I had a wheel built with Neda rims brought in for service.
Though to be honest, it's a wheel I built myself in the past.
This is apparently a Neda Ujee model, which is different from other Neda rims.
For some reason, the aluminum nipples on this rim keep corroding and cracking.
Where they crack, there's some lateral runout, though not as severe as a broken spoke would cause.
Up until now I'd dealt with it twice by just replacing the cracked aluminum nipples,
but the third time around, I really wanted to do a complete nipple replacement.
So I asked the customer if I could re-lace the wheel with brass nipples instead.
It's a 24-spoke rear wheel, so I gradually loosened all the nipples,
replaced each aluminum nipple with a brass one individually,
then re-tensioned them all back up.
Because of this procedure, the rim and hub never completely separated from each other.
So this is one of those things that only matters to me,
but this re-lacing doesn't count as "another wheel build today" (story continues).
As for why the nipples crack,
it's definitely not a matter of spoke tension being too high or low.
I suspect the counterbore angle where the nipple sits on the rim
doesn't match the nipple geometry,
but since I've never seen this problem on any other rim, I can't say for sure.
Here are the aluminum nipples I removed.
The surface is corroded,
and it's happening much faster than the usage time would suggest.
I've had water pour out of the inside of this rim when removing the tire before,
so maybe it's just a rim with poor drainage.
By the way, the rim is a WO (wired-on) type.
↑Interestingly, none of the nipples had completely broken off,
but I did find two with obvious cracks in them.
These are the broken nipples I collected from the previous repairs.
Though to be honest, it's a wheel I built myself in the past.
This is apparently a Neda Ujee model, which is different from other Neda rims.
For some reason, the aluminum nipples on this rim keep corroding and cracking.
Where they crack, there's some lateral runout, though not as severe as a broken spoke would cause.
Up until now I'd dealt with it twice by just replacing the cracked aluminum nipples,
but the third time around, I really wanted to do a complete nipple replacement.
So I asked the customer if I could re-lace the wheel with brass nipples instead.
It's a 24-spoke rear wheel, so I gradually loosened all the nipples,
replaced each aluminum nipple with a brass one individually,
then re-tensioned them all back up.
Because of this procedure, the rim and hub never completely separated from each other.
So this is one of those things that only matters to me,
but this re-lacing doesn't count as "another wheel build today" (story continues).
As for why the nipples crack,
it's definitely not a matter of spoke tension being too high or low.
I suspect the counterbore angle where the nipple sits on the rim
doesn't match the nipple geometry,
but since I've never seen this problem on any other rim, I can't say for sure.
Here are the aluminum nipples I removed.
The surface is corroded,
and it's happening much faster than the usage time would suggest.
I've had water pour out of the inside of this rim when removing the tire before,
so maybe it's just a rim with poor drainage.
By the way, the rim is a WO (wired-on) type.
↑Interestingly, none of the nipples had completely broken off,
but I did find two with obvious cracks in them.
These are the broken nipples I collected from the previous repairs.