Coming up…

It’s time to revive the Diary, I think! Six months have passed since my wheel building quest began and since my last post back in August 2006 I’ve been up to a few other things that have kept the wheel building and blogging on hold.

The pair of wheels that I built back in the summer, the all-purpose “utility” set consisting of Mavic F519 rims, Shimano XT disc hubs and DT Competition spokes, is still going strong and I’ll provide a medium term report on them next week.

I’ve not yet got around to building the second set, the “budget” set for Mrs P’s bike consisting of Sun CR18 rims, Shimano XT disc hubs and DT Competition spokes. This is principally because I haven’t been bothered enough but they wouldn’t have been used until this coming spring in any case. Mrs P is not exactly a keen rider and the only time she’d go out on a bike was if it wasn’t muddy or raining and if we could bring the kids along for the ride too! Our youngest won’t be a year old until April, so he’s only been able to ride in a kiddie seat for a couple of months or so. However with spring only another couple of months away and with about £125 worth of wheels to sell when I get the new ones built – that’s £125 to spend on some new project – it’s high time they were assembled! Look out for updates over the next few weeks.

One project that was but the germ of an idea back in August has come to fruition unexpectedly quickly: that being a flip/flop rear wheel for use on the singlespeed. Ideally I would liked to have built it myself, I was fortunate enough to spot such a wheel being sold second hand in the STW classifieds which fitted my own specification almost exactly – a Goldtec flip/flop hub mated to a Mavic XM719 rim with DT Champion spokes and including 16 & 17 tooth freewheels, all for £55. The cost of the individual parts alone is about £140 and the shop that built it would probably have added at least another £20 for putting them all together! I’ve not even test-ridden it yet, and I’ll expand on what I’m going to do with this wheel in a future post.

Also still on my “to do” list is the re-tensioning of my lightweight Hope/XC717 wheels that were so badly built by Chain Reaction, and the dismantling of my very first wheel building attempt, a Hope/X221 mish-mash. My aim is to get all this done before spring is sprung.