Wheelbuilding / Wheel Building / Wheel build help

The grey ones? Buy them so I don’t! 😬👍🏻👍🏻

And while I’m here - I’m also planning a 20/24h build as I want to try the DT Swiss Oxic 21 and have found rims - are Bitex ‘good enough’? I was also looking at some hope on eBay - I’ve already got a pair of 32h hope and quite like the shouty freehub for warning folks I’m nearby... any other options I should consider?

I've been plenty happy with my bitex hubs, and the ones if built for other people have also seemed fine.

I built some bitex RAF/R 12 20/24H the other day. Feel great quality and the hub is nice and clicky without being crazy loud. Did 140k on them with no problems at all

I've bought some cheap rims and hubs to have a go at wheelbuilding myself. Have measured the hubs and rims, everything looks okay other than the effective rim diameter I came up with.
I measured the diameter and the depth of the rim in about 6 spots and subtracted 2xDepth to get an ERD of 576.4mm
Velocity Deep V ERD is listed as 581mm, a difference of 5mm between two 30mm deep rims seems very big so I feel like I've made an error. Any help?

Light too, if that's your bag.

Any help?

Where are Velocity measuring to? ERD is supposed to be to the end of the spoke when tensioned, but it sound like you're measuring to the bearing face where the nipple hits the rim. 5mm diameter difference (i.e 2.5mm radial) isn't an unreasonable difference if the DeepV has only a slightly greater wall thickness at that point than whatever rim you're measuring and Velocity's book number is to the spoke end.

So are their centrelock hubs. Every time I need new hubs I struggle to justify spending more than bitex costs, and never can

I measured the diameter and the depth of the rim

The depth of the whole rim or just the spoke bed? Sounds like you might be measuring, in effect, the internal diameter of the rim which would indeed be too small. As tester points out, the ERD should be measured to where the spokes will finish, which will be the internal diameter plus twice the thickness of the spoke bed plus (nearly) twice the height of the spoke head.

Yep, I've got Bitex 312F/R centerlock straight pull hubs on the 'nice' summer wheels on my Lynskey, and so far they've been excellent.

Right that's exactly what I've done. I had a look at Sheldon browns page and I don't have the bits he used to measure the rim. Is there a standard spoke bed thickness measurement I can use or are the spoke length tolerances too small to risk that?

Get two spokes you know the length of with ideally the nipples you'll be using, spokes through opposite holes on the rim, nipples threaded to right place, measure gap between spoke elbows with Verniers, add gap to 2x spoke length.

Is there a standard spoke bed thickness measurement I can use

Not really, no. If you're going to do it properly and measure the ERD then there's no point guessing part of the measurement.

This is how I do it. Works well and nipple length shouldnt matter to spoke length

Doesn't that depend which nips you're using? DT Swiss and Sapim nipples are different IIRC, although I can't remember which ones have threaded sections which vary with nipple length.

I think the Squorx or whatever theyre called have a longer threaded section, but the threads start in a similar place to other nipples. Got a few different ones in the shed will check

No the miche road hubs are made in italy by miche. Never had any issues with there track hubs the bearing last.

You took the tension too far. Read the PhD by matt Ford for a full explanation. You found the critical tension for that rim beyond which it will never be true. The physics is fascinating.

Used hundred of pairs of miche hubs and it hard to find fault with them. Novatec give some issues. Mostly short bearing life. Bitex are better. Bitex dont bother with ezo bearings for a start which are utter garbage.

You have not harmed the rims. The rim can be taken into its wobbly state and dropping the tension returns it to it's normal state. Its critical tension remains unchanged.

Never had any issues with there track hubs

Plenty of people have had trouble with weak lock nuts on the track hubs, but that's obviously irrelevant to the road hubs.

That's why you use the nipples you want to build with when measuring, or if you can't, use allowances for.

I need two BMX wheels built (not for BMX).

If I supply rims and the hubs can someone sort that for me please(inc. spokes)?

Going to be Profile hubs on Dartmoor rims.

I imagine that someone has asked this already but I need some guidance with spoke calculations for hubs that require straight pull spokes. I've built some DT Swiss ones and Powertap but they had some guides on their website where you just had to input the ERD. The hubs are fixed to a particular pattern. Got a handful of these builds lined up.

I need some guidance with spoke calculations for hubs that require straight pull spokes

If you can't get dimensions from the hub manufacturer, you're back to measuring as with any undocumented hub. Radial fronts are easy, rears or dick break fronts not so much. The PCD and offset from centre are not too bad, but a lot of designs also have a tangential offset so the nominal spoke termini are not equispaced around the PCD.

To be honest, I'm probably just going to model up the one I'm contemplating (rim swap on a Mavic Crossride with a large change in ERD) in Fusion 360 and measure the spoke lengths that result 🙂

The DT Swiss online calculator will work out the lengths for straight pull spokes. I used it to calculate the spoke lengths for my wheels with Bitex straight pull spokes and it worked fine.