Wheel Lacing Warning

[jmcookesq]

I have a 74 bike that I am redoing. All the spokes were pretty rusted so I had the rims and hubs powdercoated, got some new spokes and by following the advice of the forum here, got the wheels laced up. I then went over my powdercoater's place to borrow his truing stand ( he is a Triumph guy and does spoke wheels quite a bit). Suddenly, he starts telling me how I needed to check the backspace, offset, spoke tension, etc. Basically, he told me I didn't know what I was doing and I needed to find someone that was an expert on these wheels before going any further. I know a lot of guys here on the forum do their own wheels so I wanted to ask if this guy is just an alarmist or am I missing something? Thanks in advance for your help.

 

[gggGary]

Well IMHO a bit of both LOL Relacing a set of these stock rims back to their own hubs is pretty straight forward. Generally if you start with straight rims, get the nipples all threaded on to the same depth and tighten all equally a bit at a time then do a bit of truing, it will be as good as or better than the factory did it. And for sure better than a rusty factory lace job that's 35 years old and never been touched.
Start messing around with changing rims/hubs and it can get quite a bit more complicated.
PS it's easy enough to true or check them on the bike and then you know you have em centered.

 

[5twins]

These rims are basically centered over the spoke flanges. On the front, that's pretty much the center of the hub but on the rear, it's not. On the rear, the sprocket mount sticks out more than the brake drum. You're not the first guy to tear his wheels all apart without taking any pics, notes, or off-set measurements and you won't be the last, lol. I don't know why guys just dive in like this but it happens all the time. Be aware that excess powder build-up in the spoke holes, especially on the hub, may cause problems. You may need to clean some out with a suitably sized drill bit twirled by hand.

 

[650Skull]

I'm a carpenter and if you asked to borrow my tools to do me out of a job i d tell you all sorts of bullshit.......................... Bit bloody cheeky if you ask me.

Would have been more respectful to ask if you could help him, pay some money, and learn for next time.

 

[650Skull]

double post

 

[650mark]

I took my spoke wheels apart after taking some close up pictures BEFORE I started cutting the old spokes. then it was easy to respoke. I then took the wheels to a good shop and paid them to tighten and true them up correctly. cost me about $30.00 for both but they were happy to do it and they were safe when done.

 

[figure8]

I took my spoke wheels apart after taking some close up pictures BEFORE I started cutting the old spokes. then it was easy to respoke. I then took the wheels to a good shop and paid them to tighten and true them up correctly. cost me about $30.00 for both but they were happy to do it and they were safe when done.

$30 to true 2 rims is a bargain, wish I could find that around here.

 

[650mark]

it was a very old, established independent Harley shop in phoenix. when I told him the wheels were from a "piece of jap crap(his words)" he really didn't want to do it, but then he said "I don't want some hack to do it and then you end up dead" so he relented. really a nice guy, but he did have one of his shop monkeys do it. I ended up putting over 4,000 miles on those wheels and never had an issue. my point: find a good shop and have it done safely and correctly regardless of cost. I just got lucky

 

[jmcookesq]

I really only took them apart without taking the measurements because I saw some posts here with detailed directions that didn't mention offset so I assumed that it wasn't critical. Certainly my bad though.

Found 5Twins explanation of offset. Thank you for your help