Acetone seems to have gotten ‘most’ of the anti-sieze spots off. We’re running low on nail polish remover, so I was using it sparingly, but I’m fairly happy with it now.
Most of the tensioning/truing is done. Hub is no longer flopping around in my rim, and the tension is really close to where it needs to be. Right now, my true is spot on. Almost zero wobble. I need to go through and stress relieve all my spokes again though, as well as free up any spoke torsion (I forgot to backtwist while I was truing ). I feel like the overall tension is ‘fairly’ even as well. It can always be better though.
I also haven’t even looked at vertical truing yet, but I’m not super worried…
Tension is my biggest concern thus far. The long spokes make it very hard to judge where you’re at, and where you need to be.
I also forgot to mention how pleasantly suprised I was to open my spokes up and find they were black. I was planning on boring old stainless, but now I have some sick looking black spokes and silver nips.
Wheel is done. Got it as true as I feel like I can get it, and I don’t really want to tighten it any more for fear of over tensioning. It seems to be about where I remember it being before I ripped it apart…
Tomorrow (or Saturday), I’ll begin with my final tubeless attempt. Gorilla tape, and weather stripping as a last resort. If I can’t make that consistently work, it’s back to tubes. I have to be able to get multiple dry inflations with both beads unseated to convince myself it’ll work. I’m not playing the ‘let’s seat one bead at a time’ game.
So far, wheel building doesn’t seem to be ‘too’ hard, just time consuming. Tensioning is nerve wracking, and I still worry I don’t have enough tension in my wheel, but I’m going the mind set of ‘less is more’ on 36er wheels. Please correct me if I’m wrong.
There’s a certain sense of satisfaction building a wheel yourself. Kinda cool. But if I go to get on and it collapses, I’ll probably cry.
I may have missed it, but I’m curious as to your motivation for building a coasting 36er. Is it mostly just for the challenge and the curiosity of seeing if you can ride it? It would seem that if you have gone through all the time, effort and expense to build it, that you would hope it would become a “normal” mode of 36er riding, and not something you’d try a few times, give up, and stick it in the garage, collecting dust.
I have no intentions of letting this baby collect dust.
Have you seen Waalrus’s threads on his coasting Muni? He’s proven to me that this is most definitely a doable endeavor, and I truly anticipate being able to ride this much like I would a normal 36er.
There’s been a lot of speculation on whether or not a 36er would be ‘easier’ to freewheel on; I want to find out.
I feel that given enough time and effort, a coasting 36er would be completely insane on down hills.
Plus there’s enough doubt that it can really be done to make me want to try.
If it proves to be feasible (and I believe it will be), I’m going to get a new frame as well to better fit my hub.
Just had an idea, it isn’t going to help now, but in case anyone else is rebuilding a wheel and unsure of spoke tension it might come in handy. Take a sound recording of you plucking the spokes before tear down. That way you could tell how close you are to the original when you put it back together.
Killian, please please please video your first attempt and post it.
That would work if you used the same spokes as the previous build, or were confident they were the same diameter and material. (and used the same diameter hub and wheel) A thicker diameter spoke will come up to tension faster than a thinner one, and will sound a lower note. I think a tension meter is probably the only reliable guage. (Although years of experience would probably be a good substitute.)
I will do my best to get video. My camera takes video, but I’ll need to figure out how to post it.
For now though, I still need to get my wheel set up for tubeless, and do a final run through to make sure everything is in order before I put cranks on and throw it in the frame.
I will also need to do some handle bar configuring, since I don’t wanna turn my newly purchased aero bars into hamburger.
This project should give the unicycling community important new information which we can use to make future decisions. There’s always the chance that something like this simply remains a novelty but even if that’s the case we can still learn from it. I haven’t ridden a 36" freewheel unicycle but I have ridden 20" and 26" freewheel unicycles and a 36" fixed wheel unicycle. I believe the 36" freewheel will be more stable at higher speeds, will roll over obstacles more easily, and there’s a good chance it will be easier to coast than smaller wheels. However, it will also be more prone to UPDs. I think there will also be an opportunity to pedal more on the 36" than smaller wheels. On a 26" even slight pedaling on flat ground quickly gets up to speeds where you no longer need to pedal. I wonder if the 36" will be more like pedaling a small wheel up a slight incline which is relatively easy.
One reason I haven’t built a 36" freewheel yet is I don’t have a great place to practice it. I wouldn’t want to start out on the street. A low usage road or bike path would be great but that’s not available to me. I’m also planning on building a 3.8x fixed gear 20" freewheel unicycle around December. That may have some of the projected benefits of a big wheel (in this case a virtual 76" wheel).
I’m not sure how useful it would be for a 36" freewheel unicycle but I threw together a quick tutorial video from footage I shot on 6/23/2013. I already was able to ride fairly well but the first half of the video I’m doing switch stance for extra authenticity.
Tried tubeless conversion again today, and no dice.
Guess it’ll be a tubed 36er freewheel.
I bumped the wheel into a door going out and had to do some yanking on it to get the tire on and off, so now I think I’ll go back and check for true again. I’m probably anal, but I always worry about banging my rims on stuff… :o
Tonight is game night. Got the frame on, a seat in, and tire inflated. I’ll get some video and see if I can upload it.
For now I’ve left the brake off. I know, I know, it’s essential, yadda-yadda, relax. I’ll add it later once I get the mounting figured out (of the brake lever). Or maybe I’ll decide I don’t need it.
This is without a doubt possible. I’m able to freemount fairly easily, and riding isn’t a problem at all. I can coast short distances, and they just keep getting longer. With a brake, I don’t think you could stop me. The hardest part, is that in my head I can do it, and I just need to apply that to my feet. It’s almost refreshing learning something new like this though. Harkens back to 22 months ago when I first learned to uni.
I cannot emphasize enough, this is doable.
I got some vids from my ~1 1/2 hr practice session, I’ll post as soon as Youtube decides to get over it’s heart attack and upload my videos.
Waalrus, I’d like to shake your hand some day. I really think this could be the future.
Of course, I’ve only been going at it for an hour and a half. I may plateau and never get any better; but I really have a hard time imagining that you’d go anywhere but up.
Also, anyone have an idea how durable these hubs are? Before I was freemounting, I had mount using chain link and hop the uni to turn it the direction I wanted to go. I wonder if hopping could do any real harm to the hub.
). I feel like the overall tension is ‘fairly’ even as well. It can always be better though.
I know, I know, it’s essential, yadda-yadda, relax. I’ll add it later once I get the mounting figured out (of the brake lever). Or maybe I’ll decide I don’t need it. 
Success!!
