Thoughts on wheels
 

As many of you know I trashed my rear hub. Expect it to be down for a while. So here is my dilemma. Would it be stupid to buy another wheel for the interim? I sometimes think it might be a good idea to have one anyway. Or would it be a waste of money? Next question: What wheel would you buy? (Rear only)
My current wheels are UST but the replacement doesn't have to be. But it must be disc ready. Thanks for your thoughts.

if you have a couple of bikes then it might be worth it coz your more likely to need it. But think about this, how many times since you've been riding have you wished you had a spare wheel? Not many id guess (tyres maybe but not an entirely new wheel). If you think about it you'd only need one really if you completely trash your other back wheel, and how often do you do that? I mean if one needs trueing your not going to swap them out are you.

It might be worth it if you kept one wheel set with road tires and one with XC, depends what you do i guess. Just ask your self do you really need another wheel, you dont want to buy a cheapy one really so you could end up spending a fair bit on a good wheel, and it might just be a waste of money if you hardly use it.

If you need a wheel while you wait for your hub to be fixed, see if your lbs will loan you one, or ask a friend maybe?

A 2nd set of wheels is always a good idea. You can keep different tyres on them. You can have an extra strong set, and a lightweight set. You can use your bike to ride to the bike shop to pick up spare spokes for repairing your broken wheel.
Its quite common practice for roadies to have a set of everyday training wheels, and a set of lightweight aero race wheels.

Consider this. If you want to be able to easily swap back and forth you'll have to add a new cassette and a new disc rotor to your new rear wheel. $$$$$ Know what I mean?

If you're hard on wheels or race it would be nice to have a spare for when you knock the thing out of true or taco the rim, but I think for most of us the spare will just sit in the garage.

After seeing what happened to your hub i'd be thinking about replacing it with something a little more reliable. What's from keeping the same thing from happening again?

of course, If money is not a problem then I suggest the Chris King hub. I'd probably go with the Shimano XT though, 14/15 butted spokes and Sun or WTB rims built by an experienced builder not a machine.

I say take the money and spend it on the new wheel set. Buy a much better hub and all that. It would be nice to have a spare but if you think about it, you really dont need one (plus it would cost some mad $$$ to get one that you can just swap out wiht out transfering stuff around.

IF you have that money thn do it, just i think that the money will be better spent on stronger parts then many parts.

Jared

I'cve never used disk brakes, so I don't know squat about rotors, but swapping out my heavy-duty thrash wheels for my lighter speed wheels isn't much of a chore. For one thing, I have knobbies on the thrash wheels and semi-slicks on the light wheels, for another, it takes 20 seconds with a chain whip and a lockring tool to move the cassette from one freehub to the other. Not a big deal...

Okay... I have to take two minutes to adjust the V-brakes for the narrower/wider rim...