How to lace wheels on a 1974 Commando?

£350 sounds reasonable to me, I've just paid someone £408 for stainless steel rims and spokes. Though I guess as with all restorations any savings you can achieve if you're capable of doing things yourself are good.

Just posted this as a price comparison for you. Good luck with your resto!

The Commando disc wheel is a swine that defeats even many professionals. The disc side spokes have to stand almost vertical and I believe that there was a factory service release posted on this forum which detailed thumping the spokes with a hammer to get them that way !

There have been a number of spoking threads on AccessNorton. Unfortunately, this message board doesn't support copy / paste using Firefox.

If you go to the forum and search using 'lacing' it will show plenty of information about the three different disc wheel lacing patterns used by Norton.

Are your original wheels still in one piece ?

Bearing in mind that your supplier will have provided spokes with a particular head angle and that the rims will have been pierced with one or other spoking pattern in mind, it might not be a bad idea to call them and ask.

Emile,

I had my wheel rebuilt last year and the labour was £50, I supplied the SS rim and SS spokes. The local chap (in Somerset UK) was very familiar with this rim, and as Richard points out, is a difficult one to true up because one set of spokes are almost vertical and have to be highly tensioned. In fact, the night after he rebuilt the wheel he found that one spoke had snapped and the free end had marked his ceiling!

This guy is extremely experienced at building wheels and constructing his own racing sidecar space frames, then racing them. So I trust him to have got it right, I couldn't have done this myself.

I suggest you try and get some alternatve quotes for the rebuild.

Phil Ham.

You may wish to have a look here:

http://www.nocnsw.org.au/technical/spoked-wheel-building

Good luck!

Rgds

Steve

Here's the pic of the disc brake wheel service release for final 'fettling'!!..... You will probably find the disc side spokes very tight on completion. They are very beefy spokes though, the correct disc wheel ones that is.