(03-30-2020, 10:35 AM)JADANFORTH Wrote: (03-29-2020, 12:25 PM)Painkiller Wrote: When you say match, If you do not know what the rims were and even if you did, they could have been replaced also. With that said. To me a match would be more to the hubs than the rim itself. It mentions "Exage" and "XT". This should be your baseline to "Match". Look for any good used Shimano Exage hub or better wheelset. That will accept the proper number of speeds of which I hope you know. Rear spacing
should also match.
Matching the hubs/wheelsets makes a lot of sense. It looks like I have a couple options:
1) I can see some Shimano Exage wheelsets on ebay that would be an easy fix, but they land in the $ 100-150 range. This would definitely get this bike on the road the fastest.
2) I can see some Shimano Exage hub sets online that are fairly affordable. If I take this route and really take my time to learn about rebuilding. But... This might get me in over my head
3) I can stop by that bike yard and see what I find.
I have a primary bike that is operational so I'm in no rush... even though the ease of option 1 sounds alluring. I would like to start with option 3, but with our city's current "stay at home order" I think I will go ahead and give option 2 a shot. The prospect of rebuilding is both intimidating and exciting for me... I'm eager to learn but I've heard this can get pretty complicated.
I'm also not 100% sure about the number of speeds I had. The wheels were actually snagged a couple years back and I'm only now revisiting the plans to fix it. I've found images of of other Nishiki Performance Equipe bikes that appear from the same (or nearly the same) year and I believe it was a 12 speed bike. Do you think that is a reliable source of information? or did some years offer multiple speeds? I suppose if I'm rebuilding I could replace the gearset entirely... I'm just not sure I will succeed...
With all that said, does anyone have a resource/guide/tutorial for how to get started rebuilding from the wheelset / gearset from the hubs up?
Hi Jonathan,
Welcome to the club. I generally rebuild vintage '60s-'80s Italian/European bikes, but I have very recently started working on some Japanese bike projects. I know many of their bikes in the '80s utilized Araya brand rims (from race bikes to recreational, my '87 has them as OE). I am still not that familiar with models through the years. Do you know what year your bike is; my guess is early '90s, maybe very late '80s. Just so happens I located a Nishiki catalog from '87 and was able to find all the OE specs I needed to make my ride original (back to about 80% original now). I would think that you were right about it being a six speed (my '87 is), but you could probably fit a seven speed freewheel, freehub/cassette into the rear. I agree with Painkiller as far as sourcing something that is the same or similar to what you have since the groupset on it was probably an "Exage/XT" group; not sure what year(s) they started those groups. I would go to "Velobase.com" to see if there is a catalog for that bike model and to ID your existing parts for the year(s) of manufacture. As far as I know, most Shimano parts have a date code (all mine do from the '70s-'90s) as to the year of manufacture; although they could have been installed as OE on a later model year bike (my '87 Nishiki has '86 parts which were made for and first appeared in the '87 Shimano catalog). I know the "Bulgier" site does not have any Nishiki stuff as I've already checked for my ride. General Note to anyone reading: If you are not in a rush to build (you have a rider now, recovering from injury/illness, QUARANTINED, etc.), I would monitor the ebay site for a few weeks (something to do while quarantined!); you may find complete and original wheels/parts tomorrow at half the price and in better condition. Also try craigslist, and some of the other marketing sites, as you never know what you'll find and it is often below ebay (asking) prices and also more open to price negotiations. I have several sellers (domestic and international) on ebay that I use, but I buy from them directly and not through ebay. I get better pricing due to the seller not having to account for ebay fees and often able to give better shipping cost since the ebay "police" are not there to force them to expedite shipping and provide express shipping just to get positive buyer feedback; not to mention bulk purchase discounts. Even if you try ebay, always contact the seller and toss them an offer even on items up for bidding; I find that about 75% of the time they will either accept my offer or give me a discount from their asking price. One ebay seller I've got a very good rapport with is "Dicknosebikes" (might be different spelling, I deal with Richard) who is closing/closed his shop and is trying to move out of the building without having to move all his stock at the same time. If you review his listing and find something that you like contact him. He's been great not just as a seller of parts, but an experienced mechanic. He should give you about 10% off if you make an offer; I get more $ off due to our history and eschewing ebay. He has more parts than what are shown in his listings, so tell him what you're looking for and he'll do some digging. I will say that he's gotten rid a lot of the best stuff, but that means the rest is more negotiable. I'm sure I saw some Araya rims listed, but they may have been ATB's/MTB's. If you want, I can contact him and see if it is okay to provide to you his personal email; I'm believe it will be okay, but I need to be respectful and ask first. It might be listed on his ebay page (if so use it first before contacting him thru ebay), ebay doesn't like their sellers to provide that info which takes them out of the "loop". Quick note: he just got back/ is getting back from vacation so there may be a delay if you contact him.
As far as hub rebuilding, I am definitely not as familiar with Japanese components as I am with European (I'm still figuring out Shimano stuff). I would assume that rebuilding/servicing the hubs would be similar and is not that difficult with the proper tools. As far as building a wheel, I would leave that advice to be given by the more experienced at it on this site since I have only rebuilt a couple '50s steel rimmed wheels, although I generally true my racing wheels myself at the co-op. I am about to "tear down", I hate to say it, a perfectly good '90s Mavic Open Pro wheelset w/Camp record hubs just to install rims which match my frame color, and are branded the same as the frame; also keeps my complete Record group on the bike intact since I don't have a spare set of like hubs to build with the new rims. They'll be my first race set that I've done myself; always learning! It's embarrassing to say that I've worked on my own bikes and built bikes for others for nearly 40 years, but I've always seemed to unintentionally avoid building wheels being that the installed wheels were either good with just servicing and/or I found complete wheelsets available. Hope I've helped some; sorry for the rambling.
Take care,
Jesper
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