Holly crap!! my wheel set is going to cost a lot!!

Holly SHIIYYYYYYYYYTTT. Well, I just got back from Buchanons Spoke Wheels to get my wheels relaced, tru'd, tires mounted and balanced. Not one operation of the wheel set build is expensive. Lace and tru was I think $94 each and mount and balance was like $27 each or something like that. but man..... I just thought about how much I spent on the whole wheel set build! I think I just spent like $1200 on the wheel set!! It just added up real fast! I didnt realized that just the wheel set was going to cost that much when its all said and done...... Im still absorbing how much i realized i just spent on the wheel set..

1. Okay rechrome the 2 rims was $120 both rims
2. Polished the hubs was about $80 both hubs
3. Stainless polished spokes sets front and back and niples was $320
4. Lace and tru was $192 both wheels
5. Mount and ballance was $54 both wheels
6. Intertubes was $22 front and back
7. Front Dunlop tire was $90
8. Rear Dunlop tire was $90
9. And after tax and all the shipping!!! about $1200 total!!!

Man I should have just cleaned them up as best as I could and just left it.... but i guess thats the last major expence of the bike....

Thanks for reading my vent!!. But this crap adds up!! hahaha

Yup!! The same thing happened to me! I put aluminum rims on my H2! I think my cost for the wheels alone (without rubber!) was about that!

All that and you still have the original heavy steel rims. The spokes and nipples are off the charts, they're 3x the price i usually see, lacing and truing are 2x. At least I know never to get spokes from Buchanan. Sorry to hear about the hit to your wallet.

yeah, i just looked at the reciept and the stainless spokes was $110 a wheel. so $220 for the set. and they charged me $58 to polish both sets. but man... thats still alot. if i didt polish them it would have the same finish as my sink. but yeah, alot of money.

I paid almost that much for my Buchanan stainless spokes/nipples for my XS650. I didn't have them polished though - just the $200 for the two sets of spokes.

My wheels ended up costing probably about the same. I paid a ton to have my hubs/rims polished (way more than your chroming price). I had to have the anodized finished stripped first, and then polished, and I'm running big drum brakes front and back so that was a lot of polishing too.

I paid for professional polishing on the parts I never wanted to take apart again, like the wheels.

Trick is to never add up all the costs - you'll go mad. Non-stainless spokes would have saved you $150, and I paid $50/wheel for lacing truing, but then again you had Buchanan's do the work and they're tops for quality etc. Lets see some pics! Here's my setup. If this ain't worth $1000+ I don't know what is

that looks sweet man.

yeah, $1100+ for wheels is hard to swallow. i shouldnt think about it though. its because the whole bike only costed me $350 haha.

they said the wheels will be done in a few days, so ill post up some pics when I get them back.

holy crap is right! y'all have got more in your wheels than i've got in my whole bike, purchase price included. I guess I'm just super cheap, but man, that's a lot! They look great though!

where did you get the wheels re-chromed? I'm at the point where I was looking to get a D.I.D. replacement rim but this looks like a better option.

Deviant1 said:

holy crap is right! y'all have got more in your wheels than i've got in my whole bike, purchase price included.

Click to expand...

I hear ya! Thats more than I have in any two of my bikes and four of them if you do the right combination

You can get rims cheap these days - i would have bought new rims if they were available when I paid to have mine polished.

For 36 spoke wheels, MikesXS sells very nice polished shouldered alloy rims for $89 US each, which is cheap.

http://www.mikesxs.net/products-56.html#products

I was quoted one of those "GULP!?" prices from Buchanon for relacing the spoke wheels on my Heritage Special XS650 (the one with the extra spokes). I ordered the spokes from MikesXS and found a guy in the next town over that would relace them for me. Less than half of what Buchanon wanted for ONE wheel.
The local Harley dealer can lace wheels but won't work on anything other than HD's. Maybe if you knew someone in the parts/service dept. they could sneak it in?

WOWOW-WEE-WOW!
I don't think I'd ever spend that much on one single thing, unless it was a Macbook or something lol. $1200 is like where I'm at when I factor in the cost of materials, tools, and my bike! I'm not done yet though...

Well I guess you live and you learn. That's a lot but what's done is done.

It's not about gettin'er done
It's about doing her right.

goodfornothing said:

WOWOW-WEE-WOW!
I don't think I'd ever spend that much on one single thing, unless it was a Macbook or something lol. $1200 is like where I'm at when I factor in the cost of materials, tools, and my bike! I'm not done yet though...

Well I guess you live and you learn. That's a lot but what's done is done.

Click to expand...

You must pay to play and you get what you pay for. I dropped nearly $900 for 18" flanged alloy rims, stainless steel spokes etc for the Triton and they are worth every penny.

For my Hondas I order OEM rims and spokes from Honda Parts direct and lace, true, mount and balance them myself and it is much, much cheaper.

Speak of the devil, look what UPS just dropped off for me. New set of 18" and 19" DID rims for 1974 Honda CB750, $223.00 delivered from Honda Parts Direct. They look great and rims for CB400 and 550's are much cheaper.

I cannot wait until I have time time off to start this project!

this may be a dumb question, but I was curious if you guys that run the more modern looking sport bike style tires are running tubes. And if you are, what tires are you guys running? I want to get a set for my cb350, but dont know where to start looking.

Yep - if you've got old spoked rims, you're pretty much stuck running tubes (although some people have tried different ways of sealing the spoke holes if you can imagine that).

Avon Road Riders get a lot of positive reviews around these parts. I'm running them on my XS650 project. These are my wheels (picture was on the first page of posts)