Motorcyclist USA — September-October 2017

90 | september | october 2017

GARAGE

JULIA LAPALME

“I literally grew up in the shop,” says Kennie Buchannan, seen here fine-tuning the spoke tension on a Triumph T140 front wheel. “Mom worked

the counter when she was pregnant with me, and she said I’d kick when dad struck his rawhide hammer against a rim.”

• to many riders, wheel building is
  a black art, an ability as mysterious
  as suspension tuning. But for the
  Buchannan family—brothers Robert and
  Kennie, their father Jim, and Kennie’s
  sons Patrick and Liam—wheel building
  is an occupation and a family tradition.
  Jim founded Buchannan’s Spoke and
  Rim in Southern California in 1958, and
  the company has been in business ever
  since. The advent of one-piece alloy
  wheels in the mid-’70s and the influx of
  cheap Chinese wheel parts that began in
  the 2000s challenged the company, “but
  we still stay plenty busy with vintage
  stuff and customs,” Kennie says.
  “Busy” means building and truing
  more than 1,500 wheels a year, plus
  manufacturing spokes, nipples, and rims.
  And while business is good, Kennie knows
  that his family practices a waning craft.

“It’s getting harder to find anyone

that can true,” he remarks. “It used

to be that every shop had to deal with

damaged wheels. It seems there’s a lot

less interest in mechanics now and in

the trades in general. When dad started

the shop he probably only replaced a few

rims. Most of the time he’d straighten

and repair them. These days, not many

people know how to fix things.”

Building a wheel isn’t complicated,

but the two major steps—lacing and

truing—can be intimidating. “When

lacing up a wheel, a lot of people over-

think the process, or they don’t know

what the cross pattern for the spokes

is, or they think the spokes are too

short because the rim is turned too far,”

Kennie says. “Then they panic.”

Assembly may be tricky, but “truing

is the hardest part,” Kennie warns.

“It takes the most skill and the most

patience, and that only comes with expe-

rience. Dad, even at 90, can true a wheel

so fast. He’s got a knack for working in

two dimensions, constantly adjusting

lateral and radial runout.”

While wheels must run true to within a

few thousandths of an inch, Buchannan’s

doesn’t employ precision measuring

tools. “We use a surface gauge, and the

motion of the wheel tells you everything

you need to know,” Kennie says. “Using

a dial indicator is insanity anyway, espe-

cially with a rolled-steel rim since they’re

not actually flat. What we’re doing here

is taking an inexact part and truing it

to average the errors. If the tire thinks

the rim is true, the tire will run true.”

Building wheels may not be a black art

for the Buchannans, but it certainly is an

art form. —Ari Henning

THE LOST ART OF

WHEEL BUILDING

Balancing tension to average errors

MCY1017_LOST.indd 90 7/20/17 3:41 PM