Little Wheels

The pins haven't arrived yet, so it was a slow weekend for bike building.

After lacing Sarah's new wheels, I took them to a shop with a good wheelbuilder for tensioning and truing. Turns out the backlog there is at least two weeks (to accept work - not to return it) and that there's no assurance that Darrell will do the work. So, the wheels came home with me.

I got out my old cast-iron Hozan truing stand. It appears to be built for motorcycle wheels - very heavy and no way to center the wheel or to easily flip it over to check for dish. Part of the problem is that the axle holders are on big acme threaded screws. The threads have accumulated coagulated oil that makes them very difficult to turn (I use a monkey wrench on them). And part of the problem is that the axle ends go into hollows at the ends of the acme screws. The net of this is that removing the wheel is a slow laborious process.

Anyhow, up went the stand. A dial indicator got set up next to it. As tension got up there (no gauge), I would true the wheel. I figure tension pretty was even because the roundness looks great. The indicator says that the front wheel was true within +/- 3/1000's of an inch. The back wheel is true within +/- 4/1000's of an inch.

My son the rocket scientist has developed a program for me to analyze the possible seat-tube/top-tube/BB-drop combinations depending on what combination of lug I use in the DCS carbon system. This is cool and will make frame design/layout much faster and easier. Yea Nick!

That's it for now.