A customer entrusted me with an FF Yamaguchi F6C wheel.
It's F6C, not F6R.
The "C" doesn't stand for "Clincher"... because it has a tubular rim.
Since this is specced for cyclocross, the "C" apparently means "Cross."
So then the "R" must stand for "Road."
The difference is that while the R has 24 spokes, the C has 28 spokes.
The work request I received was:
Replace the freewheel body on this FF Yamaguchi brand Shimano 10-speed hub with
a Shimano 11-speed version.
They found a rather nefarious article I wrote before (→here)
and were asking whether the same approach would work on this hub too.
In the linked article, I'd written that the Japanese distributor for FFWD
only carries DT hub spec models,
but nowadays they also carry specs assembled with hubs bearing the FFWD marking.
However, it turns out there are different variants even among those,
and the freewheel body on FFWD brand hubs
is not compatible with this FF Yamaguchi brand hub (confirmed).
So I decided to convert it to 11-speed using the same technique from that linked article.
So I sourced that hub freewheel body.
The marking on the spline indicating Shimano 11-speed has changed from before,
but the actual part is completely identical.
The pawls are the same too.
There's a spacer on the 11-speed freewheel body to prevent it from bottoming out on the hub shell,
but when I pulled out the 10-speed freewheel body, the same part
remained on the hub side due to grease—
this is the same component for both 10-speed and 11-speed (same dimensions).
As always, the contact point with the right end cone is different, so
↑You need to slightly file down the flange on the right end cone.
The swap was successful.
Since the bottom-out spacer has the same dimensions
and the right end cone isn't supplied with the new freewheel body,
so we reused the existing one, the wheel center shouldn't be thrown off—
or so it should be. But there was a centering issue, so I trued it up slightly as a precaution.
Though this is slightly off-topic,
initially the Garmin EDGE 500 models sold through official distributors
came in only two colors:
Silver/Blue or the Argyle pattern of the Garmin-Chipotle team replica.
So when you saw Black/Red or Silver/Black variants,
you could immediately tell "ah, that one must have been ordered online"—
but once the official distributor started stocking these colors too,
you can't tell at a glance anymore.
Similarly, FF Yamaguchi wheels without DT hubs
used to be a dead giveaway that they were "definitely ordered online,"
but that's no longer the case anymore.
This particular rim is in basalt spec,
so it must be from a fairly old FF Yamaguchi wheel.
I've received a fair number of comments lately saying,
"Because of this blog, the logo now looks like nothing but FF Yamaguchi to me,"
but this logo originally says "FF Yamaguchi."
While it resembles that premium wheel brand "FFWD" so closely as to be indistinguishable,
I have to say they're "different"—otherwise the thought police will come calling—
so officially I can only say they're "different."
It's F6C, not F6R.
The "C" doesn't stand for "Clincher"... because it has a tubular rim.
Since this is specced for cyclocross, the "C" apparently means "Cross."
So then the "R" must stand for "Road."
The difference is that while the R has 24 spokes, the C has 28 spokes.
The work request I received was:
Replace the freewheel body on this FF Yamaguchi brand Shimano 10-speed hub with
a Shimano 11-speed version.
They found a rather nefarious article I wrote before (→here)
and were asking whether the same approach would work on this hub too.
In the linked article, I'd written that the Japanese distributor for FFWD
only carries DT hub spec models,
but nowadays they also carry specs assembled with hubs bearing the FFWD marking.
However, it turns out there are different variants even among those,
and the freewheel body on FFWD brand hubs
is not compatible with this FF Yamaguchi brand hub (confirmed).
So I decided to convert it to 11-speed using the same technique from that linked article.
So I sourced that hub freewheel body.
The marking on the spline indicating Shimano 11-speed has changed from before,
but the actual part is completely identical.
The pawls are the same too.
There's a spacer on the 11-speed freewheel body to prevent it from bottoming out on the hub shell,
but when I pulled out the 10-speed freewheel body, the same part
remained on the hub side due to grease—
this is the same component for both 10-speed and 11-speed (same dimensions).
As always, the contact point with the right end cone is different, so
↑You need to slightly file down the flange on the right end cone.
The swap was successful.
Since the bottom-out spacer has the same dimensions
and the right end cone isn't supplied with the new freewheel body,
so we reused the existing one, the wheel center shouldn't be thrown off—
or so it should be. But there was a centering issue, so I trued it up slightly as a precaution.
Though this is slightly off-topic,
initially the Garmin EDGE 500 models sold through official distributors
came in only two colors:
Silver/Blue or the Argyle pattern of the Garmin-Chipotle team replica.
So when you saw Black/Red or Silver/Black variants,
you could immediately tell "ah, that one must have been ordered online"—
but once the official distributor started stocking these colors too,
you can't tell at a glance anymore.
Similarly, FF Yamaguchi wheels without DT hubs
used to be a dead giveaway that they were "definitely ordered online,"
but that's no longer the case anymore.
This particular rim is in basalt spec,
so it must be from a fairly old FF Yamaguchi wheel.
I've received a fair number of comments lately saying,
"Because of this blog, the logo now looks like nothing but FF Yamaguchi to me,"
but this logo originally says "FF Yamaguchi."
While it resembles that premium wheel brand "FFWD" so closely as to be indistinguishable,
I have to say they're "different"—otherwise the thought police will come calling—
so officially I can only say they're "different."