Rear Wheel Reassembly on Triumph
We reassembled the front wheel from scratch, and the rear wheel had to be redone with a new rim on a standard hub for a wider sports tire. The rim and spokes were made to order by LSL. We decided to fit Michelin Pilot Power 160/60 tires — this is the maximum size that can be fitted with the standard offset (wider tires require shifting the hub offset relative to the rim in the direction of the brake disc).
Changing the wheels also requires replacing the shocks and fork. Shock absorbers with a length of 370 mm are ideal for a cafe racer, we chose adjustable YSS — a good option in terms of price / quality ratio. Together with the Kayaba 800 mm fork dropped by 25 mm, the 370 mm shock absorbers provide the standard tilt of the motorcycle and increase the ground clearance so that the motorcycle can be leaned over further in corners without scraping the footpegs.
The process of wheel spoking, balancing and service is described in our previous videos and articles. So there's nothing to add on the rear wheel topic. Balancing turned out to be hard for us, probably because of the spokes of different lengths. Whenever we fixed lateral runout, we got radial runout (an "egg"), and vice versa.
When tightening, it is important to control the displacement of the hub relative to the rim so that the wheel does not go off to the side and stays centered. To do this, you can measure the offset on the standard wheel (if it is exactly in the center) and add half the difference of the width of the new rim and the standard one. You can also tighten the wheel on a motorcycle this way but also keep an eye on how centered it is in the frame. LSL recommends an offset of 7 mm from the landing surface of the brake disc to the edge of the rim. After installation, we measured the position of the wheel and came to a 10 mm offset.
After the tire service you need to do static balancing, but in our case we needed to change the sprocket, so we did the balancing after the replacement. The wheel (without the brake disc and the sprocket) has become lighter by 2 kg which is significant. If we had also replaced the set of sprockets to a 520 kit, then we could have significantly reduced the transmission loss and increase the power at the wheel. But this time we just replaced the rear sprocket, as the chain and the front sprocket are practically new.
After working with the spoked wheels, we can assure you that it's not easy, it requires patience and special tools that are not cheap. If you don't have them, better leave it to professionals.