Crahift
£18 to true, £130 to build
Wheel building and truing
Wheels trued while you wait, or built by hand from a rim, hub and spokes you choose. This is the part of the job we are slowest and fussiest about, and we make no apology for it.
What is included
Truing: wheel off the bike and into the stand, not trued in the frame- Truing: lateral and radial true, both corrected together
- Truing: spoke tension read with a meter and balanced across the wheel
- Truing: dish checked and corrected so the wheel sits centred in the frame
- Truing: loose, damaged or previously replaced spokes flagged to you
- Building: a conversation about what the wheel is for and how much it should weigh
- Building: rim, hub and spoke choice explained with the trade offs, then left to you
- Building: spoke length calculated from your measured components, never from a chart
- Building: laced, tensioned and stress relieved in stages over a day
- Building: final dish, true and tension recorded and given to you
- Building: rim tape fitted, and a free re true at six weeks once it has settled
What is not included
None of this is hidden. If your bike needs any of it, we will tell you and price it before we touch anything.
Components, rims, hubs, spokes and nipples are charged at cost- Tubeless setup, which is £12 a wheel including tape, valve and sealant
- Hub servicing or freehub body replacement, quoted separately
- Rebuilding a rim that is cracked or worn through at the brake track, we will show you the wear rather than take your money
- Any warranty against pothole, kerb or crash damage, which is not a build fault
- Straightening a wheel that has been ridden flat until the rim folded
Turnaround
Truing is same day, and often while you wait if you can give us half an hour.
A build is three to five days. That is not us being slow, it is that a wheel needs to be tensioned, left, and brought up again. A wheel built in one sitting goes out of true in a fortnight.
Why hand built is worth it
A machine built wheel is tensioned once, quickly, to an average. A hand built one is brought up in stages with the tension read at every spoke. The difference is not how it rides on day one, it is whether it still runs true after a winter of potholes.
Wheels we have built
The wheels on the touring bike were the most over engineered set we have made, and they came back from six weeks away still true. The cargo bike wheels were the hardest, because the loads are enormous and the front wheel is small. The budget gravel build is the honest counterexample, where we talked the owner out of custom wheels and into good stock ones.
The other services
