Advice on Fixed spec.

[ASC1951]

About 5,000 miles ago I had a fixie built for me by Deeside Cycles on a Dolan 853 frame. Excellent job they did, too. However, the frame is a bit short for my liking, so I have now stumped up for a Ti custom frame and forks from XACD in China.

The original plan was to swap everything over from the Dolan, then I thought "that's daft, there will just be another cannibalised bike clogging up the house", so I'm going for a new build. No track or racing miles, just trundling my porky self round the Yorkshire Dales.

The Dolan spec is Miche Primato chainset BB and hubs, with stainless DB spokes on Mavic CPX 33 rims. All perfectly OK, but not the lightest and maybe things have moved on since 1995. What should I go for now? Price isn't particularly a constraint, but I'm not going to pay £500 for a pair of wheels because, as L'Oreal say "I'm not worth it".

I also plan to build the wheels myself, so where should I buy the stuff so that I get sold the right length spokes?

 

[Theseus]

Download the spoke calculator from Sheldon's site. This is a spreadsheet with common (at the time) hubs & rims. If your hub or rim is not on it, it is easy to edit. It does both front & rear in case you need to worry about dishing and allows for multiple cross patterns.

As for building, also on Sheldon's site is an article on how to build a wheel. I have used this for all the ones I have built, but for the definitive source, get "The Bicycle Wheel" by Jobs Brandt.

You can't go far wrong with Mavic or Halo for the rims. A bit of time on your favourite search engine will bring up lots of option. Likewise depending on your budget there are lots of hubs out there.