Rear Wheels

The bike shop said what I needed were 201mm spokes ... so I bought them. Having some time on my hands today, I decided to lace up the wheels. Only to discover that the spokes are too long. The spokes would extend through the nipples and punch holes in the innertube.

Should I have questioned his professional judgement? ... the spoke calculators that I ran on the web has said to use 195mm spokes (or there abouts) ... which would be shorter ...

LATER - he assured me that you just tighten them up and cut them off with a dremel tool ... even with the top of the nipple (inside the rim).

Getting Spokes

There are only 2 bicycle shops within a 50 mile radius of where I live. The first shop I took the partially laced 20" wheel into ... the guy starting hyperventilating and nearly passed out. He is a "new bicycle" only, TREK dealer. He said he hasn't tried to spoke a wheel in over 15 years.

The other bicycle shop owner (and bike mechanic) told me to leave it with him for a day or so ... he would measure the hub and feed the numbers into his calculation program ... and see if we couldn't come up with the correct length spoke. I then told him I'd be back with a similar hub and a 26" rim that we'd have to do the same thing for ... find the correct spoke length. He didn't seem too flustered by the request.

I did order one set of pillow block bearings. I'll use them to drill all 3 rear frames ... and order some more using my next paycheck.

An old riding buddy asked me how much it would cost for me to make him one of these DeltaWolf trikes ...

Need Longer Spokes

There is something wrong with this picture ...

Notice the nipples in the rim ... which means there are some spokes attaching the rim to the hub ... but the hub extends well below the rim (it's the black pedestal in the middle) ...

I need longer spokes. Guess I'll have to visit the local bike shop ...

It looks pretty good from a top view -->
However, ...