The Tandem Wheels

Ok, finally the wheels are built. I managed to get them done Saturday evening for their maiden ride on Sunday. There are a lot of steps that go into building a strong wheel. They can be found all over the Internet so I won’t bore you with the details of the build process.

I started with the rear wheel, 32-hole 3 cross. The key is to get the first spoke in the correct hole so that when you are done there are two things evident. What I am going to say is purely cosmetic and has nothing to do with how well your wheels are built, but it does show attention to detail. The first is decals, if you decide to keep the rim decals they are usually set so that on one side they are at the valve hole and then 180° opposite. The other side of the rim will usually have them 90° offset. When I build I like to have the drive side also have the decal at the valve hole.

The other key is the hub logo. Most hubs have either a deal or are etched with a logo on the hub body. I want to make sure that one of the hub logos lines up with the valve hole also. I know it’s obsessive, but it’s the way I wanted it.

Starting out with everything within reach, I had the rear wheel laced in about ½ hour. Then spent the next three hours making sure that not only was the wheel true, but also round and that the spoke tension was even all the way around. With this rear wheel combination I was able to build a wheel where the non-drive side was 90% of the tension of the drive side. Pretty good for a back wheel that usually has a lot of dish. I am sure it will be as strong as any higher spoke count wheel I already have.

While I was at it I decided to weigh what was there. So off came the old wheel, tire and tube, then the skewer and finally the freewheel and it went up on the scale. A whopping 1396 grams! Wow I knew that wheel was heavy. The new rear wheel, 1081 grams, 315 grams (11.1 ounces) lighter. Besides that I now use a smaller tube, and a narrower and lighter tire so the weight savings are even greater.

Now on to the front wheel, originally 1206 grams, new front wheel 832 grams. Again a savings of 374 grams (13.2 ounces).

Currently I do not have the tires I want on the tandem, I have a drawer full of 23 mm wide tires and I wanted to use a 25 mm wide tire. Even so the tire/tube combination went from 440 grams to 345 grams, another savings of 190 grams, 95 grams per wheel, bringing the total weight reduction to 879 grams (1 pound 15 ounces).

Look for a future update on the overall ride and durability of this wheel set.