Model A - Wheels

 It's half term and the kids are at a loose end, there's nothing much open and the weather's not very nice so I'm thinking "let's give them something useful to do" . Number Two is an enthusiastic maker and fiddler like his dad and me and he might like to get to grips with something mechanical.

The Model A needs its wheels building - what could possibly go wrong? 

The first step - putting the spokes in the brakes side of the front wheel. No problem there:

Getting those threaded into the rim is quite straightforward and we can put the nipples on. I've got lots of reference pictures to help me get the spoke pattern right:

Next up spoking the non-brake side.

That's pretty easy and the keyholes help you get the spokes in - though they fall out just as easily when they have no tension on. Once again Devon Rim provided excellent parts that go together easily.

This is the first time I have assembled an Ariel wheel of this type and I'm surprised to find the spoke heads are not sitting happily in the brake drum. Wheels of this vintage have the spoke heads on the outside of the brake drum, hidden by a trim piece on the brake plate. Later wheels have spokes alternately inside and outside the flange.

The spoke heads settle down quite well as the spoke tension is increased assisted by a small dead weight hammer. 

Onto the rear and again something a little unusual - as has been mentioned before in the blog all the spoke heads on the brakes side at the rear go in from inside the brake drum and are covered with a little protective ring retained with three screws. Once again the wheel goes together very easily. 

These are Devon's Valtru rims and I've asked for them to be powder coated gloss black. Eventually the spokes and nipples will be painted as well.

Here's the non-brake side coming together:

I've decided to do the truing operation in the bike as I will be able to accurately centre the rim between the forks.

It's difficult to get the runout fixed by eye. An option would be to rig up some way of mounting a dial test indicator, but you would have to do that for both the axial and radial runout. I came up with this simple solution using two Tufnol sprung loaded needles:

Realising that there was no necessity to measure axial run out in two places I modified the design so that the rig would display axial and radial run out at the same time.