So, I'm not happy with the appearance of my 10 year old oem spokes, although my rims are still mint. I had considered going up to a 60 or 80 spoke rim (oem style).... but I can't seem to find a quality rim at a reasonable cost.... especially considering all I need are new spokes.

Not into bling, superfat spokes, 16" & 21" setups, crazy colors or anything like that.... just want a "new" looking rim again. I cannot justify the cost of 80-spokes, so I thought spending alittle more on some "old diamond" style spokes to reflect more light would be a wise investment, without straying too much from oem, and without being gaudy..... so...... thats what I'm going to do.

I've been watching videos on how to do a wheel re-spoke.... and everyone tears the wheel completely down.

1) Is there any reason why I couldn't (with the wheel off the bike) remove 1 spoke, replace the spoke with a new one.... remove another spoke, then replace it, etc??

2) I have tubeless tires on my bike... I have to assume there are no tubes in there. Is there a difference in the way I would re-spoke it based upon the type of wheel?

3) are there "tubeless" vs. "tube" style spokes, or are they all pretty much the same?

Anything else I should know? I'm actually about 99% ready to call Buchanan and purchase enough spokes to do the whole bike..... like before the end of the weekend.

 

Wheel building is an art, the spokes need to be tensioned correctly, replacing one spoke at a time with render your wheel useless and dangerous, you probably have tubes in your tires regardless of what they have written on the sides as you have spoked wheels, unless the wheels have been lined to make the rims suitable for operating tubeless.

 

You wish it could be that easy,it is not.You need to have a stand and arbor,which you could make yourself.Once you have this tool set your wheel take a reading where the rim runs in relation to the hub with a pointer fixed to the arbor stand near the edge of the rim.Record that dimension,lay the wheel down strip out old spokes install new tension them lightly.Set wheel back in arbor stand start tensioning spokes taking note of where the rim is in relation to hub with measurement you recorded.
All spokes should be tensioned nearly the same or your could warp the rim.Good Luck and have fun

 

Agree.
I would never attempt this without having experience and the correct tools.
Your life depends on it!

 

You have oem spoke wheels, you have tubes. A buddy of mine just had his EGC respoked. It would have been just as expensive to just buy new wheels.

 

Since we are talking about spokes, enybody know of a torque wrench and procedure? Don't trust my ears for the proper, exact, tuning tone. Excuse me for jumping in.

 

If you are doing a full lace of a rim, the hd repair manuals have a really good section on how it's done as for a torque wrench this is what I have http://pitposse.com/potowrkit.html

 

Not that hard. Lace it up per HD manual and get it true as possible then take it to a good dirt bike shop for final trueing. I got mine within a 1/4 inch of true and gave up and took it to a pro. Dirt bike shops do spokes more than any other shops.

 

I laced mine loose and took it and had it trued. Not that hard once you figure out the pattern. I didn't use any tools other than a small wrench and a flat head screwdriver to take the wheel apart.

 

+1 to the last two responses.

yes you have to disassemble the whole wheel to replace the spokes, it will take you a lot more time to attempt to do it one by one. I took a lot of before pics of my wheels then used the service manual to lace them back up. not that hard really, had about 4 hours in the two wheels. Then took them to my local dirtbike shop to have them trued.