Another day with wheels (and so on).
A customer left me their carbon rim rear wheel to work on.
They want me to rebuild it.
The reason being "it feels kind of mushy, or more like clearly loose,"
but the spoke tension was excessively tight.
It's technically within this rim's limit,
but I'd never tension the freewheel side this much if I were building it.
The spokes and lacing pattern are all-black CX-RAY with 4-cross lacing.
I don't know if the customer had knowledge about how
radial lacing on the non-freewheel side is weak to twisting
or prone to left-side contact issues,
but apparently the shop that built it once increased tension even more
because they said it felt mushy.
With the freewheel side spoke tension already maxed out with no room to spare,
and the rim center already pulled out of true, I can't tighten the non-freewheel side any further.
Yet that side still feels loose.
So I ended up rebuilding it with different spoke counts and diameters on each side, with a crossing pattern.
One broken spoke was also a motivation for rebuilding.
↑It broke near the boundary between the round and flattened sections.
If you assume all other materials are perfectly rigid
and kept tightening the nipples indefinitely,
nearly every spoke would fracture at the neck.
Breaking midway like this is extremely rare.
Looking at the other spokes, it seems a chain drop bent this spoke,
which is what caused it to break here.
So I tried to rebuild it, but... the rim was bent.
You might think carbon can't plastically deform!
But it's a fact (though if heat was the main cause, it's possible).
The fact that this rim's rim side (the inner section, not the brake zone)
is as flexy as a Cosmic Carbon hood might be related.
↑The undamaged section
↑Where the spoke broke, the rim is dented inward.
↑The opposite side bulges outward.
I replaced the spoke and tensioned it, but the deformation didn't go away.
The wheel improved somewhat when I took it apart, but it never straightened out completely.
So we decided to get a new rim as well.
The hub is a Leaf Hub-like hub.
Built it.
24-hole semi-aero 4-cross lacing with a crossing pattern.
I don't know if a matching front wheel exists,
but silver spokes are fine according to the customer.
The freewheel side spoke tension is slightly lower than before,
but I'm confident that in actual use this will feel better—
less mushy, less prone to contact issues, in short, definitely not "loose."
A customer left me their carbon rim rear wheel to work on.
They want me to rebuild it.
The reason being "it feels kind of mushy, or more like clearly loose,"
but the spoke tension was excessively tight.
It's technically within this rim's limit,
but I'd never tension the freewheel side this much if I were building it.
The spokes and lacing pattern are all-black CX-RAY with 4-cross lacing.
I don't know if the customer had knowledge about how
radial lacing on the non-freewheel side is weak to twisting
or prone to left-side contact issues,
but apparently the shop that built it once increased tension even more
because they said it felt mushy.
With the freewheel side spoke tension already maxed out with no room to spare,
and the rim center already pulled out of true, I can't tighten the non-freewheel side any further.
Yet that side still feels loose.
So I ended up rebuilding it with different spoke counts and diameters on each side, with a crossing pattern.
One broken spoke was also a motivation for rebuilding.
↑It broke near the boundary between the round and flattened sections.
If you assume all other materials are perfectly rigid
and kept tightening the nipples indefinitely,
nearly every spoke would fracture at the neck.
Breaking midway like this is extremely rare.
Looking at the other spokes, it seems a chain drop bent this spoke,
which is what caused it to break here.
So I tried to rebuild it, but... the rim was bent.
You might think carbon can't plastically deform!
But it's a fact (though if heat was the main cause, it's possible).
The fact that this rim's rim side (the inner section, not the brake zone)
is as flexy as a Cosmic Carbon hood might be related.
↑The undamaged section
↑Where the spoke broke, the rim is dented inward.
↑The opposite side bulges outward.
I replaced the spoke and tensioned it, but the deformation didn't go away.
The wheel improved somewhat when I took it apart, but it never straightened out completely.
So we decided to get a new rim as well.
The hub is a Leaf Hub-like hub.
Built it.
24-hole semi-aero 4-cross lacing with a crossing pattern.
I don't know if a matching front wheel exists,
but silver spokes are fine according to the customer.
The freewheel side spoke tension is slightly lower than before,
but I'm confident that in actual use this will feel better—
less mushy, less prone to contact issues, in short, definitely not "loose."