Another day with wheels (and so on).
A customer left me with a rear wheel using an 88mm high-end carbon rim.
It's a WO rim, by the way.
It was built with CN spokes—flat aero spokes that require slitted eyelets—
but the customer wanted me to rebuild it a bit tighter.
It uses a Novatec F372 hub—one with the flange eyelet phase slightly modified—built in a 24H 4-cross JIS lacing pattern.
The flange width isn't particularly wide, so with equal-diameter spokes and equal-number lacing on both sides, the non-freewheel side should tension up decently, but it's a bit loose.
I think the paint coating on the CN black spokes plays a role too, but when you grab the crosses, they creak quite a bit.
The customer also wants the hub replaced during the rebuild.
The customer had already realized on their own that the original hub wasn't particularly good dimensionally—no need for me to say so.
Maybe they stumbled across some blog that goes into detail about wheel components
and picked up someunnecessary knowledge there.
The customer's preference was to keep the original aero spokes on the freewheel side of the rebuilt wheel and use black CX-RAY on the non-freewheel side—that was the first choice—
and if that wouldn't work, black half-comp, they said.
They ended up saying exactly what I was planning to suggest myself.
The Revolite hub flange doesn't have aero slitted eyelets, so
the only possibility would be a Rolf hub.
Rolf hubs vary—sometimes they have slitted eyelets, sometimes round eyelets,
sometimes the left end nut is silver, sometimes black—
the specs shift slightly with each shipment,
but the current version has slitted eyelets.
I carefully disassemble everything so I can recover all the spokes cleanly.
16mm long nipples (measuring about 16.5mm actually) were used,
but the rim's inner wall is extremely thick, so it won't work with 12mm nipples.
(It's not impossible, but better not to try)
This time I decided to reuse them.
Before the rebuild, I explain to the customer about a certain treatment the nipples undergo—
something that wasn't done before.
Whether or not this is done makes a very important difference in how tight you can tension the wheel.
I received this wheel quite a while ago, but
since the customer could make it to Osaka today,
I'm building the wheel in front of them.
Disassembled.
From right to left in the image above:
Freewheel-side non-drive spokes
Freewheel-side drive spokes
Non-freewheel-side non-drive spokes
Non-freewheel-side drive spokes
I've arranged six of each in order.
This is because during the rebuild I want the original non-drive spokes to go to non-drive and
the original drive spokes to go to drive,
but the bend angle below the spoke head between non-drive and drive spokes
didn't have as much difference as I expected.
With hubs that have deep flange eyelets (wide flanges) like Dura-Ace or Chris King,
the difference shows up more easily.
When building a rear wheel with a rear hub having equal-diameter flanges on both sides using equal-number lacing,
the spoke length on the freewheel side plus 2mm
generally becomes the spoke length on the non-freewheel side.
With an American Classic hub this would be
more like a 1mm difference rather than 2mm,
and since the hub from before the rebuild was also narrow-flange,
I figured the left and right were probably 1mm different... but
turns out they were the same length on both sides.
All the spokes in the image are the same length. That's some sloppy work!
When I calculated it, I found that cutting 1mm from these
would let them work for the freewheel side of the Rolf hub,
so the 12 unused spokes can become spares.
There was a faint but clear difference in wear below the spoke head
between the non-drive and drive spokes,
but I'm only showing one of them (and even then, hiding which one)
and I'm not writing about how they differ.
Built.
Rolf hub, 24H, half-CN spoke, flat aero 4-cross lacing with cross-lacing.
Of course, it's not JIS lacing—I sneakily did Italian lacing instead.
The customer confirmed that it's already tensioning tighter than before the rebuild,
even without the cross-lacing.
A customer left me with a rear wheel using an 88mm high-end carbon rim.
It's a WO rim, by the way.
It was built with CN spokes—flat aero spokes that require slitted eyelets—
but the customer wanted me to rebuild it a bit tighter.
It uses a Novatec F372 hub—one with the flange eyelet phase slightly modified—built in a 24H 4-cross JIS lacing pattern.
The flange width isn't particularly wide, so with equal-diameter spokes and equal-number lacing on both sides, the non-freewheel side should tension up decently, but it's a bit loose.
I think the paint coating on the CN black spokes plays a role too, but when you grab the crosses, they creak quite a bit.
The customer also wants the hub replaced during the rebuild.
The customer had already realized on their own that the original hub wasn't particularly good dimensionally—no need for me to say so.
Maybe they stumbled across some blog that goes into detail about wheel components
and picked up some
The customer's preference was to keep the original aero spokes on the freewheel side of the rebuilt wheel and use black CX-RAY on the non-freewheel side—that was the first choice—
and if that wouldn't work, black half-comp, they said.
They ended up saying exactly what I was planning to suggest myself.
The Revolite hub flange doesn't have aero slitted eyelets, so
the only possibility would be a Rolf hub.
Rolf hubs vary—sometimes they have slitted eyelets, sometimes round eyelets,
sometimes the left end nut is silver, sometimes black—
the specs shift slightly with each shipment,
but the current version has slitted eyelets.
I carefully disassemble everything so I can recover all the spokes cleanly.
16mm long nipples (measuring about 16.5mm actually) were used,
but the rim's inner wall is extremely thick, so it won't work with 12mm nipples.
(It's not impossible, but better not to try)
This time I decided to reuse them.
Before the rebuild, I explain to the customer about a certain treatment the nipples undergo—
something that wasn't done before.
Whether or not this is done makes a very important difference in how tight you can tension the wheel.
I received this wheel quite a while ago, but
since the customer could make it to Osaka today,
I'm building the wheel in front of them.
Disassembled.
From right to left in the image above:
Freewheel-side non-drive spokes
Freewheel-side drive spokes
Non-freewheel-side non-drive spokes
Non-freewheel-side drive spokes
I've arranged six of each in order.
This is because during the rebuild I want the original non-drive spokes to go to non-drive and
the original drive spokes to go to drive,
but the bend angle below the spoke head between non-drive and drive spokes
didn't have as much difference as I expected.
With hubs that have deep flange eyelets (wide flanges) like Dura-Ace or Chris King,
the difference shows up more easily.
When building a rear wheel with a rear hub having equal-diameter flanges on both sides using equal-number lacing,
the spoke length on the freewheel side plus 2mm
generally becomes the spoke length on the non-freewheel side.
With an American Classic hub this would be
more like a 1mm difference rather than 2mm,
and since the hub from before the rebuild was also narrow-flange,
I figured the left and right were probably 1mm different... but
turns out they were the same length on both sides.
All the spokes in the image are the same length. That's some sloppy work!
When I calculated it, I found that cutting 1mm from these
would let them work for the freewheel side of the Rolf hub,
so the 12 unused spokes can become spares.
There was a faint but clear difference in wear below the spoke head
between the non-drive and drive spokes,
but I'm only showing one of them (and even then, hiding which one)
and I'm not writing about how they differ.
Built.
Rolf hub, 24H, half-CN spoke, flat aero 4-cross lacing with cross-lacing.
Of course, it's not JIS lacing—I sneakily did Italian lacing instead.
The customer confirmed that it's already tensioning tighter than before the rebuild,
even without the cross-lacing.