Tuesday, October 18, 2022

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!
 

Janice Annette Castleberry

  The cousins came to Sylacauga on January 28th to place the ashes of Jan in the Marble City Cemetery beside her parents. The long delay cam...