Half dead bird! Swallow ptarmigan (re model...page 7 on)

[Tootyred]

Starting with the wheels, ive had a bit of luck. A forum member kindly sold me some of the lesser seen mavic m281 rims...basically nos too!

The bonus was they were laced rather oddly to some xt m752 hubs.....rather a time slip, but would have made great touring wheels im sure.

The hubs and rims have now parted company ( hubs are to go onto my touring bike when i build the A719 rims onto them) and ready to go.

Whist you see lots of mavic m231 and a fair few m261, m281 are not so often seen ( the first 2 numbers is the rim width). M281 are slightly different internal construction with stronger eyelets too. They are also disproportionately heavier as a result. Theres about 40g between the other two, but you add another 80g on the m281. Not that weight is really an issue here!

Certainly more substantial!

 

[Tootyred]

Having built the front wheel (all spokes needed in boxes gladly).....I've turned to the rear hub....its uniglide....

I will just pause there.....

I hadn't really considered that and Uniglide gives me acid type flashbacks to my lbs days.....screaming coming from the rear, missing skin, wailing and cursing.....and that was just the customers! .

Whilst it was a move on from freewheels and gave us smaller cogs all round, its still a pita to deal with.....plus cassettes are hard to find now in good condition / ratios......hummmmmmm.....not sure im quite ready to go there again.

Those of you with more modern bikes or young enough to have never had uniglide.......how lucky you are......"oh the youth of today with their fancy cassette tools.....in my day we just had 2 homemade chain whips.....but we were greatful".

So its hub conversion time. Out with the uniglide in with the hyperglide!

Pretty straightforward...had to swap a few washers over and moved the freehub a tad closer to the frame than standard to improve the wheel tension % L to R. I ended up using m732 nuts on the ends as the m730 were too thick to make up the spacing i needed.

Hubs were polished when i put them away btw, so no nos has harmed and ive bagged and labelled the original parts incase someone wants yo go back the the dark side.

 

[Tootyred]

This is good reading if your interested in the difference......

https://www.sheldonbrown.com/k7.html?utm_content=cmp-true

 

[Tootyred]

Heres 2 pictires of m732 ( top) and m730 ( bottom) together...... i know they can look the same but they are different.....hub body ends are shaped differently and the grease ports are different too. Plus, the whole assembly is spaced differently, with different much wider one piece nuts ( changed here).

Plus the flange round the cassette end is deeper on the earlier hubs, so you need to choose your donor freehub to cope....or your cassette nuts will hit the body.....not a problem with looses uniglide cogs....

 

[Tootyred]

Wheels now built. But found some interesting things.

The old wheels had a professional wheel builders decal on the rim, but in really starting to doubt that the hub / rim combo was from them as there was a few issues.

Firstly the rear wheel spokes were way too long, to the point of having bottomed out on quite a few. The spokes were also pretty loose.

Then there was the goop in the eyelets around the nipples. Whatever it was was rock solid....im wondering if it was huge dollops of thread lock? Possibly to fix the spokes coming loose, due to them not being tight enough....i will never know. But it came out with a wire brush head on a dremmel.

Photos...goop, grinding mess, no goop!

 

[Tootyred]

Other than above, they went together pretty well. Amazing how these old thick rims pretty much build themselves, whith very little truing needed......provided you get the spokes in equally.

So here they are.

Mavic m281cd with dt swiss double butted spokes and sapim brass plate nipples.

Interestingly having looked up the official weight, there are well off!

Mavic list
m231 410g
M261 460g
M281 550g

But in reality ive never had a m231 that light, normally 420g......m261 is about right....but these m281 are 590g!

Anyway, thats the first bit done.

But i do need to swap those innertubes!

 

[27motorhead]

@Tootyred another very informative post! Wheels look great. Hadn't really paid any attention to 281s. Had heard of them, but didn't realise they were completed different in construction. I want to look up the cross section now vs. 231s & 261s. I always remember M7s were bomb proof, but heavy as, just like those 281s!

Some wheel builders would use varnish or linseed oil as threadlock as the drying time was plenty long enough to allow wheel to be built up with the inevitable interruptions of customers & working on other bikes. Plus it's cheap (especially vs. threadlock) and works!

At least sorting out your inner tubes will allow you to align the tyre logos up properly!

 

[Tootyred]

At least sorting out your inner tubes will allow you to align the tyre logos up properly

Exactly.

It could have been varnish as threadlock....about all it was doing was locking the nipples into the holes !

As i said. I think the rims were originally built onto different hubs, then swapped. Seems an odd mix otherwise, and i cant believe professionals would bottom out spokes and have them that much too long.....well i would like to belive that .

 

[Tsundere]

Just seen this thread for the first time, what a beautiful bike, so clean, subtle and understated but the quality shines through.

 

[Tootyred]

Cheers @Tsundere . Yes. Its a lovely bike to ride, too a bit of getting the hang of as its older style geometry....but a step on from my saracen conquest. Amazing really how fast things were changing.....considering by 89 it was all the norba geometry that be ame so normal.

Really an amazing 5 year period.....