What is a typical charge for a shop to lace up a new wheel?

bergsnj

bergsnj

Well-Known Member
Just curious what the ballpark price would be for the labor assuming you provide the hub, spokes, nipples and rim.
 
Not sure but would expect them to charge a little more since you didn't purchase the parts from the shop.
 
Why not lace it yourself? Couple YouTube vids should get you through it. Then take it to a shop for truing/tensioning as I would assume you don’t have those tools.
 
TJYeti said:
Why not lace it yourself? Couple YouTube vids should get you through it. Then take it to a shop for truing/tensioning as I would assume you don’t have those tools.
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Not to be a douche, but why spend the time lacing it if you're just going to drive to the shop to have them true and tension? I mean, drop off all the parts, walk away, come back, boom, Jim's built you some wheels.
 
mbruno said:
Not to be a douche, but why spend the time lacing it if you're just going to drive to the shop to have them true and tension? I mean, drop off all the parts, walk away, come back, boom, Jim's built you some wheels.
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I've been building my own wheels, and this whole time I could drop them off and have them professionally done for $50 each???
 
mbruno said:
Not to be a douche, but why spend the time lacing it if you're just going to drive to the shop to have them true and tension? I mean, drop off all the parts, walk away, come back, boom, Jim's built you some wheels.
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Because he might get some satisfaction out of at least lacing it himself and learn something in the process?
 
Magic said:
If you tell them you just built them but don't know how to true, I think they charge double.
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If a customer wanted to lace it themselves I was fine with and encouraged that. I was a one man show for a while so it saved me time. I would tell them I’d knock a few bucks off for that but if they did it wrong and I had to redo it I’d charge extra and let them decide. It was cool to see people proud that they’d done something themselves that they thought was voodoo before.
 
MaxiBSplat said:
This is way lower than I thought tbh
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It's on point with normal hourly shop rates. Most of the time shops are 80-100 an hour. It takes me 10-15 minutes to lace a wheel and another 10-15 to tension and true it. For normal metal wheels. So 40 -60 minutes. The other $20 is in picking out the correct spokes and such. Carbon takes 5-10 minutes longer for each step and internal nipples are another 5-10 minutes.

I also build over 1,000 wheels a year so this is probably on the fast side. Newbs might take over an hour per wheel.
 
Magic said:
If you tell them you just built them but don't know how to true, I think they charge double.
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The truing usually isn't the part you need to worry about. If the spokes aren't prepped correctly it will be really difficult to get good tension. The prep needs to be wet for it to work. Once it dries out the nipples are hard to rotate. Especially because new wheel builders will usually use the multi colored Wheelsmith Prep and that stuff sucks.
 
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