Another day with wheels (and so on).
I received a Reynolds R2 rear wheel from a customer.
The wheel itself is light, but during hill climbs he feels flex,
so he's actually been using a heavier wheel for his main events.
He thought maybe a rebuild could help,
and this will definitely be able to tension up tighter than it currently is.
Of course, I'll adjust the conditioning too.
The freewheel side has reverse Italian cross—equivalent to reverse JIS—
24-hole all-comp four-cross lacing.
Reynolds has used different-diameter lacing left and right before,
and in those cases they'd use comp/evo with round spokes.
This wheel is all-comp.
I'll keep reusing the freewheel side spokes,
while rebuilding the non-freewheel side with CX-RAY (Sapim CX-RAY) six-cross lacing.
The freebody wasn't compatible with Shimano 11-speed.
The customer is currently running it with 10-speed components,
but I suggested that if there are no plans to upgrade to 11-speed in the near future,
we should keep using the hub since it has good dimensions,
whereas if he does plan to go 11-speed, we should rebuild with an Evo hub or similar.
It might be possible to do an 11-speed conversion just by swapping the freebody on this hub,
but since the freebody cost is about the same as an Evo hub anyway,
it makes sense to swap the hub now if we're planning on 11-speed.
But this time, we decided to reuse the hub.
The non-freewheel side radial-laced spokes are clearly too long...
↑Of the 24 spokes, I carefully unlaced 20 of them. This is the non-freewheel side of the remaining 4.
This nipple was never tightened or loosened during the disassembly.
About 5 threads are sticking out.
The freewheel side had about 2 threads sticking out too,
but on the non-freewheel side this is a bit of a problem.
The spoke threads are bottomed out against the nipple, so I can't adjust further.
That said, these are the spokes I'm going to discard anyway,
and as long as I calculate the spoke lengths correctly for the rebuild, it'll be fine.
The rim was extremely light.
Excellent.
Light weight alone isn't much,
but this rim can tension up far more solidly than you'd expect from its weight.
While rebuilding, I cleaned up the rim sides nicely.
It's laced.
24-hole half-comp four-cross lacing with tie-wraps.
I'm building this rear wheel in front of the customer,
and even before tie-wrapping it's already tensioning up better than before the rebuild,
so I had him check both how the wheel holds its tension overall
and how the spoke deflection changes when only 2 of the 6 final crosses are tie-wrapped.
In the image above, next to the R2 near the valve hole
is the side with the warning sticker,
and this was the freewheel side before the rebuild.
I'd built it with a non-dished rim as if it were a standard rim,
and after the rebuild I'm also treating it as a standard rim.
However, I flipped the rim for reasons I had in mind.
I've changed the freewheel side cross to Italian lacing.
When reusing spokes that were tangent-laced,
since the spoke neck deformation differs between J-bend and reverse J-bend spokes,
I have a rule to always keep "original J-bends as J-bends, original reverse J-bends as reverse J-bends,"
but in this rebuild, the freewheel side spokes were never removed from the hub flanges to begin with.
I simply flipped the direction—what was facing reverse J-bend direction when I unlaced it
is now facing J-bend direction in the rebuild.
For four-cross lacing on a standard rim with Italian lacing, that means right-drop,
so I threaded the CX-RAY spokes right-drop.
↑Since the rim is light, the whole wheel is light too.
It feels unbelievably light for a rear wheel.
↑By the way, this is the rear wheel from the のむラボ (Nomu Lab) wheel number 6 that I built yesterday.
I was actually surprised how close they are in weight despite being so different.
That's because this rim is actually heavier than the R2.
It's just that the Leaf hub is so light that the overall weight comes out nearly the same on the scale.
You can't just go by what the scale tells you.
Between these two rear wheels, if the only use was hill climbing,
which one is the best choice would depend on the rider's weight and style.
There's a subtle trade-off: the R2 should have lighter snap off the pedals,
while number 6 should have less flex under hard efforts.
I received a Reynolds R2 rear wheel from a customer.
The wheel itself is light, but during hill climbs he feels flex,
so he's actually been using a heavier wheel for his main events.
He thought maybe a rebuild could help,
and this will definitely be able to tension up tighter than it currently is.
Of course, I'll adjust the conditioning too.
The freewheel side has reverse Italian cross—equivalent to reverse JIS—
24-hole all-comp four-cross lacing.
Reynolds has used different-diameter lacing left and right before,
and in those cases they'd use comp/evo with round spokes.
This wheel is all-comp.
I'll keep reusing the freewheel side spokes,
while rebuilding the non-freewheel side with CX-RAY (Sapim CX-RAY) six-cross lacing.
The freebody wasn't compatible with Shimano 11-speed.
The customer is currently running it with 10-speed components,
but I suggested that if there are no plans to upgrade to 11-speed in the near future,
we should keep using the hub since it has good dimensions,
whereas if he does plan to go 11-speed, we should rebuild with an Evo hub or similar.
It might be possible to do an 11-speed conversion just by swapping the freebody on this hub,
but since the freebody cost is about the same as an Evo hub anyway,
it makes sense to swap the hub now if we're planning on 11-speed.
But this time, we decided to reuse the hub.
The non-freewheel side radial-laced spokes are clearly too long...
↑Of the 24 spokes, I carefully unlaced 20 of them. This is the non-freewheel side of the remaining 4.
This nipple was never tightened or loosened during the disassembly.
About 5 threads are sticking out.
The freewheel side had about 2 threads sticking out too,
but on the non-freewheel side this is a bit of a problem.
The spoke threads are bottomed out against the nipple, so I can't adjust further.
That said, these are the spokes I'm going to discard anyway,
and as long as I calculate the spoke lengths correctly for the rebuild, it'll be fine.
The rim was extremely light.
Excellent.
Light weight alone isn't much,
but this rim can tension up far more solidly than you'd expect from its weight.
While rebuilding, I cleaned up the rim sides nicely.
It's laced.
24-hole half-comp four-cross lacing with tie-wraps.
I'm building this rear wheel in front of the customer,
and even before tie-wrapping it's already tensioning up better than before the rebuild,
so I had him check both how the wheel holds its tension overall
and how the spoke deflection changes when only 2 of the 6 final crosses are tie-wrapped.
In the image above, next to the R2 near the valve hole
is the side with the warning sticker,
and this was the freewheel side before the rebuild.
I'd built it with a non-dished rim as if it were a standard rim,
and after the rebuild I'm also treating it as a standard rim.
However, I flipped the rim for reasons I had in mind.
I've changed the freewheel side cross to Italian lacing.
When reusing spokes that were tangent-laced,
since the spoke neck deformation differs between J-bend and reverse J-bend spokes,
I have a rule to always keep "original J-bends as J-bends, original reverse J-bends as reverse J-bends,"
but in this rebuild, the freewheel side spokes were never removed from the hub flanges to begin with.
I simply flipped the direction—what was facing reverse J-bend direction when I unlaced it
is now facing J-bend direction in the rebuild.
For four-cross lacing on a standard rim with Italian lacing, that means right-drop,
so I threaded the CX-RAY spokes right-drop.
↑Since the rim is light, the whole wheel is light too.
It feels unbelievably light for a rear wheel.
↑By the way, this is the rear wheel from the のむラボ (Nomu Lab) wheel number 6 that I built yesterday.
I was actually surprised how close they are in weight despite being so different.
That's because this rim is actually heavier than the R2.
It's just that the Leaf hub is so light that the overall weight comes out nearly the same on the scale.
You can't just go by what the scale tells you.
Between these two rear wheels, if the only use was hill climbing,
which one is the best choice would depend on the rider's weight and style.
There's a subtle trade-off: the R2 should have lighter snap off the pedals,
while number 6 should have less flex under hard efforts.