Front hubs for a warrior

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Apr 20, 2020
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Florida, USA
What have you used for front wheels specifically the hubs. Did you build your own wheels using aftermarket hubs that were threaded for the brakes, or did you go to a bike shop and just break open the wallet and buy complete rims?
 
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If you use screw on brake adapters the right-hand wheel will be fine (disc on it's left) but the left hand one (disc on it's right) will want to undo as you apply the brakes. I have used this method and glued the adapter plus bolted the disc through the hub. It's a bodge rather than a proper job but it worked fine even under extreme braking. See top picture. You really want hubs that are designed to take a disc direct not the disc screw on adapter. You'll be exceedingly lucky to find any ready made wheels that will do the job. Regular 3/8 axles will not take the strain. 12mm, 14mm, 15mm and 20mm will all be ok. Of them only the 14mm regularly comes in a 20" wheel and almost (rocking horse droppings levels of rare) never with disc brakes so it's a case of lacing a pair of suitable hubs into some 20" wheels. It looks quite daunting doing your own lacing but frankly it's simple though time consuming.



I laced a pair of each of these myself. Both 20" nominally! One with a 20mm axle and one with a 12mm.
 

Twinkle

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We used a pair of DMR 20mm hubs laced to a pair of second hand rims from a bmx . Alternatively 15mm hubs could be used with top hat spacers and 12mm hubs .
If you are lucky enough to find a pair of pressed steel quando disc hubs these can be modified with 14mm bmx spindles and smaller balls.

Regards Emma
 
Joined
Apr 20, 2020
Messages
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If you use screw on brake adapters the right-hand wheel will be fine (disc on it's left) but the left hand one (disc on it's right) will want to undo as you apply the brakes. I have used this method and glued the adapter plus bolted the disc through the hub. It's a bodge rather than a proper job but it worked fine even under extreme braking. See top picture. You really want hubs that are designed to take a disc direct not the disc screw on adapter. You'll be exceedingly lucky to find any ready made wheels that will do the job. Regular 3/8 axles will not take the strain. 12mm, 14mm, 15mm and 20mm will all be ok. Of them only the 14mm regularly comes in a 20" wheel and almost (rocking horse droppings levels of rare) never with disc brakes so it's a case of lacing a pair of suitable hubs into some 20" wheels. It looks quite daunting doing your own lacing but frankly it's simple though time consuming.



I laced a pair of each of these myself. Both 20" nominally! One with a 20mm axle and one with a 12mm.
Thanks for the info Popshot. how do you determine what length spokes to use if you use a different size hub?
 
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There's a few online spoke length calculators.
Others too.
 
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Dave

You don't say where you live ?

making it rather hard to give advice as to what is available and where to get it from ?

All help so far is UK based !
 
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DMR front hubs in the UK are c.£49.99 ea.
They have a 20mm bolt-through axle, but you can put a 20mm tube in there with a 2mm wall thickness and an M16 bolt through that (what I did).
They are plenty strong enough then for single-side mounting.
 
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I got 20mm hubs from China and ad first I wanted to use 20mm tube with 16mm boles and nuts, but I went for 20mm.
I let my wheels be build together by a BMX shop. He didn't ask much and he also delivered, the rims, spokes and the tubes and tires.
 
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Thanks for the replies, I'm in the USA. I'm going to check with a couple of the local bike shops to see what they would charge to build the wheels. From what parts and prices that I have found, I'm thinking it's going to be around $70 USD just for parts, for one wheel (new). I'm not sure if there's better places to buy the parts besides Ebay or Amazon, but I keep searching.
 
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Look ad mountain bikes for the hubs.

Aliexpres has them, but shipping from China is now even slower than it was.
 
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Thanks for the replies, I'm in the USA. I'm going to check with a couple of the local bike shops to see what they would charge to build the wheels. From what parts and prices that I have found, I'm thinking it's going to be around $70 USD just for parts, for one wheel (new). I'm not sure if there's better places to buy the parts besides Ebay or Amazon, but I keep searching.
Ok so I can't send you any !

We have a large Auto/cycle chain called Halfords , I found they had a bike with suitable wheels in their range.

Further investigation showed the wheels available as spares and I was able to order them to the shop ?

good hunting Paul
 
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It's been a while, but I have finally made some progress. I didn't take a lot of pictures of my warrior build, but have a few so far. I'm still waiting on parts for my front wheels. Being from the US, anything shipped from China can take months, and finding things I need from the US is almost impossible or stupidly expensive. I'm not sure if the video attached, but if it did, it was the first test ride once I got it rolling. (Hence the gloves on my hands for brakes?) If you click on the pic of me getting off of the bike, it should play the video. Pic 1 Pic 3 Pic 4 Video 1
 
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