I was going to try to sell my custom KH29 with Oracle hub and disc brakes. But I realized that it’s a great uni for commutes and road rides of less than 2 miles or so, which I often do, either with my kids or when getting around my work campus.
The standard KH rim is too big for a tire like a Big Apple and I don’t want a skinny 700cc.
I was thinking of trying to build the wheel myself. So, what rim and parts would I need for using a tire like a BA without any fear of the tire popping off? Are there still KH xcountry rims still available and are they skinny enough for a BA?
Velocity Dyad 23c rim. Velocity make some fantastic rims, and the Dyad is really good. BA is a good tire, Schwalbe Marathon Supreme is better and mine has puncture protection.
I am also considering a geared hub at some point. How much weight does that add?
Obviously in this case, I’d use a KH hub and spirit cranks.
Would this make my 36er a bit redundant?
Does anybody else have this kind of setup? A skinnier 29er with geared hub, and has found they use this more than the 36 and maybe even got rid of it? I do love my 36, but am tempted by the versatility of a geared hub…
I was in a similar situation, and ended up building a Rhyno Lite. I have a Rubena tire on it that is very similar to the Big Apple I used to have. It is really nice on the Rhyno Lite. I don’t know if I would want to go narrower than the RL with the BA. The tire already balloons out a bit. I would be afraid that it would be squirmy without a lot of pressure. I like a little cushion from the tire if possible.
If you want the 38mm KH rim Darren Bedford has some of them.
I have a 29x2.3", KH rim Schlumpf (named TD Jr.), and a 29x2.0", with a narrow(ish) bike rim and fixed hub (named Zippy), 110mm cranks. I really like Zippy for commute rides, it’s great up to about three miles, and I feel fine riding it without protective gear, or in my Keens. TD Jr., I use for easy MUni, mixed road and dirt, or long-distance rides.
The thing about the Schlumpf is that it makes the whole setup more complicated. You have to worry about shifting, so the shoes you’re wearing matter. The speeds are higher and the likelihood of falling is greater (due to shift problems), so I almost never ride TD Jr. without gloves and helmet (and if I do, I take it easy). The experience of riding it is more intense; you have to pay attention on a Schlumpf.
I don’t think a geared 29 would necessarily keep you from riding an ungeared 36. The experience of riding an ungeared 36 is closer to the ungeared 29 than it is to the Schlumpf; you can relax a little more up there, though it’s not as easy to control in traffic.
It’s a 28x2 V99 City Hopper. So far so good. I like the ride and I haven’t had any flats yet. We’ll see how it wears over the long haul. My Big Apple had the flat protection, and I had a ridiculous number of flats with it.
So for a 29 road tire, that’s not too skinny, what’s the best choice for the diad in terms of the weight vs. robustness compromise? Like I said, while I’m ditching the mountain tire, I’d like to keep the weight down, but I don’t want flats (obviously), and I think I want to about 2" or maybe 1.75" if they have that size…
I personally haven’t liked 1.75" or narrower tires when I’ve used them. They get quite twitchy. I’m currently running the 2.0" Schwalbe Marathon Supreme, which I’m not sure they make anymore (but they have a bunch like it). I like the Big Apple or Big Ben in that size. Pretty much anything with a rounded profile should be nice. Avoid anything where the side knobs give a squarish profile.
With the Dyad I don’t think I would use a tire wider than 40c, or 1.5". As it gets narrower you also need to raise the pressure to support the same weight. To me it is an endless spiral of compromise. 2" is a good road width as long as the profile is right. I agree with tom that a nice rounded profile is the key. That’s the problem with the larger BA, the profile is more peaked in the middle. It makes it track poorly on cambered surfaces.
First:
Brake lever mount is a separate part. To the best of my knowledge there aren’t any saddles that come with them.
Second:
Building wheels is fun, and the only parts you could hurt without having done it before would be the nipples, which are pretty cheap if the need arises. So I wouldn’t shy away from it for that reason.
Third:
I agree the 29er seems like an ideal size. With short cranks it is surprisingly fast (and it’s amazing how much it feels like a bigger wheel when it’s got really short cranks).
Fourth:
The only special tool you need is a nipple grip (spoke wrench).
It is really handy to have a nipple driver to set the nipples at exactly the same spot on the spokes. It makes tensioning much easier. You can make a nipple driver from an old flat head screwdriver, or even a drill bit. Just file the sides down until there is a 3mm long pin in the middle.
You can use your uni frame with a couple of cable ties as a truing stand, and you can gauge the dish with a ruler by matching the distance from the rim to the inside of the fork blade on each side. An inside caliper might even work better.
I really enjoy building wheels, and I’m lucky enough to have a few customers a year who want custom wheelsets (bike, so two at at time). As a result I have some really nice tools, but I’ve built a wheel next to a campfire on a cross country tour with only a nipple grip. So, it is the knowledge that is the key.
Does Sheldon Brown have good instructions for building an inside mounted disc? I know nothing about wheel building, but doesn’t the wheel have to be dished or something?
All wheels need to be dished. A correctly dished wheel is one that has its rim centered between the lock nuts, or bearings in the case of uni’s. Disc hubs will have asymmetric dishing meaning that the spoke bracing angle is different on each side of the wheel. The lacing doesn’t change based on the symmetry of the dish, but you will probably have shorter spokes on the disc side. Also, the tension will be probably be slightly higher on the disc side.
If you use a good spoke calculator, and keep the correct spokes on the correct side you should have no problem building with Sheldon’s tutorial.
A truing stand isn’t necessary. I have one, and use it for building wheels. If I didn’t have one I wouldn’t buy one just to build a wheel. A bike repair stand can be nice for clamping the uni frame while you use it as a stand. Alternately you could use a vice to hold the uni frame.
There are some very popular truing stands out there that I don’t like for building wheels. So while a good stand for building wheels works great for truing them, it doesn’t necessarily go the other way.
Can someone point me to a video or text tutorial that they have used or pre-screened and they can attest is decent? Esp, for building a wheel with a disc?
This looks like a good tutorial. It’s not the way I build wheels, but it seems like a logical way to teach it. I would add that you should lube the spoke threads, and the nipple seats in the rim. Otherwise it looks good.
As for the disc. It’s not a big deal, and it doesn’t change the way you build the wheel. The offset of the dish isn’t nearly as much as you need for a rear wheel on a derailleur bike, and that’s not a big deal either.
Cool, I think I’ll try it myself. Worse comes to worse, I can always bring it to my LBS for help.
In terms of tires I might want something that’s a little bouncy for hopping up curbs and such. Does that affect the tire choice, or just the air pressure?
Too bad you aren’t closer. I’d love to help you out if you needed it.
Tire build has a lot to do with how it handles a range of pressure. As long as you have it on a wide enough rim you can go with lower pressure, but tires with more substantial sidewalls support the tire better at lower pressures. This can mean that you can compress the tire for more bounce, or lean deeper into a turn without rolling the tire. So tires with soft, thin sidewalls usually need higher pressure to avoid those problems.
In this way good uni tires are different from good bike tires. For bikes a lighter more supple casing gives the tire a more lively feel that is welcome. heavier/stiffer sidewalls lead to a dead tire feel on a bike. So good tires are relative to the use.
All you need to do is detention the old wheel, zip tie the new rim to the old rim in the same position as the old rim, then start swapping spokes. This is how a bike shop would do it. I just relaced a couple bike wheels, it’s not hard to lace a wheel, the hard part is truing, avoiding out of round wheels, getting the tension even, etc…
I think it’s fun building a wheel, so I’d suggest taking your existing wheel apart, get a good inexpensive mtb rim like a WTB or Sun, then relace the wheel. It is a dished wheel, but that requires nothing special, just make sure you have the correct spokes for each side, don’t mix then as they are different lengths. Get new nips for sure, and use your frame to true it.
Sheldon Brown has a nice tutorial, follow his directions, see if you can come to understand the mechanics behind wheel lacing, this will help you learn how to fix problems with lacing, being out of round, and it will help with learning to true.
Don’t be afraid of messing anything up, worse case is you have to start over. The rim and spokes can handle many lacings, you won’t damage the rim if you lace it wrong or get it out of round. Nips are cheap and easy to replace.
I made my son relace a wheel and do some basic truing, he was 15-16 at the time and had no bike repair experience. It’s very simple, the process is very straightforward, just follow the directions…
