revtothelimit - motorbike forum

https://www.ryanbuildswheels.co.uk/prod ... l-classes/

Giving some thought to this over winter as a bit of a personal project. At various race meetings i really need to be better with wheels, rather than just random tensioning, i want to be able to strip/build/re-rim a wheel on the fly in the paddock. There's times when we really really need the ability to do so and i don't have it.

I'm sure i can persuade @crust into this as well... But i'm also chatting to my LBS at Rotec to see if he wants the task instead

To be honest, wheel building is a doddle. I found Jobst Brant's book, The Bicycle Wheel, in my local library in the 1980's and taught myself from that. It's available now as a freebie pdf, link below.



There's a shed load of online or phone app spoke length calculators, here's one: https://spokecalc.io

As is the case with most things, buy good quality tools, in particular spoke wrenches. Having said that, I've built a wheel using the spoke wrench on a Crank Bros multi tool, because it's what I carry and I wanted to make sure it worked.

Another resource, Sheldon Browns guide is foolproof, https://www.sheldonbrown.com/wheelbuild.html

Stay away from ally spoke nipples.

Yer right, I'd be up for some of that

I think most of my wheels have slight wobbles.

crust wrote: Tue Aug 19, 2025 1:46 pm Yer right, I'd be up for some of that

I think most of my wheels have slight wobbles.

Like your tummy

I've got a copy of Roger Musson's book "Professional Guide to Wheel Building" I can send you.

I used to watch an old boy do spoked wheels at a bike shop in Bradford as a yoof.
He just tapped each one with metal stick and could tell by sound if too tight or too slack.

Someone here send we a wheel building manual - but embarrassingly I can’t remember who.
That said , depending on where it was, i would be up for it.
Would it be generalist or road only?

(It was @Beancounter )

It'd be MTB build for me with a DH setup.

If you were closer @weeksy would happily teach you...

mboy wrote: Wed Aug 20, 2025 11:48 pm If you were closer @weeksy would happily teach you...

Well i will be in 12 months

Take a look at The Bike Inn (https://thebikeinn.co.uk/courses/wheelbuilding/). I did the wheel-building course nearly 30 years ago and still use the notes I made at the time. I may even have a PDF of the magazine feature I wrote about it on a hard drive somewhere. If anyone wants to see it, let me know and I'll go and look for it.