Custom Wheels with Lifetime Guarantee
What makes our Custom Built Wheels better than others?
- Quality of workmanship. Building a good wheel is a skill, like painting
a wall; building a great one is art, like painting the Mona Lisa.
- The spokes are tensioned properly. This is done by skillfully using
a tool which measures the tension in each spoke. The ideal wheel has the same amount of tension in each spoke on
the same side of the wheel, but in the real world and on a great wheel they won't. Spoke thickness can vary, rim walls
are not always the same thickness etc. I use a spoke
tension gauge to actually measure the tension in each spoke.
- The spokes are laced correctly. This
distributes the forces on the rim
in such a way that the wheel supports itself and resists damage. The direction in which each spoke leaves the hub
and enters the rim is important and is not done correctly by a wheel building machine.
- The spoke is just long enough to completely fill the nipple. This reinforces
the brass, carbon fiber or alloy nipple which could fail unless the spoke goes all the way through. Using wrenches on the nipple
and not a screwdriver provides the soft nipple with reinforcement and keeps it from failing.
(Machine built wheels are
tensioned with a special screwdriver which can not allow the spoke to come all the way through the nipple.)
I have a specially designed Microsoft Excel™ file to figure out the exact
length of the spokes on both sides of the wheel, using the actual rim,
actual hub, number of spokes and number of spoke crossings.
- The rims are in one plane before they are built into
the wheel. If the rim is not in one plane the wheel will always try to go out of
lateral trueness. (Side to side)
- There are variations in manufacturing
which change the spoke length required. On
a rear wheel different
length spokes are used on each side. This makes for a stronger wheel because the wheel has to be built to allow
for the space taken up by the cassette, and the proper length spoke (see 4 above)
should be used.
- The spokes are stressed several times
to make sure they seat properly,
and a special spoke-specific locktite™ is used on the nipple/spoke junction.
- The hub's bearings are adjusted after the wheel is built so the bearing
set will not self-destruct during your first ride.
- You get a lifetime warranty that the wheel will stay true and the spokes
will not break. The warranty covers our skill and the quality of materials
used. It does not include accidents or abuse.
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