Friday, February 15, 2008

Wheels of the Day

It's been a while, but here we are!

Rims: Ambrosio Nemesis 'day SC 32h
Spokes: DT Swiss SuperComp
Hubs: DT Swiss 240s - Campagnolo

Weights: 774gm Front, 889gm Rear.

I enjoyed building these wheels. They are kind of old school, but with a new twist, using the 240s hubs and triple butted (2.0/1.7/1.8mm) spokes. With such rims you just get the spoke tension even and the wheel is straight and round, they demand very little truing, and will probably wear out before they need any post build truing. Gerard Schraener comments in his book about how a wheel builder can tell the best pair of wheels from a batch, this is one of those pairs.

To finish them off, I corked the rims. Something you don't see much anymore, you use little corks to fill the ferrules, giving a better support to the base of the tubular. I have seen base tapes wearing holes when this isn't done because the tire pressure pushes the tape into the ferrules. This solves that problem!