Dellortoman
Hero member
- Location
- Tasmania, Australia
I've always built my own spoked motorcycle wheels since I first got into motor bikes. The first wheel I built was when I was 17 and I crashed my 250 Yamaha into a car (car driver's fault) buckling the front rim. I didn't know a thing about building wheels at the time, but figured "how hard can it be?" It worked out OK, so I kept doing it whenever I needed to replace a rim, and developed a new skill in the process. For a short time a mate and I set up a fledgling business building wheels.
When I was in my 20's, my mate Dave that I shared a house with built an adjustable jig for drilling spoke holes in blank rims, allowing the drill to be set at whatever angle was required. It looked a bit Heath Robinson, but worked a treat. It was a handy tool because some of the massive drum brakes back in those days needed some radical spoke angles. We accumulated some other special tools and started touting for business at race meetings. People were always crashing race bikes and buggering the rims. Between us we must have done dozens of race bike wheels with big 4LS brakes, and a few with hubs for those new-fangled disk brakes that were gaining popularity at the time. I think we had delusions of becoming famous wheel builders and end up touring the race tracks of Europe with Mike Hailwood or Giacomo Agostini. Needless to say, our fame never spread beyond the local tracks and we never got enough work to actually make a living at it. We did get to work on some interesting bikes bikes though. One of the bikes that sticks in my mind was a gorgeous Seely G50 with a beautiful bronze welded chrome moly frame. It was a work of art. I think I still have a photo of it somewhere. It had a drum front brake but he wanted to convert to disk, so we built him a new front wheel.
Life priorities inevitably changed and our wheel building empire crumbled within a couple of years. I was putting more time into my engineering studies but Dave suffered a more crippling fate. He fell in love, got married, moved out of our shared house and immediately started producing kids. Something like that usually buggers up any prospect of having fun with mates and motorcycles. I haven't seen much of Dave since those days.
I still do the occasional spoked wheel, but not so much in recent years because of the proliferation of cast wheels. Last time was a few years ago when I re-built a dirt bike and had to replace the rusty steel rims.
I encourage novices to have a go at wheel building. It's not a mysterious art as some people seem to believe. It's actually pretty simple if you're just re-building a wheel with standard components. Just do a bit of homework on spoke tension and apply common sense. Always take photos before stripping a wheel so you'll have a reference to re-create the spoke pattern. Often the spoke layout is obvious, sometimes not.
When I was in my 20's, my mate Dave that I shared a house with built an adjustable jig for drilling spoke holes in blank rims, allowing the drill to be set at whatever angle was required. It looked a bit Heath Robinson, but worked a treat. It was a handy tool because some of the massive drum brakes back in those days needed some radical spoke angles. We accumulated some other special tools and started touting for business at race meetings. People were always crashing race bikes and buggering the rims. Between us we must have done dozens of race bike wheels with big 4LS brakes, and a few with hubs for those new-fangled disk brakes that were gaining popularity at the time. I think we had delusions of becoming famous wheel builders and end up touring the race tracks of Europe with Mike Hailwood or Giacomo Agostini. Needless to say, our fame never spread beyond the local tracks and we never got enough work to actually make a living at it. We did get to work on some interesting bikes bikes though. One of the bikes that sticks in my mind was a gorgeous Seely G50 with a beautiful bronze welded chrome moly frame. It was a work of art. I think I still have a photo of it somewhere. It had a drum front brake but he wanted to convert to disk, so we built him a new front wheel.
Life priorities inevitably changed and our wheel building empire crumbled within a couple of years. I was putting more time into my engineering studies but Dave suffered a more crippling fate. He fell in love, got married, moved out of our shared house and immediately started producing kids. Something like that usually buggers up any prospect of having fun with mates and motorcycles. I haven't seen much of Dave since those days.
I still do the occasional spoked wheel, but not so much in recent years because of the proliferation of cast wheels. Last time was a few years ago when I re-built a dirt bike and had to replace the rusty steel rims.
I encourage novices to have a go at wheel building. It's not a mysterious art as some people seem to believe. It's actually pretty simple if you're just re-building a wheel with standard components. Just do a bit of homework on spoke tension and apply common sense. Always take photos before stripping a wheel so you'll have a reference to re-create the spoke pattern. Often the spoke layout is obvious, sometimes not.
for luck me thinks 
) but noone here has made any untoward comments about Paul! I don't think anyone who's met him (like me, several times) or seen him race would ever have a bad thing to say about him, or his ability on a moto!
). Still teeming with rain here - how's the Snowys looking? Still envious ...