Fixin' A Wheel

The Tamland with the temporary wheel

 Last Summer I was going round and round with my Tamland's Roval wheels and figured out that the noise I was hearing was some of the spokes getting loose due to unwinding nipples. 

I temporarily solved the issue by using an old wheel I had sitting around. However; I wanted to save that Roval wheel somehow and I thought maybe rebuilding it would be the way to go. 

However, straight pull spokes are expensive, and buying a minimum of 32 of them, (what one wheel would need) was going to be costly. So, since the spokes were really not the issue here, I decided that maybe I had nipples that would work to replace the red alloy DT Swiss nipples the wheel had originally. 

I searched for some brass DT Swiss nipples I knew that I had but there were only 26 nipples in that little box. Hmm.... I started digging through my stash of wheel stuff and I found these red alloy nipples I had saved for years. They had come from a wheel off a Raleigh Rush Hour track bike. If I recall correctly we were tasked to remove all the alloy nipples for the customer right away when the bike was purchased and replace them with brass nipples and different spokes. Anyway, I hadn't found a use for them all these years. 

Oddball red alloy nipples.

As I recalled these nipples were weird. They would not thread on Wheelsmith spokes as they had a slightly different thread pitch. I usually use Wheelsmith spokes, so that was maybe why I still had not found a home for these red nipples. 

I had no good idea what the spokes were in the Roval wheel but my guess was DT Swiss. (And no - I did not check the head for a stamp) I grabbed a red nipple half expecting it to not work when hey! It went on!

Now I have plenty of these nipples, so I started going through the Roval wheel one spoke at a time. Unwinding the old nipple, putting Wheelsmith Spoke Prep on the threads, and then installing with the red alloy nipples from the old Rush Hour track bike. 

The new nipples are longer, which I guess is 'good', assuming that the nipple has a bit more support. The thing is, the old, I assume DT Swiss nipples, had a hex head inside the rim portion that was hidden from view so the support thing may be a wash. 

Straight pull spokes are a bit weird because they usually have to pierce a thicker "flange" so they tend to be a bit longer than you might expect. These are 300mm and 302mm in length for this rear wheel application. 

Plus, they can spin while you are tightening up the spoke nipple. There is no "J" bend to work against, so I have to kind of tension them up by applying sideways pressure which jambs the nail head and helps prevent the spoke from spinning until you get enough tension for that to hold the spoke immobile. 

While I have two tensionometers, I am doing initial tensioning by plucking the spokes and matching pitch. I'll go through and do a final tensioning with the tensionometer at the end. But in my experience, it probably will need only very minor adjustment. 

'Spose I should do some cleaning too.

This will save the rear wheel, use the spokes I have without having to purchase new ones, and get this wheel back on the Tamland again. 

It is important to save this wheel because I don't have much for quick release wheels anymore and less that are suitable for a gravel application. These are pretty light wheels as well as being thematically similar in color scheme to the Tamland, so they kind of look at home on that bike. Those red painted DT Swiss Aerolite spokes are definitely unique! 

So, that's but one of the Winter projects I have in mind to do this Winter. I'll be busting out more as the season rolls along. Hopefully I get around to everything I have in mind to do. That will depend on the weather we get, of course. 

Stay tuned.....