THE MISSING WHEEL

I spoke to the bike shop again today. Madison have "credited me with a new wheel" but as yet we don't know how much this is! I have asked if they will also credit me with the front wheel, as it's part of a set, and I'm now left with a fairly useless wheel. I've also asked if the old wheel can be returned because my new freehub body is on there. We shall see, though I don't hold out much hope on the latter, really, as they've probably binned the wheel by now.

I've asked if new rims can be built around my old large-flange Dura-Ace hubs. Yes, Dura-Ace. Very old Dura-Ace, but still in excellent condition. This is currently being looked into, as it will involve more spokes (both front and rear are 36 spoke hubs), so somewhere along the line I expect this to cost me money, which I don't actually have.

Using the old hubs means I have to go back to using a 6 speed freewheel block rather than an 8 speed cassette. I intend to take the Stronglight triple chainset off and replace with smaller rings anyway as I just do not use big gears anymore, so I don't see any problem with losing a few gears along the way. It will lighten the load. Imagine, a mere 18 gears!