A little about my up coming wheel building project

Oh no, more work! To be honest, my vintage Fuji Del Rey is the bike I use the most. It's a great all-round bike.  But what's up with, "vintage."  When it comes to the wheels, a very old road bike usually, but not always, means having a 27" (ISO 630) wheelsets.  Unfortunately, for some reason, 27" was no longer the norm ever since a very very long time ago.   Not only does finding replacement wheels can be difficult, but looking for reliable and quality matching tires can also be a challenge.   It's a good thing we have Performance Bike, Mike's Bikes, REI, and my LBS (Local Bike Shop) carrying 27" tires: 

Bike Shop	Tires
Peformance Bike	Forté Strada K Road Tire
Peformance Bike	Forté Strada Road Tire
Mike's Bikes	Kenda Street K35 Road Tire
Mike's Bikes	Specialized Tri-Sport Tire
Mike's Bikes	Specialized All-Condition Armadillo Tire
REI	Serfas Seca Road Utility Tire
REI	Vittoria Zaffiro II Tire
REI	Panaracer Tourguard Pasela Bike Tire
REI	Continental Continental Ultra Sport Tire
Robinson Wheelworks	Panaracer Tourguard Pasela Bike Tire

Nowadays, road cycling is all about the 700c (ISO 622), which has the same diameter as the 29ers.  There are huge tire selections for 700c for road applications.  I love the feel of narrowly tires that is exclusive to 700c size.  All modern road frame usually have a drop out of 130mm instead of 120mm found on mine and 126mm found in many vintage road bikes.  So you need matching hubs for the frame dropout if you decided to replace them.  Summarizing the points, here's the reason why I should ditch this bike and get a new one instead:

• Obsolete 27" wheels and tires
• Obsolete drop out width of 120mm (for 5/6 spd) vs. modern width of 130mm
• The width of the tires are usually (27 x) 1 1/4"
• Fewer tire selections
• Obsolete threaded on freewheel, which I didn't mention above

Back in 2006, a good friend of mine gave this Del Rey to me free of charge.  But at that time, the bike was very different from what it is right now.  By different, I didn't mean in a good way.  It used to be like the tires and tubes were long gone, cables rusted, cloth tape torn, inaccurate shifting, theft-proof look of the frame... long story short it was messed up.  I spent a lot of time and money working on this bike.  There were times that I was tempt to sell it because of the high maintenance cost and the incompatibility with modern bike parts.  In the end, I decided to keep it, because the bike is super reliable, can go up any hills without problems, unattractive appearance which makes it a very good SF Bay city-bike, and it just works perfectly as a beater.

One last upgrade I wanted is to replace the two wheels.  Since day one, the rear wheel creaks after each rotation.  I am suspecting it has something to do with the rust inside rim, and I happened to have a pair of new rims hiding at the corner of my room for a while:

Sun Rims AT18 27" 36h

Not the best, but certainly something that should give my Fuji a new life, and a chance for me to build my first wheel.  Anyways, I will start this project as soon as I got all the other parts.