Thank you so much - this was very helpful. I've been doing a lot of research and talking to the folks at my local bike store. I would love to build my own wheel on the custom builder, but the bike store people recommended the Mavic Open Pro Sport / Ultegra hub rear wheel - with the deal going on it would be about 180$. What are your thoughts? Do you think I could get a better wheel building my own (within roughly the same price range)?

Also, this may be a dumb question - I know riding on my current jenky wheel is definitely messing up the rim and hub on it, but I'm not doing any further damage to my frame or drive train, am I?