Another day with wheels (and so on).
A customer left a Bontrager Aeolus rear wheel with me.
It originally came in for an inspection, but...
It's a Bontrager
labeled as an Aeolus, but
the rim is actually HED-made.
It's an aluminum rim with a carbon fairing structure, but the carbon section is so thin that you can see the weave pattern when you hold it up to light—that's not this type. This one is filled with something like expanded polyurethane, so the rim side doesn't flex or dent when you push on it with your finger.
There's one spoke missing—that's because I broke the nipple during work. I was just about to tell the customer that "the nipple is corroded and feels like it's about to snap off," when it went "crack" and snapped. Since all the nipples are probably corroded, I'm replacing all of them, and while I'm at it, I'm also upgrading to black semi-comp spokes.
↑This is the nipple (you can see it).
A hex nipple sits flush in the spoke holes on both sides, but the spoke doesn't reach the blue locking resin on the thread. In this case, that's correct. If you make the spoke length flush with the nipple end face, then when you tighten it further, it breaks through the rim tape.
This nipple sticks out a bit above the rim tape surface, but once the rim tape is applied, there's no problem.
When the nipple grip is hex-shaped, the flat-to-flat sizes are 4.76mm (3/16"), 5mm, 5.5mm, and 6mm—four options. This is 5.5mm, the same size as Cosmic Carbon.
This is the Cosmic Carbon-specific nipple wrench, but
there are marks where it's been rubbing on the sides of the spoke holes.
Cosmic Carbon SL and later versions
have single spoke holes, so
there's some clearance around the tool.
With Park Tool's 5.5mm hole driver-type nipple wrench, the tool head is too large to fit in the dual spoke holes. So I've made a custom one with the head shaved down for dual-hole work.
Loosening the nipples. Salt-like corrosion flakes are crumbling out of the pockets around the spoke holes.
Wow, it's really corroded.
After loosening about half the wheel and releasing the tension, I cut the spokes and disassemble.
It was severely corroded.
↑The nipple at the bottom of the image has a crack in it.
When I pushed this nipple outward along with the spoke, it fractured. Or it might have already been that way.
↑The rest is still stuck in the rim, but when I pushed it out from the inner edge with a punch,
it shattered. If I'd pushed from the outer edge, it would've fallen inside the rim. That was close.
Built.
On the freehub side—since it's a 16H rear wheel, I went with 14-gauge plain spokes. So not competition grade. The candidates were DT Champion, Sapim Leader, and Wheelsmith SS14, but this time I went with Leader.
I did full non-bladed two-crossing to avoid any chance of rear derailleur interference. I wanted to prevent the situation where people say "it hits when I stand and climb" or "it hits when I really push hard," which would mean re-tensioning the wheel.
The non-freehub side is full non-bladed two-crossing.
There are theoretically subtle pros and cons to how the crossings overlap, but this time I put the "porcupine-direction" spokes on the inside. Why? Because that makes the non-freehub side overlap the same way as Italian-style lacing. Italian and JIS-style lacing are identical on the freehub side, but mirrored on the non-freehub side. When it comes to wire-tying at the junction, which direction you wrap depends on the overlap orientation—it's mirrored. In my case, I have the Italian-style non-freehub wrapping memorized in my hands, but with JIS-style rear wheels everything is reversed, taking over three times as long. It's like a right-handed person awkwardly using chopsticks with their left hand.So I hate doing spoke-tying work on the non-freehub side of disc brake hubs. This time, the final crossing (well, the first one) is close to the hub flange, so spoke-tying barely makes sense and I probably won't do it, but anyway, I set the overlap to make tying easier if needed.
For comparison, before rebuilding, the freehub side was laced in reverse Italian/reverse JIS style, and
the non-freehub side (partly out of frame) had the opposite overlap from the rebuilt version, in full non-bladed lacing.
The new nipples—thinking ahead about maintenance ease,
I went with 5mm flat-to-flat. The spokes not reaching the white locking resin is the same as before.
The nipple ends protrude about 0.5mm more than before, so I checked with a Vittoria rim tape,
↑and it looks fine.
Also, there was something I wanted to check, so I had them install a tire and took it for a short ride.
A customer left a Bontrager Aeolus rear wheel with me.
It originally came in for an inspection, but...
It's a Bontrager
labeled as an Aeolus, but
the rim is actually HED-made.
It's an aluminum rim with a carbon fairing structure, but the carbon section is so thin that you can see the weave pattern when you hold it up to light—that's not this type. This one is filled with something like expanded polyurethane, so the rim side doesn't flex or dent when you push on it with your finger.
There's one spoke missing—that's because I broke the nipple during work. I was just about to tell the customer that "the nipple is corroded and feels like it's about to snap off," when it went "crack" and snapped. Since all the nipples are probably corroded, I'm replacing all of them, and while I'm at it, I'm also upgrading to black semi-comp spokes.
↑This is the nipple (you can see it).
A hex nipple sits flush in the spoke holes on both sides, but the spoke doesn't reach the blue locking resin on the thread. In this case, that's correct. If you make the spoke length flush with the nipple end face, then when you tighten it further, it breaks through the rim tape.
This nipple sticks out a bit above the rim tape surface, but once the rim tape is applied, there's no problem.
When the nipple grip is hex-shaped, the flat-to-flat sizes are 4.76mm (3/16"), 5mm, 5.5mm, and 6mm—four options. This is 5.5mm, the same size as Cosmic Carbon.
This is the Cosmic Carbon-specific nipple wrench, but
there are marks where it's been rubbing on the sides of the spoke holes.
Cosmic Carbon SL and later versions
have single spoke holes, so
there's some clearance around the tool.
With Park Tool's 5.5mm hole driver-type nipple wrench, the tool head is too large to fit in the dual spoke holes. So I've made a custom one with the head shaved down for dual-hole work.
Loosening the nipples. Salt-like corrosion flakes are crumbling out of the pockets around the spoke holes.
Wow, it's really corroded.
After loosening about half the wheel and releasing the tension, I cut the spokes and disassemble.
It was severely corroded.
↑The nipple at the bottom of the image has a crack in it.
When I pushed this nipple outward along with the spoke, it fractured. Or it might have already been that way.
↑The rest is still stuck in the rim, but when I pushed it out from the inner edge with a punch,
it shattered. If I'd pushed from the outer edge, it would've fallen inside the rim. That was close.
Built.
On the freehub side—since it's a 16H rear wheel, I went with 14-gauge plain spokes. So not competition grade. The candidates were DT Champion, Sapim Leader, and Wheelsmith SS14, but this time I went with Leader.
I did full non-bladed two-crossing to avoid any chance of rear derailleur interference. I wanted to prevent the situation where people say "it hits when I stand and climb" or "it hits when I really push hard," which would mean re-tensioning the wheel.
The non-freehub side is full non-bladed two-crossing.
There are theoretically subtle pros and cons to how the crossings overlap, but this time I put the "porcupine-direction" spokes on the inside. Why? Because that makes the non-freehub side overlap the same way as Italian-style lacing. Italian and JIS-style lacing are identical on the freehub side, but mirrored on the non-freehub side. When it comes to wire-tying at the junction, which direction you wrap depends on the overlap orientation—it's mirrored. In my case, I have the Italian-style non-freehub wrapping memorized in my hands, but with JIS-style rear wheels everything is reversed, taking over three times as long. It's like a right-handed person awkwardly using chopsticks with their left hand.
For comparison, before rebuilding, the freehub side was laced in reverse Italian/reverse JIS style, and
the non-freehub side (partly out of frame) had the opposite overlap from the rebuilt version, in full non-bladed lacing.
The new nipples—thinking ahead about maintenance ease,
I went with 5mm flat-to-flat. The spokes not reaching the white locking resin is the same as before.
The nipple ends protrude about 0.5mm more than before, so I checked with a Vittoria rim tape,
↑and it looks fine.
Also, there was something I wanted to check, so I had them install a tire and took it for a short ride.