wheels

This little post could easily have just been called "New Wheels" because there really is nothing tandem specific about them. The components arrived a few weeks ago and all that was left was to take some spare time and build them up. You all know what spare time is don’t you, since we all have so much of it laying around.

The orange FG/SS is moving along. Frame has been prepped. Bottom bracket and crank have been installed. Seat post has been cleaned and polished. Stem and bars have had the anodizing removed and been installed. Brake levers and cabling have been installed. Bars have been wrapped.

An interesting article was posted today on Shimano’s wheel building at their factory in Malaysia. Some things I did not know. All of Shimano’s wheels are hand-built. The only exception is that a few wheels use a robot to stuff the hub with spokes. Otherwise there are no robots in the wheel building assembly. Shimano makes all the parts that go into the wheel, the hubs, spokes and rims at the same factory. They control the entire supply chain. All their wheels except the all carbon Dura-Ace tubulars, which are made in Japan, come from the Malaysian factory.

After everything was said and done, here is a summary of the upgrades/swaps that we did on out Cannondale Road Tandem. Nashbar/Winwood cyclocross fork replaces the Cannondale Tandem Specific Fatty fork. Avid SD-7 linear pull brakes replace the Avid BB-7 mechanical disc brakes. Custom wheels built from Shimano M760 hubs, DT Swiss R1.1 rims and WheelSmith DB spokes replaces OEM 40 hole 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.

Now that all the parts are here is it time to actually build the wheels. So the parts list is as follows. DT Swiss R 1.1 double eyelet rims, Shimano 32-hole M760-S mountain bike hubs, Wheelsmith DB14 double-butted spokes (silver) with black spoke nipples and finally some Ritchey snap on rim strips.