Building a 40 hole 4 cross wheel

After waiting for almost 4 weeks for a bike shop to rebuild our wheel I decided, in a fit of frustration, to do it myself.

Sooooo...... I've never built a wheel before. After much internet research I decided I needed a truing stand, DTSwissAlpine III triple butted spokes (on recommendation from Steff at Onitsports), a Mavic A 719 rim and i decided to get a Parktool tensiometer to make it seem less like guess work.

I used a combination of wisdom from the Immortal Sheldon Brown and a very easy to follow guide by Steve Litt which can be found HERE. Unfortunatly both articles predominately deal with more normal 36 hole 3 cross wheels.

All of the stuff arrived from Germany from Starbike in 3 working days! Nearly an month wasted when I could have been building our wheel!

I followed the lacing guide, substituting 4 cross steps where appropriate. It was actually quite enjoyable, up until the point where I realised I had boxed the valve incorrectly and had to start over!

After I relaced the wheel (and a good nights sleep) I got it up on the truing stand. The truing stand is a a Tacx Exact Stand 'cos it was cheap. Its OK for what I've done with it but I can definitely recommend spending a little more on a stand if your budget allows.

Correctly boxed valve

After getting the initial tension in the spokes I used my super -duper-home-made dishing tool to get the dish right and the continued to pile on the tension untill I got up to 120kgf drive side.

The rim must be pretty round because the tension were almost identical all the way round. The rim has some internal rattling which is probably some loose filler. Its annoying on such an expensive rim and is inline with other peoples concerns about the quality of Mavic rims. I don't have the luxury of doing anything about it now but I have no doubt it will be a strong rim.

When I mounted the tire and inflated it the spoke tension dropped about 20kgf which put the non-drive side a little low. But I know the manufacturers quote a tension range without the tire but I decided to take the driveside tension up to 130kgf (without tyre).

Its all fitted now and on and hopefully lasts us many miles to come!