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I've had the WheelPro ebook for a while and have been considering building my own wheels. However, every time I look into buying the hubs, rims and spokes it always seems more expensive to build your own wheels than to buy them.
I am pretty handy as I always build and maintain my own bikes and have a lathe and build LED lights etc. I have trued my own wheels and replaced the occasional broken spoke but never built up a full wheel.
I get the satisfaction angle but another aspect that concerns me is the expertise to match all the various parts to build a light, strong wheel. Looking at various custom wheel builder sites (Wheelsmith, MoonGlu etc.) I can get a pair of sub-1500g road wheels for around £500.
Any comments/advice welcomed.
However, every time I look into buying the hubs, rims and spokes it always seems more expensive to build your own wheels than to buy them.
Yup, it is. The only time I've ever built wheels has to put new rims onto extant hubs!
As above, I'd only do it to get a wheel I couldn't get or buy cheaper.
Oh, & I'm a tight wad so buy most stuff S/H.
Once you start building wheels, you'll never buy another fully built wheel. Once people know you can do it, all sorts of bits and bobs will be given to you, people will ask you to build them wheels. You'll get to keep the old bits. If you're any good at it, your rep will spread and you'll make some beer tokens out if it.
Don't look at the cost. Just buy the bits and get on with it 🙂
Handbill wheels are far better than machine built factory wheels too. Stronger and more durable.
Thing is you'll end up with a wheel jig, spoke tension meter and all sorts of stuff on your wish list!
Unless using old hubs you'll never really save money building your own
However there's something massively satisfying about looking at your bike after a long ride knowing that you built the wheels - you built something that got you that far...
Building wheels isn't the science some people make it out to be. Building good wheels is though..
It was cheaper for me as I used existing hubs as flange points out. It's worth doing in my opinion for the satisfaction - the first few rides on mine I kept expecting mine to explode but they didn't to my amazement. Order spokes from Germany to keep costs down too.
Unless using old hubs you'll never really save money building your own
It can be done fairly easily.
I built a pair of wheels with DT Swiss 240s hubs, DT double butted spokes and Mavic 717 rims using parts obtained in various offers and sales. It was all brand new apart from the rear hub which I got off the classifies here, lightly used.
They cost me £175. That's a £400-£500 pair of wheels any day of the week.
And like I said, once people get to know, parts will start coming your way. Old sets of wheels with knackered hubs, sets of spokes etc. and you'll spot bargains and scoop them up... Because people generally don't buy wheels in parts, you find the parts going cheap.
For me, it's down to choice - I do [i]most[/i] of mine as I get to pick and choose from odd / unusual components.
That said - my most recent 'winter' road wheels were machine made / shop bought, as there was no way I'd have matched them on price, but that set are common-or-garden wheels. (Tiagra hubs on Open Sport rims).
Good advice up there: I bought a huge lot of new spokes (for the price of a wheel and a half's worth at crc) from the classifieds, which came in useful sizes and made it much more worth it. As is swapping rims or unsuitable hubs and repairing pringled or wonky wheels.
It is even worth learning to build just so that when you get almost totally untensioned wheels on your bargain bike purchase (yes you Kona) or one of the 'friday-afteroon-job' but un-match-ably cheap superstar components wheel 'builds' you can slacken the whole wheel off and build it properly.
most of my home builds have been new rims on old hubs/spokes due to the cost of sourcing bits, and usually with a wrecked rim but perfectly sound everything else. Just find a rim with the same ERD and spoke count and jobs a good un.
And yes when your riding/club mates discover your skill youll become very popular!
I found a cheap king ss rear wheel for £120 on a 26 inch rim. Cut the spokes out, bought a Stan's from crc and ended up with a pretty cheap, pretty nice ss rear wheels. It can be done, you just have to hunt round.
I do it for the satisfaction. Sitting watching telly on a winters evening while building a wheel is very therapeutic. I can also become very anal about it as well. I might spend a silly amount of time perfecting the build so that the variance on spoke tension is half of sod all.
I know in real terms, the wheel was straight, true and good enough hours ago, I just love seeing how well balanced I can get it.
I sat and built some enve's last weekend. that was good fun!
I assemble my own then get a better guy to finish them for me, costs buttons and his shop is right beside a favourite riding spot. I could learn, but I'm realistic, I won't be as good as the best experienced wheelbuilders and Steve is excellent.
That said, I just replaced all the nipples on a tired set of Rovals and I'd forgotten what a pleasure it it to true up a lightweight wheelset... Normally with mine I'm fighting strong rims and high tension and a bit of damage to boot, with these it's like zen, every tiny tweak does exactly what you want. I could get used to that.
Thanks for all the feedback guys. Inspired by you DIY builders I dug out a Shimano Deore disc hub, Mavic Open Sport rim and spokes that I bought many moons ago for a project.
I laced it up using the Wheelpro instructions and it looks pretty good. I just need a truing stand now which I will probably build myself and then there's no stopping me.
Thanks again! 😀
I use a stand built from the instructions in the Wheelpro book. Mostly from scrap MDF. Works great.