Today it's wheels again (and so on).
A customer brought me the rear wheel from a SES (Smart Envi System) 7.8 to work on.
This one has a WO rim with a 78mm depth.
It's got one of those Garmin gadgets wrapped around it, and it's built with a Chris King R45 24-spoke hub in black, CX-RAY spokes in a 4-cross pattern, tensioned to a level where there's still plenty of room to tighten further.
The ride feel is noticeably soft (definitely not in a good way), so the customer was asking if anything could be done about it. Since just increasing tension on this build wouldn't accomplish much, we decided to completely rebuild it.
The state before rebuilding was practically a waste of a Chris King hub and ENVE rim, so it's satisfying that I can confidently say the rebuild will be a significant improvement.
↑It turned out lighter than expected, actually.
With WO rims, aluminum rims can be lighter when the rim depth is low, so carbon doesn't really have much of an advantage. But once you get above 50mm depth, carbon rims become lighter. Or rather, aluminum rims in 50mm or 80mm depths simply don't exist in the first place—at least not for competitive use.
Built.
Black half-comp, 3-cross lacing with bracing. This time the customer brought the rear wheel on their bike and I disassembled and rebuilt it on the spot. They'd been saying they wanted a rebuild for a while, and I had specified today as the timing for them to bring it in, so it wasn't a case of jumping the queue. Despite telling them to come today, it ended up being a surprisingly hectic day, so they had to wait quite a bit before I could get to the work. My apologies for that.
After the rebuild, they only rode it around a little bit in the parking lot before saying "it's completely different now." It apparently runs straight now. I wonder if it wasn't running straight before, but it's probably like that experience where you take a sip of beer and say "I'm alive again!"—the difference in stiffness was easy to notice precisely because the previous state was so underwhelming.
A customer brought me the rear wheel from a SES (Smart Envi System) 7.8 to work on.
This one has a WO rim with a 78mm depth.
It's got one of those Garmin gadgets wrapped around it, and it's built with a Chris King R45 24-spoke hub in black, CX-RAY spokes in a 4-cross pattern, tensioned to a level where there's still plenty of room to tighten further.
The ride feel is noticeably soft (definitely not in a good way), so the customer was asking if anything could be done about it. Since just increasing tension on this build wouldn't accomplish much, we decided to completely rebuild it.
The state before rebuilding was practically a waste of a Chris King hub and ENVE rim, so it's satisfying that I can confidently say the rebuild will be a significant improvement.
↑It turned out lighter than expected, actually.
With WO rims, aluminum rims can be lighter when the rim depth is low, so carbon doesn't really have much of an advantage. But once you get above 50mm depth, carbon rims become lighter. Or rather, aluminum rims in 50mm or 80mm depths simply don't exist in the first place—at least not for competitive use.
Built.
Black half-comp, 3-cross lacing with bracing. This time the customer brought the rear wheel on their bike and I disassembled and rebuilt it on the spot. They'd been saying they wanted a rebuild for a while, and I had specified today as the timing for them to bring it in, so it wasn't a case of jumping the queue. Despite telling them to come today, it ended up being a surprisingly hectic day, so they had to wait quite a bit before I could get to the work. My apologies for that.
After the rebuild, they only rode it around a little bit in the parking lot before saying "it's completely different now." It apparently runs straight now. I wonder if it wasn't running straight before, but it's probably like that experience where you take a sip of beer and say "I'm alive again!"—the difference in stiffness was easy to notice precisely because the previous state was so underwhelming.