Respoking Rear tire (2010)

Hi Dave,

I'd trust Mike's advice; Walridge laces wheels for a living. That said, the parts explosion for drum-brake Commandos (e.g., Old Brits) call out different part numbers for inside and outside spokes. Since the spokes are short, my guess is that the head angle is indeed different for inside and outside spokes, although I only have personal knowledge concerning my Mk3. My comment was really directed at the Mk3 problem, where the hobbyist technician (me, in this case) must discern between two types of nearly identical spokes. When I did my rear wheel last spring, after a few false starts, the right spoke in the right hole always fit well, and no bending was needed. The occasional spoke that looked like it could use some force always turned out to have the wrong head angle. It was an enjoyable 3 hour, 2 beer job.

Yes, come to think of it, there were 2 sets of spokes, and I think they were a bit different in length, inner and outer I think. I just used the old ones as a gauge to go by. The front wheel went together like ninety, but the rear one I had to re-do because of bending the spoke heads. The funniest thing was though, I re-spoked the front one first time backwards, that is I had the spokes going in different directions than original, but it worked just fine, but I re-did it to make it right. I think I was going off a web site that was doing a ducatti and their spoke layout was different.

Dave
69S

Here is the best video out there for the truing of the rear wheel. Yes there are 3 sets of spokes required. Even though video details a Triumph T140, it's the same for Norton MKIII.