Shiny Things

The first parts to be really revived on the Beast are the wheels.

Whilst I have been whacking away at gummed up nuts and bolts, or attacking rust with various toxic chemicals, the wheels have been in the care of Star Cycles here in Oz. They managed to find a set of NOS Wolber Superchampionship rims in their warehouse. They'd obviously been there a while as they had a hand written tag on them, but were mostly still in their original wrapper.

The Beasts original hubs were in good if shabby order, so the plan was very quickly hatched to have those laced into these lovely rims. So far as I have been able to learn, they were made by Wolber, a tyre company with competition use in mind, tying in nicely with the plan forming at the back of my mind to build up something that would pass for an old school racer.

The rims responded beautifully to a polish and buff using my new favourite product, the aforementioned Mothers alloy and chrome polish. The rims and the rusty, buckled old wheels then went off to the shop.

We waited

Waited a little more

Then this picture lobbed in my inbox.

That was quickly followed by this one

I had visions of having to fumble about with a rag between the shiny new stainless steel spokes to clean up the hubs, but the boys at the shop had put them on their buffer for ten minutes or so, and the results were evident. So, now the Beast has two lovely handbuilt wheels, not telling you what the price was, but its good! 

Then we got to decision time, the Beast rolls on 27 inch wheels, a bit unsual in the modern world, but tyres are still available. My decision was between retro gumwalls or all black, 1, 1 1/4 or 1 1/2 inch width. 

The guys at the shop mounted up one 1 inch and one 1 and a 1/4 inch gumwall (oh yeah, we quickly got down to gumwalls after a quick play on google images )

"I reckon the 1 inch is the way to go" I said

"Cool, that's what we thought" they said

Quick switch of a tyre and we ended up with this.

Cue the wukka wukka guitar!

Original Shimano front and Normandy quick release hubs, with NOS Wolber Rims, gumwall 27 by 1 inch tyres, stainless steel spokes and new skewers.