd it is shimano, white industries or Royce but with the last two be prepared to open your wallet very wide.

the propblem with mr musson's book he say round up on spoke lengths which if you do you end up with spoke poking through the nipple. Even spokes exactly the right length end up being too long by a small but acceptable ammount. with proper stretching of spokes rounding down by up 1mm is fine better though round down by 0.5mm which is why having spokes in 1mm increments is much better than 2mm increments. thin spokes stretch more but this wont apply to those commutor wheels.

Decision fatigue wtf? you only have one brand of hub as an option. and of those the XT T780 is the only one to go for. there you go decision made.

This is what i am getting at with the tension balance thing. folk make the whole wheel thing more complex than it really is. received wisdom should mostly be ignored as it is founded on thin air and overthinking things you end up going in circles and going of in tangents.

JSpencer1

Hi All.

Used the search function with some joy, just exceeded my budget!

I’m on the look out for carbon rims for a road disc setup.

I’ll run Hope Pro4 hubs as loved the Pro3 of my last wheels.

So, rim spec as follows:

Carbon
50mm deep (or thereabouts)
25mm width (or generally suitable for 28c/30c three)
24/28 hole. Maybe 2x 28 hole
No brake track

Anyone know of a decent Chinese or similar vendor that can do that for sub £300?

If any builder wants to build me these for sub £600 on DT Swiss Alpine III spokes (or similar) I’m all ears.

Thanks

Darren

buckmulligan

BuckMulligan wrote:

Hi, not sure if this is the best place to ask, but looking for some advice regarding a singlespeed hub-set for my commuting bike.

Does anyone have any recommendations for cheap, durable fixed/singlespeed hubs?

Further to my earlier request, I'm thinking of going for the Novatec Track hubs; has anyone tried these or Novatec hubs more generally and have any good/bad opinions about them?

Are they likely to stand up to the significant abuse and neglect that my commuter bike suffers?!

cycleclinic

Miche hubs have the widest flange spacing. I use slot of these or the zenith track hubs. Novatecs are fine but there is poor choice if drillings unless you straight to novatecs.

A track hub is a shell and a pair of bearings pressed in so they are nearly all good.

cycleclinic

So you want rims that cost £300 hubs that cost over £200 spoke supplied and some one labour for £600. Y


Also what is the point in going for aero rim that cost quite a bit then using in aero spokes and 28h drilling.

Deep wide carbon rims are fine in 24h drilling even with thin aero spokes. You could use the pillar 1422 spoke if you want to save money. These have a 2.2mm elbow and are the spokes hunt use in there wheels. No idea how good they are I have never used them but they should do the job.

If going for aero wheels, do it properly, or you are not exploiting all the marginal gains which is the whole point of these.

pgmabley

A question, if I may, for the regular wheel builders here?

I've adjusted many and built 3 wheels now, one rear deep section carbon and just completed a set of Kinlin 31 rims with CX Ray spokes and Hope RS4 hubs.

They've all finished really well and I'm happy with them, the carbon has seen some good use over the last year and stayed true.

The area of building that I don't seem to be able to get down is taking up the slack at the beginning after it's laced. I don't seem to be able to evenly take up the slack and end up with a wheel that's quite a bit out laterally and radially requiring a bit of time spent rectifying, the radial part being the most annoying which could be up to 2-3mm out to start with.

I am using the Musson book and made all the tools as suggested. I've always ended up with a good wheel but the book suggests I should have a wheel that's relatively true and round after taking up the slack thus allowing even tensioning around the rim from there but that's not what's happening.

Could anyone give any tips?

Thanks
Paul

timothyw

I'm not familiar with the book/tools you mention but I think the generally accepted solution to that problem is to use a nipple driver with an adjustable probe to perform initial tensioning, such as this one:

https://www.rosebikes.co.uk/article/cyc ... aid:249279

cycleclinic

When I tension so there is no slack the wheel is well warped and not overly round. Any variation in how far the nipples have been wound on or in spoke length is enough to cause the problem but its not a problem. I add more tension and that helps a bit normally then I just get it straight. That normally evens the tensions out quite a bit and it gets rounder. Then I tension even them out again stress relieve get to full tension even the tensions out again and stress relieve and bingo its straight round and stable. I never look at how round a wheel is untill it fully tensioned and stress relieved. At that point I know the tensions are even so i can see how round the rim actually is.
Yesterday track wheels took 1hr 30 mins to do and I was being slow and faffing at the end trying to get them straighter than straight.

You wont bend a rim with uneven spoke tension.

pgmabley

Thanks for those replies, Very useful.

It's good to know that the wheel may not be as good as suggested in the book in the earlier parts of the build. My wheels are taking me about 2 hours to build which I'm happy with.

As I sat, the end result is there so I'll keep going!

Flâneur

Are Tune hubs a good purchase? Potentially the Mig70. Never hear much about Tune hubs

cycleclinic

I would not bother. they are light but there other light hubs that are easier to service, require no faff with the microshims to set up bearing preload and are as if not more so as reliable.

Flâneur

Thanks CycleClinic. good to know

ugo.santalucia

Flâneur wrote:

Are Tune hubs a good purchase? Potentially the Mig70. Never hear much about Tune hubs

Tune = German engineering gone bad

cycleclinic

If you want like and not expensive then bitex RAF/rar12 are 295g and pretty good for a light hub.

Carbon ti and extralite are examples of very light hubs that are reliable. Both have bearing preload that will need checking and adjusting but that is easy. Both are user serviceable but the extralite hub is delicate not fragile but you need mechanics hands and diassemble and reassemble. The ham fisted should avoid.

pgmabley

I've finished the RS4/Cx-Ray/Kinlin 31mm wheelset with stans tape, caffelatex and 25mm pro1 tyres and an very pleased with them, 10 mile shakedown and all good.

One niggle I have is the front wheel at the join. One side has a small step which is very loud under any braking as the pad id going up the step for want of a better description, fine on rear and other side of front and the rim other than the braking surface is dead smooth.

Is this common with these rims? Thinking of grinding it out but worried I'll make a mess of the braking surface, what do people do in this situation as i don't really want to swap the rim and rebuildif at all possible.

pgmabley

Here's a pic, hope it works

timothyw

Just wait it out. In time the braking will smooth the join.

Not a problem I've had with kinlin rims specifically, you do see it from time to time.

pgmabley

Thank you, I was thinking it may do that, bit of fill with pad material and wear of the raised aluminium on the joint. It is very loud though even on light braking but performance doesn't seem to be affected, hopefully no-one will notice it on the club run

cycleclinic

Wet and dry on the joint and it will be gone in seconds. I can't remember the last time I built with a kinlin that had a bad join. Oh I can last summer and wet and dry had it sorted in about 15 secs.

pgmabley

thecycleclinic wrote:

Wet and dry on the joint and it will be gone in seconds. I can't remember the last time I built with a kinlin that had a bad join. Oh I can last summer and wet and dry had it sorted in about 15 secs.

Cheers, will give that a go then, got plenty and used to doing it on the cars so should be no problem famous last words!

Given the rarity of the bad joint (I say bad but it's more annoying than bad really) in your experience, do you reckon that this may be a QC reject that's been sold on? I got from a European seller on ebay (I know!)

nachetetm

thecycleclinic wrote:

Wet and dry on the joint and it will be gone in seconds. I can't remember the last time I built with a kinlin that had a bad join. Oh I can last summer and wet and dry had it sorted in about 15 secs.

May I ask for a further explanation of the "wet and dry" method? It's the first time I heard about it (I'm sure it's something super silly but I have no clue about it) and it can be useful as I also have a pulsing rim.

timothyw

Wet and dry is a type of sandpaper.

cycleclinic

I had this problem on and off when buying kinlin from a distributor. The rims I have bought direct though have been perfect, they are rounder too. Not sure why.
Maybe it the transport method. When I ordered last I paid extra for the rim boxes to be packed in a way that avoided them getting bashed about. Mist out if roundness seen in rims will have this cause.

Kinlin check there rims by placing them on a granite table with a rim shaped hole in it. They can spot 1mm out if roundness easily.

pgmabley

Well, I took to the rim joint this morning with a chisel sharpening stone and soapy water, took about 5-10 minutes and now it's smooth. Looks fine too so happy with that fix.

nachetetm

TimothyW wrote:

Wet and dry is a type of sandpaper.

Thanks!

pgmabley

My wheels have been very good for the first 100 miles until today, two nipples worked loose and came off the spoke into the rim. This is the front wheel radially laced both sides 20H with CX_Ray spokes and brass nipples, the two spokes were at the same area of the rim but one each side so the rim is still pretty true and I was able to get the remaining 15 miles home without further degradation.

I guess some sort of threadlock may be necessary, or is it purely a tension issue ( seemed good tension when I set them up) ?

The other issue is obviously getting the nipples out of the rim and reset with the spokes. As I've set up tubeless, I'm guessing it's start again with the rim tape?

svetty

If the nipples have completely unwound this suggests spoke wind-up and/or under-tensioning. I'd correct this not rely on thread-lock

timothyw

I'd say spoke wind up is very unlikely given you're using bladed spokes - it'd be pretty obvious!

Lack of tension IMO. Tighten them up a bit more.

pgmabley

Thanks, definitely not wind up, as you say they are bladed and were all straight.
I'll put some more tension in them and see what happens.