Wheelworks.co.nz, Handbuilt wheels by Tristan Thomas

A silver Rohloff wheel for Puresports.  The Rohloff is a 14 speed internal gearbox replacing the normal 3 chainrings and 9 rear cogs on a mountain bike or touring bike.  They last forever and they’re awesome :-D

This DT 540 rear hub was supplied as a 140mm but the customers frame was 145mm.   Thanks to Tom at Sheppards, the DT Swiss importer, for sending the necessary 145mm axle no questions ask – it’s great to have good support.

I replaced the axle and machined a new spacer which was not included with the axle.  There was also a clearance problem with the disc mount – the disc rotor was sitting 4mm too close to the dropout and the disc brake was not able to adjust outwards that far.  I machined 2mm from each side of the screw-on adapter and now the rotor sits where it should.

It was interesting to see the insides of the 540 tandem hub – the design is the same as the 240s hub except that the axle and freehub are made from hardened steel rather than light weight aluminium.

This is a new rear wheel for Aiden’s GT Sanction.  The rim is a Mavic F519, the hub a Ringle 135mm with a 12mm thru-axle – Aiden supplied both of these.

The hub was 36 hole so I laced the drive side 3x and the non-drive side as 4x.  This increases the spoke tension on the disc side of the hub – the driveside is tensioned to 125N and with this lacing pattern the disc side is around 100N.  Without this lacing pattern the disc side would be down below 80N.  The increased spoke tension will mean a stronger wheel ready for the big hucks :-)

Building dedicated race wheels is great but I get the biggest kick out of putting together a pair of wheels which is fast enough for club racing yet durable enough for daily training use.

Dan is a big, powerful fella with a background competing at the highest levels of NZ road cycling and he needed a pair of wheels suitable for logging some serious training kms and competing at club level.

The new DuraAce 7900 hubs were our choice for price, weight and durability reasons.  I laced these to the Kinlin XR-270 rims with bladed Sapim CX-Ray spokes.  Dan muscles the front of the bike around so he needed something stiff and these wheels should fit the bill nicely.

I have years of pent-up desire to have a custom frame built for me but for various reasons (primarily revolving around NZ dollar exchange rates) I have never pulled the trigger, given my creditcard details and taken my place in a builder’s queue.

Mick did though, and after 9 months of waiting his amazing Llwellyn arrived from Darrell.  I was lucky enough to build the wheels and to help Mick sort out the groupset, parts, and solve the Thomson / 1″ steerer conundrum.

The bike is Molteni orange with polished dropout faces, seatstay bridge etc.  It’s perfect and I’m very, very jealous.

Dave must be some kind of red wine alchemist – the hub adapters I modified for him somehow turned into an Aussie shiraz with bike wheels around the neck :-)

The Zipp 808 rim is the closest thing you can get to a disk wheel:  They’re damn fast!

These 808 track tubulars are laced to Shimano DuraAce large-flange hubs.  The rear hub is double-sided so two cogs can be fitted to make gear changes easier through the day.

Spokes are bladed Sapim CX-Ray’s to help with the aerodynamics.  There are 28 spokes front and rear which will build into a really stiff pair of wheels.

These rims took a long time to arrive but were hopefully worth the wait :-)

This rear wheel is part of a pair using the Formula hub branded as Velocity which I used to be able to buy.  These are truly great hubs: Angled flanges, stiff steel axle, easy to service freehub body in Shimano or Campy, and great quality Japanese bearings…they’re reasonably light at 314g rear / 101g front and offered really great value, but alas no longer available.

This rear hub is laced to a Kinlin XR-270 rim using DT Swiss Revolution spokes.  The front hub will be laced either to an XR-200 or XR-270 to make a matching pair.

After winning his category at the Karapoti this year on a new Yeti 575 Ian decided the bike deserved a longer travel front fork and matching 15mm front wheel.

We chose the Pro2 hub because it can be easily converted between 15mm and 9mm QR so this front wheel will fit either Ian’s Epic or 575 and give him extra tyre options.

The XM819 is a bombproof tubeless rim and well suited to ‘all mountain’ style riding.  The rim is so stiff that I used the very light Sapim Laser spokes and aluminium nipples to save some weight without negatively effecting the wheel’s stiffness.