Spoking around

Today I went to a hardware store and purchased a spoke wrench. See on the pics how blue and pretty, it is. Like a candy. Not that the job would necessarily require a special tool, but I didn't have small enough wrench in any case and this thingy didn't cost much. I applied little bit of wd40 and I got almost all spokes out easily even if I was afraid that they would have been stuck with rust. I left myself also a small hint with a marker so that when I start putting new spokes back on I have some clue as of which goes where.

Nice and easy, but given the number of spokes, unscrewing all of them took about two hours including one coffee and doughnut break. I got the doughnuts from the gas station next door. It's a sympathetic sort of place and open 24/7.

Did you notice that I said almost all? One of the four balancing nuts, or what ever they are called, was damn stuck. I applied again brute force - which I apparently don't posses in sufficient measures. So I had to figure out something else, which in this case meant more wd40 and applying heat. We have torches but a cigaret lighter did the job this time and off it came. 

And before the long the end result was neatly separated hub and rim. It looks like that side had been in the bottom of an ocean for a decade but now it'll be easy to sand off. And it's not going to be visible but I'm afraid getting the new tyre on will be pain in the butt if the surface is so coarse. Taking the old tyre off also left it's mark on the rim but I'm sure I can use rubber hammer and bang the kinks off. You can see one malformation right on the part touching the floor. Speaking of which, the floor looks icky. We clean the garage quite often but years of being commercial building has left it marks. Plus it's a garage.