A customer brought in an EA90SL for service.
Both front and rear wheels were nicely centered, with just a bit of lateral runout.
When I pulled the rear wheel out of the wheel bag,
the freewheel body and right end nut had fallen inside the bag.
That could happen with a press-on type, but
since the end of the shaft has threads cut into it,
for the freewheel body to come loose enough to fall naturally
means it was in pretty bad shape.
So I cleaned it up.
Parts cleaner alone wasn't enough,
so I broke out an even stronger solution.
The bearings on the freewheel side showed slight wear,
but this time I dealt with it by re-greasing.
For something calling itself "SL," it should be as light as possible, yet
the front wheel has 24 spokes and the rear has 28—deliberately more spokes—which I actually think is a smart decision.
That's more than the WH-R501 or Axiom, but
since the rim is light, the wheel as a whole is actually much lighter than those.
The spokes are Sapim Race in straight-gauge, but
if this had fewer spokes, the tension per spoke would be so high
that controlling spoke windup during truing would become difficult.
Having more spokes also means you can do finer truing adjustments,
so for a daily-use wheel, this approach might not be bad.
It came with the manufacturer's OEM 16C-width rim tape,
but it was clearly too narrow.
There were several risky spots,
so I was going to tell the customer that next time we replace it, use the 18C version instead—
but the front wheel had a spot that was completely damaged, so I went ahead and replaced it.
Both front and rear wheels were nicely centered, with just a bit of lateral runout.
When I pulled the rear wheel out of the wheel bag,
the freewheel body and right end nut had fallen inside the bag.
That could happen with a press-on type, but
since the end of the shaft has threads cut into it,
for the freewheel body to come loose enough to fall naturally
means it was in pretty bad shape.
So I cleaned it up.
Parts cleaner alone wasn't enough,
so I broke out an even stronger solution.
The bearings on the freewheel side showed slight wear,
but this time I dealt with it by re-greasing.
For something calling itself "SL," it should be as light as possible, yet
the front wheel has 24 spokes and the rear has 28—deliberately more spokes—which I actually think is a smart decision.
That's more than the WH-R501 or Axiom, but
since the rim is light, the wheel as a whole is actually much lighter than those.
The spokes are Sapim Race in straight-gauge, but
if this had fewer spokes, the tension per spoke would be so high
that controlling spoke windup during truing would become difficult.
Having more spokes also means you can do finer truing adjustments,
so for a daily-use wheel, this approach might not be bad.
It came with the manufacturer's OEM 16C-width rim tape,
but it was clearly too narrow.
There were several risky spots,
so I was going to tell the customer that next time we replace it, use the 18C version instead—
but the front wheel had a spot that was completely damaged, so I went ahead and replaced it.