You Don't Know What You Got- 'Till You Look!

Faded to a light pewter, these Dura Ace hubs are old!

 There are those things which you have laying about that, you know, when you see them you say.....'you'll get to that someday' to yourself and then you don't. Get to them, that is. Well, I aimed to knock one of those items off the "I'll get to it someday" list the other day. That item would be the rebuilding of some old Dura Ace hubs from their old place in a 27" wheel set to a brand new set of rims and spokes. 

Originally the plan was to utilize some old 650B rims I had hanging in the Lab for years, They weren't tubeless ready, nor were they of any special import. Just pedestrian, old, 650B clincher rims in silver. I figured to build them onto these Dura Ace hubs and then try to convert my 1977 Trek to 650B wheels. Maybe even going single speed. 

Well, the first order of business was to retrieve the old wheels with the Dura Ace hubs from out in the garage. Once that had been done I cut out the front hub, then I cleaned that hub up a bit since it was covered in dust. I found that the black anodization had faded to a silvery pewter color. Nice! The grease is dried up, of course, but with a little TLC these hubs will work quite nicely. 

Okay, a break from that now, time to look at these forlorn 650B rims. They were on a hook but pushed back since I had tires hanging there which I hadn't used in years. Huh! Looky there! The pair of Challenge Gravel Grinder tires I had been running in 2014. There were a pair of Panaracer Pasela 38mm tires too, which I had reviewed for my old 'Gravel Grinder News' site. That had to have been in 2013. So, those rims had been there way before those tires got hung up. Been a while, right? Yes........

You can see how much the ano has faded by looking next to the grease zert cover.

So, I get to the rims. They have never been laced, judging by the shrink wrap still on the outer circumference of the hoops. I gently removed them from the hook, looked at the label, and then my jaw dropped. These weren't what I thought they were at all! Nope! I had completely forgotten all about having these hoops. These must have been a trade or I purchased them from a co-worker back at the old shop- or I bought them new(?), not sure. They had the old shop's stickers on them. Edit: I think I remember now! I had an old LeJuene road racer for a bit that I was going to re-lace the wheels on, but I traded the bike back to my old boss before I got that far. Here's an old post from 2013 explaining it all. So, I would have purchased these rims as new.

Oh! You are wondering what they are, no doubt. Well, they are NOS Salsa Delgado Cross rims. 36 hole drillings, just like the hubs. Not 650B at all! I don't know what happened to the old 650B rim set. Must have gifted them to someone else. Anyway...

The Delgado Cross is a rim brake design, so perfect for the old Trek. I can lace these things up and have a perfect single speed set of rim brake wheels for that bike now. Cool! Even the old school 126mm spacing will be perfect as it is a match between the hubs and frame. 

I have had wider tires on this frame before, so I know that will work out. I will strip off all the original geared stuff and just keep the brakes, which also cleared the bigger tires. The old Panaracer Pasela tires will likely go on this, as they have tan wall side walls and should look good against the green frame. Which brings me to that......the color. It isn't that I don't like the green it is painted in. No, it is just that the paint is flaking off and in bad shape. This bike could use a good powder coating. 

If I do that, I think I'd opt for a nice turquoise blue, or sky blue hue. I've always wanted a bike in that shade of blue, but going the powder coat route adds costs. We'll see..... First things first! Build the wheels! 

Stay tuned......