Wheelworks.co.nz, Handbuilt wheels by Tristan Thomas

Andy’s Zipp clinchers are getting tired so he wanted to replace them with something light and fast enough to race on when not using his carbon tubulars, but durable enough for the 400km/week of training he does.

I selected a 20 hole Alchemy ELF front hub and paired it to a 28 hole DT Swiss 240s rear.  The rims are the awesome Kinlin XR-270 and spokes are bladed DT Swiss Aerolites.

1435g is an amazing weight for such a durable wheelset – that’s around 100g lighter than a pair of Ksyrium ES or Fulcrum Racing 0

Look for these wheels training in the rain on Saturday and going off the front of the Scratch bunch on Sunday :-)

After some punishment on a Specialized SX Trail the factory-built wheels were breaking spokes so it was time for a rebuild.  Jason opted for some new rims at the same time as the old ones had a few flatspots – all expected on a bike like the SX.

I replaced the bearings in the rear hub with some new SKF units, and then built both hubs onto the new FR600 rims.  This is a 600g freeride rim which is single-eyeletted and welded at the seem.

Spokes are DT Swiss double-butted Competitions in black and matching black DT Swiss brass nipples.

The most important thing when rebuilding a used hub is to lay the spokes in the groves formed in the hub flanges – this means that whatever lacing pattern was used originally has to be replicated.  By not laying the spokes in the existing groves the flanges are far more likely to break (never a good thing.)  The downside is that a lot of factory-built wheels dont have the hub logos lined up with the valve hole in the rim – this doesn’t effect performance but having the two lined up is a sign of professionalism.

This is a new tyre from Veloflex of Italy – the successor to the ‘Black’ model.  The Corsa uses the same classic file-tread pattern, a Kevlar puncture layer, and a very supple, handmade, 320tpi casing.

As far as I’m concerned these are the pinnacle of road clinchers.  If you run them at ‘normal’ pressure the ride quality, feel, and traction of these tyres is better than anything else I’ve ridden – they’re simply a joy to ride.  Resist the urge to pump them up to 145psi and instead run them the same as your regular tyres – for some reason NZers love to over-inflate their tyres which doesn’t make any sense based on how rough the roads are here!

The tyres are claimed at 180g but, as anyone who has purchased any ‘handmade in Italy’ product knows, Italian scales tend to measure a bit lighter than those based in other countries :-)  True weight averages around 200g.

Of course there must be some downsides: tyre wear isn’t great (I generally get 3000km out of a rear, and 4-5000km from a front) and their puncture resistance is nowhere near, say, a GP4000s so running over a Tui bottle isn’t a great idea.

If you’re looking for a tyre to put on your ‘Sunday’ wheels give these a go.  I’ve got them in stock at $100/each – email or call to order.

Reynolds have used a variety of hubs for their wheels – at one point they were made by Hadley, then White Industries, then a cheap Chinese hub, and now a combination of DT Swiss and the no-name Chinese.

This particular hub was made by Hadley in the USA – I’m not 100% sure on the dates these hubs were used but they’re fairly rare and swapping from the Campagnolo body to Shimano was proving difficult for their owner.

It took a bit of time but after contacting me I managed to find a used freehub body at one of my suppliers in the USA and I had it shipped over with an order.

As is the case with a lot of hubs the Shimano and Campy versions are dished differently.  Back-in-the-day there would have been a Shimano endcap for this hub to accomidate this different dish but no such luck with the used freehub body so I made a 2.5mm spacer on the lathe to sit between the endcap and bearing preload adjuster.  You can see the thin silver ring in the photo of the non-driveside of the hub.

After re-dishing and truing the wheels it’s now on it’s way back to Masterton for some racing.

Paul O’Connell joined Christine and I in the car for day 4 – this is how the day panned out in his words: paul.w.oconnell@gmail.com

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Day 3 of the Tour of Wellington was a 165km stage from Masterton to Pahiatua and back.  With only 5 seconds between Michael Torkler in the yellow jersey and second place, and another 12 riders within 2 minutes of leading the race we knew this was going to be a fast stage.

The close time gaps meant there were plenty of teams trying to launch a rider up the road for a break, and plenty of other teams wanting to prevent loosing position by allowing a break to form and the result was a fast race from the gun.

This stage was the most exciting to watch from the team car as attack after attack tried to break free of the peleton.  Each attack would be covered by the peleton and as soon as it was brought back another rider would counter-attack and try again, and the first hour of racing covered 42km – not bad considering the 5km neutral start, the headwind, and this part of the course being gradually uphill!

The first 60km were ridden single-file as the elastic stretched in the peleton.  After 60km, as water bottles were running low, the pace eased a little and teams started feeding from the cars, but as soon as everyone had a drink the pace was lifted and again the peleton formed a long, single-file line.

Our boys are better climbers than they are timetrialists and they all did exceptionally well to withstand the high pace and finish with the bunch.