The obvious way to start in the rebuild is from the bottom up. With my newly powder coated frame wrapped back up and awaiting my attention my focus is the wheels. I was nervous coating these, stories of cracks due to the pressures of powder coating in modern bike wheels is not uncommon, how would my 20 year old runners fare? Beautifully.
Obviously I needed to get rubber on but prior to this was to replace the bearings. The ones that James from JHS (0117 986 8844) had yanked out for me were not in bad nick considering 24,000 k’s but I am not scrimping now so decided to replace the lot. I got straight online to Wemoto.com (0845 029 2929) and found everything I needed, it’s a functional site for those that know what they want, place your order, pay the cash and two days later I had a brand new set of bearings front and back in the car with my wheels heading for Moby Mansions.
There is a temptation to grab a screw driver and gently tap these in yourself but it really is not a great idea. With a tapping set that only a man who continually works on bikes would have, all was done in a flash and meant that I could now source the rubber get the tyres balanced as the inners were built.
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Tyre choice is tough when you don’t actually know what you will use the bike for. I therefore went for a set of Avon Storm ST’s – a good hardy all rounder that will help me make up my mind. The 120 / 160 is not the most common of size combos at FB Towers, so I was lucky these were on the shelf. Mark at JHS “handled my wheels with care” protecting the new powder coat against the machine with cloth. Again this was a nervy time as with some powder coating the tyres do not want to bed in.
All the luck has run my way so far, but there is a long way to go.
