Originally Posted by
DC City Hauler
Tell me more about hubs. Most of you recommend buying/building rims using vintage parts. Why? Is there a technical reason needing to do so? Or is the idea simply to be 'period-appropriate'? Or just to save money by going with old parts?
To be clear, I'm interested in saving money so would welcome used parts. I'd happily ride vintage wheels if I'm getting good value. But I'm not interested in period-appropriate for its own sake. I like the Vitus because I think it's beautiful and cool and would rather own/ride something of beauty than spend the equivalent on a new bike...the only new bikes I think are good looking are vastly more expensive custom builds. Several thousand dollars versus under $1k. Of course, all things being equal I'd take an 80s Vitus with a period-appropriate Campy group over Shimanos new or old, but who wouldn't? But, money aside, is there a technical reason why I can't just go out and buy whatever new wheel sets that, say, Performance is selling?
....a couple of things to think about. This is from the perspective of someone who constructs his own wheels, and has for a long time.
Most of those wheel sets you can buy for a couple hunnet bucks from Performance are constructed by machine, so they need to be tweaked a little bit by the user anyway. At time of receipt, you generally need to balance (and often to increase) the final spoke tensions, as well as stress relieve the spokes. They are good value, considering the cost of rims, hubs, and spokes these days, but you are often limited in what you can find available for purchase with regard to hub OLD spacing, hub quality, spoke number, and most especially rim quality.
So it's not just period correct that is involved here, but function and durability to some extent as well.
The better current offerings in box section rims (if you can get them in the 36 and 32 hole drillings to match your hubs), are really a joy to ride. The feel with a 25-28 mm high pressure clincher tyre approaches that of the older tubulars. They are quite nice, both in manufacturing processes and final finish/quality control. Before the pandemic bike parts crunch, they were more of a bargain. I just priced some 36 hole rims on Amazon, and the Sun rims I used to buy pretty cheaply in the 20-30 dollar range are now selling for 40-50. So much increased in price that I ended up buying some H + Sons rimms for not much more in price, and a big increase in quality.
I have no idea what spokes cost these days, but DT's were running around 50 cents each in bulk 100 boxes the last time I bought any. I have a pretty big collection of leftovers in a 5 gallon bucket, and mostly I use those when I can. The hubs, since you are using the old ones, are free for the cost off reconditioning them ( usually cleaning and new bearings, if needed ) .
So for this particular French PX-10E something or other Super Comp, my investment in the wheels will be about 120 bucks for two rims, plus whatever I spend on spokes if I can't find the right lengths in my bucket, plus maybe an hour to recondition the hubs, plus a couple of evenings (or crummy weather days) in lacing them and doing the tensioning and truing. The tensioning and truing would need doing anyway, even if I bought new machine built wheels.
I look at it as about the same cash investment, with a final result that is vastly superior. Which also comes out sort of period correct as to hubs and spokes, but considerably peppier to ride.
The time factor is larger when you are first learning to do this operation. So if your time is worth anything to you, consider that too. My time is pretty much free for me to do what I enjoy. Not everyone is so fortunate.