Originally Posted by
prathmann
Agreed.
Recently I've had the front rim wear out on two of my bikes. (It's always the front since that gets the most brake usage - my rear rims last for over 100 kmiles.) Got a spare rim that a friend had lying around for one of the bikes and bought a rim for $25 from the LBS for the other. In both cases the ERDs were a close enough match to reuse the spokes. So for $25 and a little time I got both bikes back on the road for another 50 kmiles or so.
Assuming your labor costs nothing. Detensioning the wheel, transferring spokes over to a new rim is more time consuming than a straight up lace and factoring in that cost, is probably *not* cheaper than a prebuilt new wheel. Don't kid yourself here.