Tuesday, October 02, 2007

Preparing the wheels


3mm wheelset
Originally uploaded by Phil_Parker.
I’ve never got on with the 3mm Society Wheels. They look very nice, have integral crank pins and self-gauging axles. When I first bought a set I was well chuffed with them and expected good things.

Since then however, I have discovered a problem. The axle ends are under size by a very tiny amount. This means that the wheels don’t grip them as well as they should giving the wheelsets a tendency to lose their quartering.

I’ve tried many things to get around this. Loctite never seems to work for me. Cutting a slot across the end of the axle and then pushing a bit of wire into this and the face of the wheel with a soldering iron did the job but doesn’t look nice.

Some people can drill in through the hub into the axle and push a bit of retaining wire in to lock things, but not me. All I do is break drills – effective but pricey. Others replace the axle with 2mm rod or bore the wheels out to 3/32nd. Neither appeals much to me as a method.

So my latest effort involved slow set Araldite. Fortunately I can set the axle up with the quartering jig with it out of the frames. That’s the benefit of a flexi chassis. I’ll let you know if it works.

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