FH - front wheel

 A very short blog post just to record that I've finished building the front wheel. 

Of course the first step is to finish the polishing. Here it is with the 80 and 150 grits done:

I needed a break of a couple of hours to let my arms and shoulders recover from the strain of polishing - these hubs are quite heavy. Here it is fully finished:

With a bit of experience, you can build these up wheels very quickly. All the spokes are tight in this view but it's not quite true; I'll leave that for tomorrow.

FH - wheel building

 With the hubs polished and the proper spokes delivered, we can start on the delightful job of lacing the wheels. 

These will use butted spokes like the originals fitted by Ariel back in the 1950s. The nipple end of the spoke is thinner than the head end - in this case the nipple end is 10 gauge and the head end, with perhaps 1" of spoke length is larger at 8 gauge. The idea is that the stressed part of the spoke is strong without making the wheel ridiculously heavy; this will have the effect of making the steering lighter by reducing the gyroscopic force on the wheel.

I'm building the wheels on a post which is of a suitable size to go through the wheel bearings. The bore of the bearings is 1"; the post I'm using is 1 1/8" so that the hub is happily suspended in mid-air. 

It's essential to get all of the spokes into their holes in the hub before you attempt to fit any of them through the holes in the rim. There is absolutely no chance of getting the spokes in the right place if you attempt to put some of them through the rim before they are all fitted in the hub, so be warned.

For this Ariel/BSA wheel Devon supply the rims in two packets - one for the inner and one for the outer spokes, that is the spokes whose heads are on the outside of the spoke flange but whose length is on the inside, and the converse for the outer spoke.

When polishing the hub I had used a brass brush in the Dremel to clean out the spoke holes. It was easy therefore to slip the spokes into place starting with the outer spokes. Because these hang down, it's a bit easier to do these first followed by the inner spokes.

You can see the butted spoke in this close-up:

Once you've got them all in you'll have this forest of stainless steel wire:

The next job is to offer up the rim. You have to decide which way the spokes are going to point-there is often a fret mark on the outer spoke flange which will show you how the originals fitted. I start with the outer spokes on the upper flange and follow the pattern shown in the spoke flange by the original spokes and fit three or four of the new spokes into their holes with their nipples screwed on by literally a couple of threads. These three or four spokes should all point in the same direction; then I will fit another one in the opposite direction still in the same flange which will serve to stabilize the rim. You can then carry on fitting the same spokes in the same flange until you have all the outer spokes fitted in the top flange. By this point you will have learned that for each outer spoke pointing in the same direction there are three holes in the rim until the next spoke of the same orientation.

When you've done that you can fit all the inner spokes from the top flange as well. This will enable you to ensure that all of the spokes cross in the proper orientation. Don't mix up the crossing, or you will end up with bent spokes.

You can then repeat the performance for the lower spoke flange but this time start with the inner spokes followed by the outer spokes, again to preserve the proper crossing.

Once you've got all the spokes in, you can do up the nipples gradually and evenly until the end of the spoke appears in the slot on the outside of the nipple, like this:

Now it's time to put your wheel in your truing jig or perhaps back in the bike. There's no substitute for using the bike frame as a jig to allow you to adjust the spokes so that the centre line of the wheel is aligned with the centre of the frame. This works beautifully on the Ariel swinging arm frame, but is much more difficult on the Square Four frame - because the Square Four frame is asymmetrical at the rear to accommodate the offset engine.

I made this spoke screwdriver years ago and it's very useful for tightening spokes when you can get to the nipple from the space usually occupied by a tyre. It makes it much quicker to tighten the spokes than using a spoke key.

I'm not going to explain the whole alignment process here because there are reams of material about it in this blog post, written when I was building the wheels for the Square Four. I must say though that these Devon rims and spokes pulled together to give a wheel that was virtually true and aligned out of the box.

Very nice indeed.

Now we just have to do it all again at the front!

FH - polishing hubs

 I've started on the rear wheel for no particular reason other than I expect it to be more work and secondly it's easier to get out than the front one for which I need to remove the wheel stop on the bike lift. 

The first step is to take a wire brush to the sand cast aluminium surfaces on the inside of the spoke flanges. You don't want to scratch the outer polished faces because it will be the devil of a job to remove the scratches made by a steel wire brush.

For the outside I have used a combination of 180 grit Scotch-Brite pad and a degreaser. This reveals a nice groove which whilst it looks quite uniform has actually been worn in place by the sharp edges of the chain case. When it's clean you can see that the bottom of the groove is quite rough:

With the grease removed we start with the 80 grit stitched mop and polish out as much of the tarnish as we can. We will also polish the edges of the spoke flanges and the ribs around the drum.

This progresses through the 150 and 300 grit wheels to the polishing mops:

It doesn't take long before it's ready for lacing on the rim.

Shame I have ordered the wrong spokes. It's shown here sitting on a 1 1/8" post, clamped in the Workmate, turned to just under 1" to allow the hub to slip over it. We'll lace the wheel in that.

FH - stripping the back wheel

 Finally, and it seems to have been a long time coming, it's time to start on the wheels. I've got the tyres now though I have had to compromise with a 90/90-19 front tyre rather than the 325-19 that I wanted, but at least I have everything.

It doesn't take very long to remove the rear wheel from these bikes despite the fact that I have complicated matters by fitting indicators, and these need to come off before the rear of the mudguard can be unbolted.

The first step is to measure the offset using a straight edge across the bearing housing. With that in place we can measure 7/8" to the edge of the rim.

These are quite common wheels so finding someone that could help with the lacing pattern of the spokes wouldn't be difficult. Nevertheless it is good practice to photograph your wheels before dismantling such that the peculiarities of the spoke pattern can be recorded for the rebuild to come. These Ariel full width hub wheels are simple in that the spokes are of two types - those that fit from the outside, and those that fit from the inside; this results in similar lengths but different head angles for the two types. For the half width hubs fitted to all my other Ariels, there are four types of spokes in each wheel.

When you have all the components delivered, and you have recorded your spoke pattern and your offset you can dismantle the wheel. I've done this a few times now and have discovered the quickest and easiest methods to my mind.

Let it be known that we are not going to reuse any of these components other than the hub. Therefore the best way to remove the rim is to cut through all of the spokes on both sides; Iuse a bolt cutter for this job which makes short work of snipping through each of the spokes.

There we go. The tyre has not even been deflated yet!

Here is the hub with the remains of the spokes. It's sensible to cut the spokes as near to the hub as possible because it is much more difficult to remove the full length of the spoke from the hole in the hub.

You will find most of those little bits of spoke are stuck in their holes through corrosion and dirt. Just wiggle them a bit to release the gunge, and thread them back through their holes.

Removal of the rim and tyre is equally brutal. All I have done here is to take a hacksaw to the tyre, lubricated with some WD40 and sawn through both the tire and part of the rim such that I can cut through both beads and the tyre will just fall off.

And that's it. Apart from a trip to the dump with this scrap metal and rubber the next job is to start polishing the hub.

FH - dashboard again

 A job I had been putting off for a while involved pulling the instrument panel off again. It involves fiddling around behind the headlamp, a particularly inaccessible area, and removing the handlebar clamp. It had to be done though, the indicator relay bracket was threatening to fret through some wires and the ammeter was popping out - not to mention the fact that I couldn't get the screws in to fasten the thing to the nacelle.

One of the problems with removing the dashboard is that you have to lift the handlebar clamp completely off. This is because the dashboard has been repaired where it sits under the handlebar clamp, and the slots are not really the right shape. One in particular fouls the stud in the handlebar clamp:

I marked the offending area on a bit of masking tape:

A few minutes with a file sorted that out, and now the clamp fits much more smoothly. You still have to lift it to remove the dashboard though.

The main job was to move the indicator relay. In a previous incarnation, I had it fitted under the rearmost speedometer nut and it was preventing me getting my hand in to fit the speedometer cable and to reconnect the wires to the headlamp switch.

What I've done today is make a new bracket for the indicator relay so that it's mounted under the ammeter in a corner of the nacelle that's out of the way:

I can get my hand underneath the dashboard now to reconnect all the wires and the speedometer cable. I made the main battery feed cable quite long when I built the wiring harness and this helps to reconnect it to the ammeter when you are fitting the dashboard.