Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Sometimes I hate building wheels

Tonight I stripped the rim off of my new powertap and went to lace it up to my new rim (Kinlin Niobium XR-300 - 30mm). Everything went really well and slick. I was cooking along. Overhauled the hub so it now spins like butter. Prepped the spokes and rim. New Spoke prep which allowed me to realize that my old prep was getting....old.

So...it's late. I ALWAYS make a small stupid mistake when wheel building. It's like making a simple math error. It just sucks. It also always seems to happen when I attempt to build when it's late and my eyes are tired and I am already squinting.

...but no....not tonight right?? :(

I was in a hurry to start getting power numbers at the end of this season. I am in rocking form and I want to set some baseline numbers.

So....I laced the wheel. I get to about the last 5 or so spokes on the drive side when it dawns on me that the spokes are going to be just a tad too short. I check, double check, triple check all of the possible causes and see that I am doing everything right. Now I'm pissed. That means I calculated the spokes wrong...AGAIN. I HATE doing that.

But there's no way. This is a straight forward build. Spokes are within 2mm of each other. The drilling is straight up and I am using the same spokes with the same lacing on both sides. Short spoke on the drive side and long on the non-drive.....

....

.....right?......wait......does this thing have different size flanges? Is the bigger flange on the non-drive side because fo the torque transfer tube on this thing??!!

MOTHER F'R!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I swapped spokes.

Check the notes! Check the notes! I always tell myself to check the notes and verify everything multiple times but NOOOOOOooooo. I'm too smart for that.....

Hope your day was better.

2 comments:

L*I*S*A said...

Oh geez.

I need to remember that I can only understand 1/5 of your blog posts.

Back to cardiac rhythms.

Arron said...

why do spokes hate you so much?