It was finally time to upgrade the rims for the 74' Raleigh Sports 3-Speed. Steel wheels are great unless you are picky about luxuries such as stopping. The easy way to do this would be just to buy a decent set of assembled wheels, spokes, and hubs. I faced two problems with this. I wanted to keep the original 3-Speed hub and the front hub. I didn't want to pay $200+ either. Solution: Just buy new alloy rims and build the wheels myself.
Here is the old steel rim. Doesn't look to shabby but, one it's not round, and two it doesn't stop when the brakes are applied. Which makes it kind of dodgy to ride on, especially when it rains.
This is how they looked on the inside. Pretty crusty.
When it comes to lacing the spokes check out Sheldon Brown's article on it first. I tried to figure it out on my own and got close a couple of times. Close doesn't quite cut it though and after reading this, I was able to finish them easily.
Here it is all finished and mounted back on the bike. This also gave me a chance to polish the hubs and spokes. Almost looks like new. This is an intimidating task. Keep in mind however I had no idea what I was doing, and found it fairly easy.
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