I have worked in several fields where my task was to solve a problem while interacting directly with people, including bike repair, computer support and telephone crisis intervention. What I learned, and passed on to others when I was in a training capacity, was that responsibilty in a helping relationship does not rest soley on the person giving assistance. The person in need of help always has a responsibility to help in solving the problem. You asked for help and then dove in without sufficient information or waiting for a response, causing a new problem and making diagnosis of the initial problem more difficult. Yes, you could have avoided the problem by waiting, or by learning more before diving in, and could have helped by going back to the Internet to learn what you did wrong or the proper term, but I did not criticize you for the error or for not knowing the correct name - I said it was an indicator that "You need to study a lot more about each step in the process."

Again, my observation is that you sometimes ignored and often unfairly characterized the responses or questions. There was a suggestion to post photos, several suggestions related to determining and possibly addressing the root cause (including saying rough roads were not sufficient reason) a few opinions that you are not at the point where wheel building would be advisable, and many advising caution as you proceed due to possible safety issues. Implying that anyone attacked your lack of knowledge/terminology, told you to be afraid to touch the bike or to study for two years, or even that you should accept everything verbatim is neither accurate nor helpful, and may chase away those who might otherwise be more than glad to lend a hand.

To be clear -absolutely do not follow everything verbatim - everyone here makes mistakes and some things are just plain opinion. I can tell that you are quite intelligent, but (my opinion) you may be more focused on defending your intelligence than on what you need to learn.

I have not followed this thread but I read cny-bikeman's posting and can hardly state my agreement strongly enough. I have a sister who is a public school teacher. I know that the qualities that a student brings to the classroom is a VERY large part of how their learning process will go. Andy.

cny-bikeman

Let's break this down;

I posted in haste and used the term 'the bit the chain goes round'. This was not as specific as it could have been, but was not incorrect.

Several people posted that being able to name the part would help in getting an answer. I accept that and learn that next time I will try to post more precise information. It's gone, it's past, it's done with..so why do we keep revisiting this. I made a mistake and have learned from it, why keep beating me over the head with it?

Despite the failings of my description I actually got an excellent answer from pierce to that point so it did not impede the advice I got at all:

People have pointed me in the direction of a couple of website's with lots of information on them and I have accepted that I should read them and in fact have made a start on it. Your posts seem to be implying that I do not accept that I should read anything, but that could not be further from the truth. I just feel that the act of actually doing will re-enforce my learning in what is largely a practical skill.

Like Gerv said I just wanted a bit of helpful encouragement, but in part what I seem to be getting is an elitist attitude that there is no way that I could even begin to learn and should just give up now, which is only serving to dampen my enthusiasm.

Alot of folks here will pee on your feet. Don't get too upset about it. You will find that wheel building is not an art , but a science and a simple one at that. Once you get started you will be suprized at how easy it is.
The only problem with working on the rest of the bike is the lack of standards in the parts from one manufacturer to the next.

You think bikes are bad? Try working on cars!

:thumb:

Science... I wouldn't go that far though. If you can chg the oil on your car.. you can build bike wheels. Simple application of time + focus. The overwhelming majority of noob's testing this subject water though would be better served to just let someone competent do the job right.. the first time.

I agree that today's stouter rims with welded joints and machined side walls make building much easier than it used to be. But there's still a certain degree of knowledge and skill involved. I've watched newbies, phase the flanges wrong, strip nipples, struggle with dish, and find all sorts of pitfalls that those with experience avoid.

Like most things mechanical, it's easy if you know how, it's fairly easy to learn, and if you have decent mechanical instincts it's possible to learn as you go and do well the first time out. But for a newbie without good instincts or a decent teacher the odds are that there'll be some error and trial in the process.

Cheers, Davidad.
I won't get upset.
Some of the info I've had has been really helpful.

Wedgwood - here are two resources for you.-

Roger Musson's fine e-book on wheelbuilding. Roger is not far from you in Preston -

http://www.wheelpro.co.uk/wheelbuilding/book.php

Mike T's site to get you going -

www.MikeTechInfo.com

I'm surprised no one has mentioned this yet: you mentioned that you do not know what pressure you've been inflating your tires to, and that you are doing so by feel. There are a lot of possible reasons you've had many wheel failures, but this is certainly one of them. At the bare minimum you should get a tire pump with a pressure gauge. There is a lot of information on recommended tire pressures. http://www.bikequarterly.com/images/TireDrop.pdf is a frequently recommended method.

At your weight (11 stone is 154lbs or 70kg) you shouldn't need especially strong wheels because of your weight, although your riding style and terrain certainly matter. Spokes break when they have been detensioned during riding by excessive loading, which can be from excessive weight (probably not your cause) or transient shocks (in part maybe by insufficiently inflated tires, and riding heavy in the saddle over bumps). Properly built wheels appropriate for their application should not exhibit the problems you're experiencing, and should only require rare and minor servicing except in the case of unusual stress (crashes).

Hubs have changed since the manufacture of your bike, with a transition to freehubs from freewheels and to increasingly wide locknut widths (120mm probably for your bike, 126mm for 7 speed bikes, 130 for 8-11sp road bikes, 135 for 8-10sp mountain and some touring/cross bikes). Wheels compatible with your frame/drivetrain are a little harder to find in stock, and may be of lower quality. You will find this problem largely solved if you get some genuinely good wheels, possibly hand built from parts by a skilled local wheelbuilder, or by a reputable online wheel manufacturer. Also, on a steel frame like yours, a shop can cold set the rear spacing of your frames to be compatible with modern wheels, although it might require the replacement of some of your drivetrain.

For learning wheel truing/building skills, a deeply messed up wheel like yours is a rough place to start. It's a lot easier to make minor truing adjustments to a essentially functional wheel, or to even build a wheel from scratch from unabused components. Don't give up on learning, bikes really aren't that crazy to work on all things considered.

Thanks guys, some good tips there.

cpach, That was a brilliantly clear description! I am now starting to understand where I may have gone wrong with the tyre pressure. I've always just pumped it up to the maximum I could get it to go, but would not then re-pump until the tyre became noticeably flat. I see I need to be doing this more regularly even when not flat and be more scientific with a pump that tells me the exact pressure. Thanks.

Well, step 1 is to re-lace and tension the rear wheel you partly took apart so that you can remove the freewheel. Use the other rear wheel as a guide to where the spokes go and how they cross, and roughly how much they should be tensioned. Don't worry about getting the rim true. Then purchase the appropriate freewheel tool and wrench and remove the freewheel. If you can accomplish that much without stripping nipples and mangling freewheel notches, that will demonstrate you have the mechanical aptitude to proceed to rebuilding your hubs and wheels and then move on to other bike maintenance.

jyl, That's just made me realise something, which I hadn't thought important before. When I had the 1st wheel removed at the LBS I remember the guys there having a brief conversation about if they should mend it or swap it.

I had the other wheel so I was all for swapping it because it sounded less expensive anyway, but the thing that made the shop guy agree was when the other one said "he's broken some spokes too".

At the time I just couldn't see why this mattered. I thought If you brake a spoke you just put anew one in. They are pretty cheap. But now I realise maybe he was meaning it will be hard to get the freewheel off if some of the spokes are broken. And without getting the freewheel off it would be impossible to add new spokes anyway, so a bit of a chicken and egg scenario.

It's really important, because I just noticed a couple of broken on the wheel that's still on the bike. I'm going to take it into the shop as soon as possible before I break any more and hope they can still fix that one.

Also, I'm going to look round for a nice professionally built set of wheels for the other bike and then try to start with a bit of spoke tightening if they start to go out of true.

I don't know if it's worth buying more stuff to keep trying with this wheel. If the new wheels need the same tool it might be worth getting and I could continue to have a play with the one I messed up, but I guess that depends on the type of freewheel that comes on the new wheels.

A few broken spokes don't prevent you removing a freewheel. If you hadn't unlaced the wheel, the freewheel could have been removed without any fuss.

So, How(approx) many spokes need to be laced up for the tool to remove the freewheel to work?

Properly built wheels will stay true almost indefinitely provided they aren't abused, so you won't get much wheel-truing practice...

A reasonable number of the drive-side ones. If it were me I'd lace as many as possible, i.e. as many as are still in the hub and not broken.

Don't just lace the non-drive side and try to remove the freewheel, or you run the risk of twisting the hub shell in half. In all honesty, I might not even lace the non-drive side at all.

I taught a school teacher with no mechanical skills how to build a wheel. She has done three and they have come out well trued and tensioned. I have put over 30k miles on a rear one with little retruing over the past few years.

As I said --But for a newbie without good instincts or a decent teacher ...

Apparently this involved one or both of the conditions. I teach wheel building, and find that there's a large spread in how easily students learn this, and that's with a preselected group who already know some bike repair. I said it was fairly easy to learn, but not equally easy for everybody.

Would they have to be laced in the correct wheel pattern, or would just evenly spaced around the rim do?

Well, I've considered this, and you might be able to just lace them evenly, put the freewheel tool in a vice and turn the rim anti-clockwise. The rim should turn until the spokes pull tight, at which point you just have to break the freewheel loose as if the wheel were fully laced. Evenly is the important bit - if a spoke is missing, you'd have to miss a hole too.

I've never tried this, so I'll leave it to others to find any flaws with it.

I had to partial lace one this fall.. stuck 16 or so spokes in somewhat even pattern sans much tension. FW removal tool in the vice.. gradual increase of the rotational tension/pressure.. and she popped loose. Was fairly tight too.

When I've had to do this, I only laced the right forward pointing spokes. On a stiff rim 8 or 9 spokes is fine (32h, 36h) With a very flexible rim I lace all the right spokes in the same direction to reduce the unsupported distance between the spokes. Lacing all the same way is fast and easy, you lace it as a radial so the spokes stick out a lot and it's easy to spin nipples on (all the same distance, ie. to top of head). Then the spokes will tension when the rim is turned to remove the freewheel.

Do you have tools? The freewheel tool needs to be held tight into the freewheel notches, or it will pop out. With a fully laced wheel, you can clamp the tool in a bench vise, place the wheel on it, and press down while turning. With a partly laced wheel, I'm guessing the guys who do it that way find some other way to keep the tool pressed into the notches?

Pretty sure I won't have all the tools. My dad had some, but he passed away and they have been left in boxes in the garage. I need to go through them and work out what I have got and what they all do. I've also ordered a couple of things on Ebay, but I definitely won't have everything.

Still if I pay up for some wheels for the bike now I can spread my learning out a bit and take my time. So it's not so urgent to do all at once to keep the bike on the road.

I use the axle nut or quick-release skewer to hold the tool in whenever I'm pulling a freewheel that takes one of the pronged tools. Be sure to loosen it off once you've broken the freewheel loose, because if you keep unscrewing it, you'll break something, as you're effectively tightening the freewheel and tool into the axle nut.