Walms wrote:
Wow, impressive work, I’d love to hear more about how you went about drilling those rims!
Very carefully.
Its the third rim i have drilled now.
I just used my 3D imagination. Center popped them on the outside and drilled them with a battery drill, with the rim on the floor between my legs. I used a dial gauge mag base with a pen in it on a flat surface too mark two even lines around in the dimples.
But had to guess where on that line in the dimple to drill.
But center popping them in the right place is important and even more important is the angle they get drilled at, because the Ali is about 4-5mm thick and if you drill the wrong angle it stresses/bends the spoke when you tighten them.
Same for the position of the hole in the dimple. if you drill in the wrong place the nipple head will sit on one side of the head and bend the spoke. But you can correct both problems by obviously opening up the hole slightly with the drill. Or if the hole is in slightly the wrong place, you can use i rotary burr and burr the dimple a bit so the nipple head contacts the ali evenly. With the ali being so thick, it doesnt matter if you remove 1/2 a mm.
The kawasaki hubs were quite easy compared to the conical hub because kawasaki hub has only two angles whereas the conical has four angles.
This wheel went quite well and only took me about two days (10 beers) to drill, spoke and true.