Another wheel day (and so on).

I received a 29-inch MTB rear wheel from a customer (probably) — a Bontrager RL (Race Lite) 29.
The bead hook got creased from buckling, so they can't use tubeless tires anymore.
I suggested they could just run it as a tubed setup, but they said
for serious racing, not just fun rides, tubeless is non-negotiable.

I've been providing them with a hand-built replacement wheel in the meantime,
but since we sourced an RL 29 rim, they'd like me to rebuild it with that.


The replacement rim has a generic white logo,
while the original rim's neon yellow was a complete-bike-only spec
color-matched to the frame.


This rim comes with its own TLR (Tubeless Ready) rim strip,
but a non-tape-style tubeless-ready rim tape is pretty rare.
The manufacturer says "reuse of removed tape is not recommended," but
since it's an expensive part they'd prefer to reuse it if possible,
so I peeled it off as carefully as I could.


Rim moving in progress...


All built up.


28 holes, 3-cross lacing with reverse-cross JIS equivalent on both sides,
with black spokes, but the final cross is woven and such —
all sorts of unusual specs on this one.