Another day with wheels (and so on).
A customer left me with a Neutron front wheel.
I did truing work on it, but when truing the lateral runout,
there was a spot that needed abnormally loose adjustment—
clearly the rim is warped.
So we're doing a rebuild, but
the Campagnolo low-profile rim front wheel has a special 22-hole count,
so I need to rebuild it with a rim of the same specifications.
I had a Proton rim on hand, so I decided to use that.
The Proton was the lower-tier model when the Nucleon—
the predecessor to the Neutron—was the flagship.
Since it has eyelets, it uses external nipple configuration,
so I can use universal nipples.
I'm reusing the spokes, but since the rim's inner diameter is nearly identical
and I'm using universal nipples for the rebuild,
I'll trim the spokes slightly shorter.
Also, these are brass nipples currently,
but after the rebuild I'm switching to aluminum nipples,
so with these two changes I can reduce the outer rim weight.
Disassembled it.
↑Neutron rim
↑Proton rim
A 32g difference, but once built into a wheel, the difference should be less than that.
The Neutron rim weight includes nipple washers attached with double-sided tape—
all 22 of them adhered.
When I weighed 22 new ones separately, they came to about 5g.
So if I count this as part of the nipple weight, the rim comes to 409g,
making the rim weight difference 37g.
I'm not sure if it's related to the rim warping, but
I found bent spokes from the tension being released.
↑The one at the very bottom of the image.
Separately from that, I found another spoke bent on the hub side,
so I'm replacing these two spokes.
Built it up.
At the customer's request, I went with gold aluminum nipples.
The suggestion about "you can choose colors since they're universal nipples" came from me.
Before rebuild 640g → after rebuild 668g,
so the 37g rim weight difference didn't translate directly—
we only ended up with a 28g difference.
The spoke tension is higher than before the rebuild, but
the lower tension before was probably just from the wheel sagging with age,
so it's more like I just restored it to new, as-delivered condition.
A customer left me with a Neutron front wheel.
I did truing work on it, but when truing the lateral runout,
there was a spot that needed abnormally loose adjustment—
clearly the rim is warped.
So we're doing a rebuild, but
the Campagnolo low-profile rim front wheel has a special 22-hole count,
so I need to rebuild it with a rim of the same specifications.
I had a Proton rim on hand, so I decided to use that.
The Proton was the lower-tier model when the Nucleon—
the predecessor to the Neutron—was the flagship.
Since it has eyelets, it uses external nipple configuration,
so I can use universal nipples.
I'm reusing the spokes, but since the rim's inner diameter is nearly identical
and I'm using universal nipples for the rebuild,
I'll trim the spokes slightly shorter.
Also, these are brass nipples currently,
but after the rebuild I'm switching to aluminum nipples,
so with these two changes I can reduce the outer rim weight.
Disassembled it.
↑Neutron rim
↑Proton rim
A 32g difference, but once built into a wheel, the difference should be less than that.
The Neutron rim weight includes nipple washers attached with double-sided tape—
all 22 of them adhered.
When I weighed 22 new ones separately, they came to about 5g.
So if I count this as part of the nipple weight, the rim comes to 409g,
making the rim weight difference 37g.
I'm not sure if it's related to the rim warping, but
I found bent spokes from the tension being released.
↑The one at the very bottom of the image.
Separately from that, I found another spoke bent on the hub side,
so I'm replacing these two spokes.
Built it up.
At the customer's request, I went with gold aluminum nipples.
The suggestion about "you can choose colors since they're universal nipples" came from me.
Before rebuild 640g → after rebuild 668g,
so the 37g rim weight difference didn't translate directly—
we only ended up with a 28g difference.
The spoke tension is higher than before the rebuild, but
the lower tension before was probably just from the wheel sagging with age,
so it's more like I just restored it to new, as-delivered condition.