Hi all,

Some good buddies of mine are getting married and April, and my college friends and I just pooled our money together to get them a tandem to ride away on. I picked this older steel tandem Peugeot up on Craigslist, and it is quite pretty:



It needs a little bit of work, and I have decent amateur repair experience and tools. The rear wheel that it came with doesn't quite fit. The frame is spaced for 135mm, but the wheel looks more like 120mm or 125mm.

So! I need to find a 27" rear tandem wheel, which thus far in my googling are difficult to find. I've never built a wheel before, but have always wanted to learn. But I'm not sure if a tandem wheel as a gift to friends that I care about is a good first wheel to build (I don't want them to have a terrible accident due to my amateur skills).

I talked to my LBS and they said they could cold set the frame at a different spacing, give or take 5mm, if I needed.

What should I do? Should I try to buy rim and hub and get my LBS to build it? I'm hoping not to spend too much more money on this gift. Or, maybe someone out there has an old tandem wheel lying around that they'd like to sell?

Thanks!
-Andrew