Monday, February 18, 2013

Wheel Progress

Well, wheel building class is over, and I managed to get three of four wheels finished.  The fourth (Juli's rear wheel -- 600 freewheel hub and Ambrosio Formula 20 rim) was built, and true, but when I sat down to dish it, I discovered that it was nowhere near centered.  Turns out I used the short spokes on the non-drive side.  Oops!  So now it's a pile of spokes and nipples and a rim and a hub, again.  I'll re-lace it this week and finish it up next Sunday at Broadway Bicycle School.

I've been making other wheel progress as well.  My Motobecane hubs have been fitted with bolt-on axles, and the rear was re-centered for a single speed freewheel at the same time.  I'll need to re-dish the rear wheel next weekend as well, and I'll take the opportunity to touch up the front wheel, too -- tension, true and tension balance it.  The other half of the parts swap that landed the Motobecane with nutted axles, the NOS XT hubs I bought are now set up with QR skewers, and the rear has an 8-speed Hyperglide freehub body on it, to boot.  The drive side profile of the freehub is a little different than other hubs I've seen, so the 8-speed cassette was rubbing against the hub itself, and I had to build up a freehub washer, spacer to make that work.  A nuisance, but not hard.

Looking beyond its wheels, the Motobecane is nearly ready to go.  The brake cables have been installed, I've gone through the headset, mounted a headlight and bell, swapped out the 39-tooth chainring for a 42, and installed a water bottle cage mount and cage.  I'm currently working on a new bag setup for the bike.  More on that later, but I'm pleased with how the project is coming together overall.  I'll post a pic when the bags are done, and the wheels installed, in a week or two.

With half of Juliana's tubular wheels complete, there is a Vittoria Rally tubular tire dry-mounted to her built front wheel.  It stretched onto the rim pretty easily, and I need to play with centering and the like.  I also need to dig up some Mastik to mount the tires for real.

The city wheels I built for my friend Allyson are nearly complete and sitting at her apartment.  They need rim strips, but just to be fitted with tubes and tires and a cassette and mounted, otherwise.  At some point I need to get over there to move her tires over to those wheels, and get them onto her bike and everything adjusted to suit.

It feels like I've been wrist deep in grease for days, now, with all this activity.  I reek of grease as I sit here, writing this, in fact.  Good progress this weekend, though, on projects both short-term and long.

All for now,

J

No comments: