Another day with wheels (and so on).
A customer dropped off a wheel built with an Alpine brand rim—actually a wheel I'd previously rebuilt myself.
The original setup had a Chenghao hub, which is basically equivalent to American Classic,
but the front hub's bearings kept dying quickly,
and the rear hub had narrow flanges with no lateral stiffness
（though the building method was also partly to blame）and would rub when touched,
so I'd previously rebuilt both with Novatec 291/482 hubs.
This time it was a spoke break repair,
but the rim's brake zone was quite worn,
so we decided to rebuild it with a Nomunラボ Wheel No. 5 rim.
When switching between the same radial lacing patterns,
the spokes on the replacement are about 2mm longer,
so we can't reuse the old spokes.
In the reverse scenario, if the pre-rebuild CX-RAY spokes hadn't been cut,
reuse would be possible.
Built it up.
Since we were getting new spokes anyway,
I consulted with the customer and went with tangent lacing.
CX-RAY 44 Italian pattern.
The customer basically wanted silver aluminum nipples,
blue aluminum on both sides of the valve hole,
and gold aluminum on both sides of the rim seam on the opposite side, so that's what I did.
Now for the rear wheel.
All CX-RAY spokes, semi-comp lacing,
and the red aluminum nipples changed to match the front wheel pattern—that was the request.
Built it up.
The freewheel body and hub shell look unusually clean compared to before the rebuild—
it wasn't just cleaning; I replaced the left and right bearings on both front and rear hubs.
Only the dual bearings inside the freewheel body survived; everything else was shot.
If I were rebuilding the front wheel with radial lacing instead,
I could have cut the 12 spokes from the freewheel side of the original build
and reused them for 12 of the 20 front spokes—
I even proposed this to the customer beforehand,
but they preferred the peace of mind that comes with all new spokes,
so those 12 freewheel-side spokes got tossed.
If doing reverse J-bend radial lacing,
reusing 6 of the original 12 freewheel-side spokes as reverse J-bends
isn't really ideal either.
The nipple specs are the same as the front wheel.
A customer dropped off a wheel built with an Alpine brand rim—actually a wheel I'd previously rebuilt myself.
The original setup had a Chenghao hub, which is basically equivalent to American Classic,
but the front hub's bearings kept dying quickly,
and the rear hub had narrow flanges with no lateral stiffness
（though the building method was also partly to blame）and would rub when touched,
so I'd previously rebuilt both with Novatec 291/482 hubs.
This time it was a spoke break repair,
but the rim's brake zone was quite worn,
so we decided to rebuild it with a Nomunラボ Wheel No. 5 rim.
When switching between the same radial lacing patterns,
the spokes on the replacement are about 2mm longer,
so we can't reuse the old spokes.
In the reverse scenario, if the pre-rebuild CX-RAY spokes hadn't been cut,
reuse would be possible.
Built it up.
Since we were getting new spokes anyway,
I consulted with the customer and went with tangent lacing.
CX-RAY 44 Italian pattern.
The customer basically wanted silver aluminum nipples,
blue aluminum on both sides of the valve hole,
and gold aluminum on both sides of the rim seam on the opposite side, so that's what I did.
Now for the rear wheel.
All CX-RAY spokes, semi-comp lacing,
and the red aluminum nipples changed to match the front wheel pattern—that was the request.
Built it up.
The freewheel body and hub shell look unusually clean compared to before the rebuild—
it wasn't just cleaning; I replaced the left and right bearings on both front and rear hubs.
Only the dual bearings inside the freewheel body survived; everything else was shot.
If I were rebuilding the front wheel with radial lacing instead,
I could have cut the 12 spokes from the freewheel side of the original build
and reused them for 12 of the 20 front spokes—
I even proposed this to the customer beforehand,
but they preferred the peace of mind that comes with all new spokes,
so those 12 freewheel-side spokes got tossed.
If doing reverse J-bend radial lacing,
reusing 6 of the original 12 freewheel-side spokes as reverse J-bends
isn't really ideal either.
The nipple specs are the same as the front wheel.