Is there any point in building your own cheap wheels?

[Twilkes]

It's a skill I would like to have, so keep going if you know how to do it.

How do you get started and how difficult is it?

Have a read of this: https://www.sheldonbrown.com/wheelbuild.html

Easiest way is taping a new rim onto your old rim and moving the spokes across one by one, but you should be able to build one from scratch in a morning. You can turn your bike upside down and true it using the forks/brakes as a guide but don't tell anyone.

 

[All uphill]

Wheel-trueing stands look like they are £80-100+ which is a fair outlay to dip your toe in in. I have a selection of v̶i̶c̶t̶i̶m̶s̶ wheels to have a go with.

An old fork fixed to a workbench can be bodged to serve as a trying stand. Lots of good ideas and guidance on youtube.

 

[Nibor]

Wheel-trueing stands look like they are £80-100+ which is a fair outlay to dip your toe in in. I have a selection of v̶i̶c̶t̶i̶m̶s̶ wheels to have a go with.

just use your fram/ forks and a steel ruler with rubber band lol

 

[Jody]

Damn, didn't think of strapping a ruler onto my frame

Thanks @Twilkes I'll have a read of that link rather than hijack your thread further.

 

[Poacher]

Another vote for Sheldon Brown's clear instructions.
I built my first pair of wheels, 32 front, 40 rear, over 50 years ago, by comparing with existing wheels.
Nowadays I'll only do 36, 3-cross; anything else would tax my poor brane too much.

 

[ozboz]

I am actually going to a wheel building class on Saturday. It is at the London Bike Hub workshop in Greenford . It is £75 for the day , I’m not saying I’ll be an ace by Saturday evening , but all knowledge and new skills are good , to myself it is the enjoyment of doing my own mods and repairs that count, back in the day , early 90s a bloke in Australia taught me how to tune an engine , I became quite masterful at motor repairs , it saved me a fortune

 

[Vantage]

I've used the forks and brakes to true wheels in the past but a couple months ago I decided to splurge on something better...
A wheel truing stand!
Worth every penny in my humble opinion. And the other day I bought a proper spoke key. Much better than those stupid multi sized keys.

 

[Spoked Wheels]

Not sure how I got started building my own, wheels, it was a few years ago when I damaged a rim on a pothole, but I've never since bought a pre-made wheel. But am I wasting my time and/or money?

The last one was a 32-hole Shimano Deore Front Hub HBM475 (£15), Halo White Line Classic rim (£21), and some stainless steel double butted spokes (£16). With rim tape that's £53 - what kind of wheel could I have bought for that?

For context, I don't remember ever breaking a spoke on a wheel I've built, all triple-cross patterns, although I have always broken spokes on OEM wheels but that would be on ~£300 hybrid bikes so not the best quality wheels to start with. And lacing and truing a wheel is fun.

£53 it's very good for a cheap wheel and much better than what you can buy off the shelf for that money.....

What I would say though, when you build wheels for somebody else, one of the top priorities is weight and that drives the price up so you find that only the rim might cost £60+.

I'd say if you have a bike that's heavy and probably not worth much, then I think building yourself cheap wheels is absolutely fine but if you spend say 2K on a bike I doubt you would want to spend on cheap wheels

 

[Notafettler]

It's a skill I will never need.
I have Ryde Andra 30 on one bike and Sputniks on the other. The Sputniks have done at least 25,000 kilometres probably 30,000. Never needed straightening. Lots of use off road often carrying lots of weight. That's my preferred method of wheel trueing, the bone idol method and I am good at it.

 

[SkipdiverJohn]

I fancy building up a wheel using a rim from one scrap wheel and a hub from another. It appeals to the tinkerer and fixer-upper in me. Economically, I'd probably be better off chucking the ratty wheels away and doing a few hours overtime to buy new ones with, but making useful stuff out of someone else's junk can be strangely satisfying.
One thing I have considered, which you don't see made commercially, is to fit a 3-speed SA hub into a 26" MTB wheel, so an urbanised MTB running on road tyres can be converted to hub gears. You'd end up with a sort of super heavy duty roadster on extra comfortable wider tyres, and I would use a lugged 501 Raleigh MTB frame so it looked old-school.

 

[Notafettler]

No, sounds to much like hard work. Sputniks with the appropriate spokes never even had to tighten the spokes despite spending large amounts of time off road with heavily loaded panniers.

 

[Notafettler]

How did I end up replying to this ancient thread!?

 

[fossyant]

How did I end up replying to this ancient thread!?

Hah, seems to be catching recently ! Might be the 'Similar threads' box below that causes it.

 

[Blue Hills]

I found the Sheldon Brown page most helpful, although in any method you have to utake your time to understand what it's telling you and make sure of each step before continuing. So maybe more like building an IKEA wardrobe.

Well at least you didn't go all swiss tony on us.

 

[Venod]

Wheel-trueing stands look like they are £80-100+ which is a fair outlay to dip your toe in in. I have a selection of v̶i̶c̶t̶i̶m̶s̶ wheels to have a go with.

I have built loads of wheels with one of these, Google Roger Musson.