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Wheel reinvention

So I got Bev a second Swytch kit partly because the old one was pre-covid and would need replacement possibly given the age of the battery. A new battery wouldn't have the discount so I could buy another kit for about the same cost. But rather than purchase the same wheel size, I ordered the 700c kit. Then for a birthday present, I got her a 29er mountain bike. So I put that new wheel into service and determined to re-build the old hub as a 700c. 
My first order for spokes I roughly measured the spokes on the new wheel and came up with a 260mm length. I failed to appreciate the nuance of wheel building and discovered they wouldn't work because they were between the two sizes I would need to single cross and two cross wheels. In fact, there are radial, single, double, triple and four cross builds. Who knew! So after that failure, I used an online utility to determine the effective rim diameter, ERD. and used a spoke length calculator to determine what spokes it needed. The required length came out to 266mm. But they were not to be found cheap. I wound up ordering from a wheel building specialist shop and they cost a lot more than the Chinese ones I first ordered. I proceeded to build the wheel using the 2 cross method and found that those wouldn't work either. I didn't take into consideration that the hub rim was a lot wider so the spokes that came from the middle were effectively too long. So I had to disassemble the wheel again. This would be the third time. So I began to reassemble again using the shorter 260 mm spokes I had first ordered for the inside spokes and used the 266 mm for the outside spokes. Surprisingly, it worked! So once I had all the spokes laced and nipples applied, I began the involved process of truing the wheel. I got it straight and mounted the tire and installed it on the bike and gave it a test ride. No problems. So that will be left alone for a while to allow for stretch. Then perhaps have a final adjustment. SO now I have enough spokes to build a second wheel should I need to. This whole project took a while due to the time required for the spokes to arrive from their respective sources. The unfortunate times I built the wheel up only to find a problem was frustrating, but all in all, it took a lot less time than repairing the rototiller. Yay!
 

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