) was also to original spec, very good quality and reasonably priced at £89.00 for the rim and £83.00 for the spokes.Having never rebuilt a wheel, but always wanted to have a go and previously been to frightened cos it looked to be on the too difficult shelf, I consulted Youtube and found a very informative site that covered re rimming/spoking and a follow on video on truing up. I thought if I made a ticket of it I could always go to my local wheel man with the bits.
1. Building:
I took a photo for each side of the wheel for reference purposes. After removing the spokes from the wheel, which surprisingly came out with no bother and retaining for future reference, I put the new rim in some suitable timber packing (see photo) and started to insert the short butted spokes into the brake drum side of the hub. The short spokes come in two bundles and are clearly marked as inner and outer. I then threaded the nipples onto the spokes leaving about a 1/16th of an inch of thread showing. I then turned the wheel over and repeated the process with the longer spoke on the hub side. I then tightened the nipples hand tight an equal amount on all of the spokes.
2. Truing:
Obviously, if you are doing this for a living, you buy a purpose made truing jig. Not wanting to go to this expense, I came up with a cunning plan. I made a dummy over length axle from some suitable diameter bar stock, clamped it up tight horizontally in a machine vice that I had bolted to the table of my stand drill and slid on some collets that I turned up on the lathe out of bar ends. I then mounted the wheel on my contraption, attached a magnetic dial gauge stand on the table and set up the dial gauge against the high spots on the rim after 1 revolution of the wheel which were duly marked with a sharpie pen. I then proceeded to adjust the nipples on the appropriate side of the rim until the dial gauge was reading zero all the way through a revolution of the rim. I then tightened all of the nipples a 1/4 of a turn, checked that the dial gauge was reading zero through a further revolution and that was it, Job Done!
Not only did I save myself £45 which can be spent on being much needed bits, I gained another skill and spent a very satisfying 2 1/2 hours doing it
