Trouble with Wheel Build
 

So I'm trying to build my first wheelset, but I am having a bit of trouble. The wheel is cross 3 and is all laced up, but the tension is being weird. I started them all with 2 threads showing on each spoke and tightened each spoke 2.5 full turns in 1/4 turn increments. All of the trailing spokes are at 55-60Kfg, but the leading spokes are all around 0-5Kfg. This is only the front wheel as I haven't started on the rear yet.

Does it sound like I am doing this right or did I make a mistake somehow? I held it up to another 3x wheel and they looked to be laced the same. Any help?

I am using Hope Pro II disc hubs and Spank Subrosa rims.

Thanks

sound like you are doing it right,as long you add tension to the wheel everything will be ok. the important thing is to keep the wheel round and straight, no up and down, or left & right bent in the wheel.

ok well, every other spoke is at final tension. The other half are very loose. The wheel is true. Do I now go around and only tighten every other spoke?

Show us some pictures of the lacing. If you're off like this it could mean that you're off by one hole in the hub or rim.

That does sound weird. It shouldn't be possible to consistently put more tension on the trailing spokes that the leading spokes, the hub should simply rotate until leading and trailing tension is reasonably balanced. What you could do though is have consistent more tension on left side trailing and consistent more tension on right side leading(or the other way around). If taken too far this can actually twist a hub right off.

I've read about someone claiming that's it's possible to lace a wheel with diff crosses for leading and trailing. I can't envision how that would turn out, so I can't say what you could do to determine whether that's what you've inadvertently done or not.

And how could 55-60 Kgf be final tension? That sounds way too low.

If it is a front wheel and you used all the same sized spokes and they all seem to be close to the right length (none are ~2 cm short from reaching the nipple) then you likely have the wheel laced properly. Show a pic and everyone can look and figure out what might be going on.

That's what I suspect too. It's easy to get the two sides of the hub laced one hole off. When You do that everything looks right but you get two tight spokes followed by two loose spokes.

Without knowing what is being built - type of rim and spokes, hard to say what the final tensioning should be. But on a front wheel, safe to say 55-60Kgf is too low.

I am using 254mm spokes on the disc side and 256mm on the other side. They are what my LBS told me to use.

I turned each spoke 1/4 turn more and then gave each disc side spoke an extra 3/4 turn.

http://i25.photobucket.com/albums/c8...oooooookes.jpg

The red spokes are all between 72 and 125Kfg. The light blue are 0-30. Same goes for the other side of the wheel. Not sure what final tension I should be shooting for with butted spokes.

The dish is off by about half an inch right now. I am certain I did not turn any the wrong way or mix up the spokes.

254 mm spokes on the disc side should all have the same tension ~ 100 kgf and the 256 mm spokes on the other side will all have lower tension, but should be the same as each other.
I can't tell from your description or your picture what is wrong.
Can you put the yellow, red, dark blue (or some other easily determined color), and light blue colors on the spokes as per the Sheldon Brown diagrams?
http://sheldonbrown.com/wheelbuild.html#definitions

I also think the picture is hard to tell the crossing pattern due to black spokes on black hub.
I think if you check through the Sheldon Brown method you will find what is up with your wheel.
If you used Spocalc, you will also know what ratio to expect for tension differences from disc side to non-disc side spokes.
Will getting the centering corrected make the "problem" worse or will it make it better?

Try taking another picture, this time with the lens on the axis of the skewer. Also, try to avoid those shadows by moving the wheel away from the white background - my eyes go nuts looking at it this way. If you do this, and color code all the spokes, maybe we can help.

Your wheel looks ok for a 3X wheel. The starting spokes look parallel as they should. With the dished wheel when the dish is good the spokes on the disk side will have more tension than the non disk side, similar to a rear wheel with a dish for the cassette. If it is a disk wheel then you may have mixed up the spokes or all your spokes may be the same size or you reversed the spoke lengths between the sides. The spokes on the disk side are shorter than the ones on the non disk side and if you mixed the spokes then this could explain the tension. Your wheel is going to be dished like a back wheel. Take a spoke from the leading and lagging ones on both sides. Oh yes, loosen the spokes up so you don't lose the roundness of the wheel.

Did you remember to cross under for your third cross? Are all the spoke heads seated properly? What happens if you bring the loose spokes up to tension?

I think it's the green rim that's doing it! :eek:

Seriously, did you double check the spoke lengths yourself, both in a calculator and with a ruler? I relied on a usually very reliable shop where I got my spokes and they had made an error in calculation or spoke selection (they weren't sure which later themselves) and given me the wrong spokes for one side, didn't get as far as you, but it was obviously wrong so took the wheel apart and started over from the beginning and caught the error...shop was embarassed.

It's hard to see with the wheel so close to the background and the shadows look like another spoke. Can you take another picture close-up of the hub and spoke from the side just like that photo?

Are all of the marked spokes from the same side of the hub? What about the tension-difference on the other side of the hub?

And somehow stand it up away from walls and stuff that causes shadows of the spokes.

It's hard to say given the shadows and all but something doesn't look quite right to my old myopic eyeballs. Like you're out by a spoke hole or something. It could be the shadows playing tricks with me though.

That's a pretty large difference in spoke tension and some really tight spokes on the non-disc side. On the non-disc side, you shouldn't have any spokes over 100 kgf unless you are running a lot of tension on the disc side. On the wheel I just built, my disc side spokes were at 110 kgf and the non-disc side ended up at 73 kgf to get the dish correct.

I'd recommend starting over and paying more attention to keeping the wheel dished properly as you bring up the tension. Basically, start paying attention to the dish early on so that you don't end up with such tight spokes on the non-disc side. Hopefully the end result with be much more even tension.

It appears from his photo and comments that the variations in tension are for spokes on the same side of the hub???

If you look at (one side of) the hub, how many spokes are there between the spokes that run almost parallell to each other to the rim, and then attaches to the rim with one spoke hole inbetween?
Is one of those paired spokes heads-in and the other heads-out?

Starting to look a bunch better. Dish is only 2mm off now, disc side spokes are all at 115-125Kfg and non-disc side is all at 65-80Kfg. Wheel is true in all directions.

What type of tension should I be bringing the non-disc side up to?

What's the rim's max tension? The disc side should be pretty close to that, and the non-disc side whatever tension you need to get the dish correct.

If it's in true, just get it dished level. At 115 - 125 Kgf, you don't want to keep spiraling upwards. That's plenty of tension on that side. Yow!