Hi, folks. I have a wheelbuilding question concerning a 36 spoke rear wheel I'm building up using an
Ultegra rear, Torelli Master rim, and
14/15/14 gauge DT spokes laced 3x. The first time I tried to build up this wheel, the bike shop sold
me too-short spokes. I caught that only after I'd laced it up once and began trying to tension
it. So I unlaced it, took the spokes back, and got some new ones in the right length. I
decided, however, to try to recycle some of the nipples from the first build. That build
seemed to go OK, but some spoke tension imbalances came to the fore when I took the wheel out
for its first ride, and after trying to correct those piecemeal, I decided to detension the
wheel and start the tensioning and truing process over again. I reread the relevant parts of
Jobst's book, and began working carefully and deliberately.
Here's my problem: I've had about four of the recycled nipples round off and / or collapse so far.
Every time I remove a failed nipple and replace it with a good one, the wheel goes radically out of
true, and each time I've retrued and retensioned the wheel, another one or two fail. So my
questions:
15) Should I cut my losses and detension the wheel yet again, the better to go around the wheel
systematically replacing all the nipples with new ones? Or should I just replace them on the
drive side (since those are the ones that are failing)?
16) If I do only replace the drive-side nipples, can I get away with just detensioning the
drive-side spokes, or should I take all the spokes down?
17) Is my recurring problem a sign that I'm trying to put too much tension on the spokes? I've been
stress-relieving after each round of tensioning and truing, and as far as I can tell, I'm
nowhere close to overloading the rim.
Thanks for any help you can give,
Trent