Another day of wheels (and so on).
A customer left me with the wheels that came stock on a Specialized complete bike.
To be precise, I received the complete bike itself, and
as part of the work to swap out parts that are "just not gonna cut it,"
this is one of those jobs.
It's equipped with tires claiming to be 26C,
but when I measured the actual maximum tire width, it came out to 27mm, likely due to the wide rim.
This is a wheel that comes stock on a women's road bike, but
the latest trend seems to be putting such heavy, wide tires on riders who lack the power to handle them.
The hub is a 24H through-axle disc brake hub with an over-locknut dimension of 142mm (measured 141.7mm),
built with CN round-butted spokes (specific gravity equivalent to full comp)
in a 4x4 JIS lacing pattern.
The spoke deflection on the non-drive side is extremely pronounced,
and I actually chuckled in front of the customer.
Since the drive side could be tensioned a bit more, things would improve somewhat if built properly from here,
but there are other reasons, so I'm rebuilding it.
If this wheel were 32H or 28H, I would have rebuilt it with a new rim and hub,
using a Shimano CX75 hub (28H spec only).
Even in that case, since the disc rotor is centerlock type,
the rotor wouldn't go to waste.
If that were the approach, there'd be no need to disassemble this wheel.
In this case, the 24H spoke count is rare and excellent, so I'm reusing the hub.
I stripped the components.
This thing has a subtle offset rim,
and it's unbelievable how slack the non-drive side is compared to the drive side.
Could it be because the hub has equal-diameter flanges on both sides?
Or maybe there's a pronounced centering issue,
but I didn't bother checking and just took it apart anyway.
Built it up.
I'm using an XR200 rim. I have some doubts about using a rim with a brake zone on a disc brake-only wheel,
but if I were to switch to something like a Novatubes disc brake-specific rim,
the Ironcross at 385g is quite light,
but its air pressure spec maxes out at 45psi (about 3 bar),
making it essentially a cyclocross-only rim—not suitable for road bikes.
If I went with the Grail instead, the rim weight would be 460g,
which isn't that much lighter, so I rejected it.
And in either case, the wide rim width makes it unsuitable for 23C tires.
When looking for something light without a wide rim, this turned out to be the sweet spot.
24H, black half-comp, 4x6 JIS laced.
I'll do the spoke lacing later.
The frame is a deep purple color, so I matched the nipple color to it.
With a 142mm hub, I had to remove the snap ring that prevents the component from falling out
where the centering gauge contacts the hub.
The pre-rebuild rim weight was lighter than I expected—
pleasantly surprised in a good way.
↑XR200 rim.
I just grabbed one from the box without any selection.
The lightest XR200 I've seen was 369g, the heaviest 398g,
with an average of 384g (according to our measurements),
so this one is on the lighter side.
↑Pre-rebuild
↑Post-rebuild (will be a few grams heavier once laced)
Roughly speaking, there's a 50g rim weight difference and a 100g wheel weight difference,
but the pre-rebuild image shows rim tape installed, so it's really an 80g difference.
The difference outside the rim amounts to 30g,
but just swapping 12 spokes on the non-drive side from comp-equivalent 4x to CX-RAY 6x
shouldn't lighten things by 30g.
Actually, the black nipples on the pre-rebuild were brass.
So the 80g breakdown is roughly 50g rim, 15g nipples, 15g spokes,
meaning almost all of it is outer diameter weight reduction.
Needless to say, lightening the tire and tube is also important.
You might think the pre-rebuild drive-side spokes didn't need replacing,
but having comp-equivalent specific gravity doesn't mean they're comp-equivalent in spoke strength,
so replacement was indeed necessary.
A customer left me with the wheels that came stock on a Specialized complete bike.
To be precise, I received the complete bike itself, and
as part of the work to swap out parts that are "just not gonna cut it,"
this is one of those jobs.
It's equipped with tires claiming to be 26C,
but when I measured the actual maximum tire width, it came out to 27mm, likely due to the wide rim.
This is a wheel that comes stock on a women's road bike, but
the latest trend seems to be putting such heavy, wide tires on riders who lack the power to handle them.
The hub is a 24H through-axle disc brake hub with an over-locknut dimension of 142mm (measured 141.7mm),
built with CN round-butted spokes (specific gravity equivalent to full comp)
in a 4x4 JIS lacing pattern.
The spoke deflection on the non-drive side is extremely pronounced,
and I actually chuckled in front of the customer.
Since the drive side could be tensioned a bit more, things would improve somewhat if built properly from here,
but there are other reasons, so I'm rebuilding it.
If this wheel were 32H or 28H, I would have rebuilt it with a new rim and hub,
using a Shimano CX75 hub (28H spec only).
Even in that case, since the disc rotor is centerlock type,
the rotor wouldn't go to waste.
If that were the approach, there'd be no need to disassemble this wheel.
In this case, the 24H spoke count is rare and excellent, so I'm reusing the hub.
I stripped the components.
This thing has a subtle offset rim,
and it's unbelievable how slack the non-drive side is compared to the drive side.
Could it be because the hub has equal-diameter flanges on both sides?
Or maybe there's a pronounced centering issue,
but I didn't bother checking and just took it apart anyway.
Built it up.
I'm using an XR200 rim. I have some doubts about using a rim with a brake zone on a disc brake-only wheel,
but if I were to switch to something like a Novatubes disc brake-specific rim,
the Ironcross at 385g is quite light,
but its air pressure spec maxes out at 45psi (about 3 bar),
making it essentially a cyclocross-only rim—not suitable for road bikes.
If I went with the Grail instead, the rim weight would be 460g,
which isn't that much lighter, so I rejected it.
And in either case, the wide rim width makes it unsuitable for 23C tires.
When looking for something light without a wide rim, this turned out to be the sweet spot.
24H, black half-comp, 4x6 JIS laced.
I'll do the spoke lacing later.
The frame is a deep purple color, so I matched the nipple color to it.
With a 142mm hub, I had to remove the snap ring that prevents the component from falling out
where the centering gauge contacts the hub.
The pre-rebuild rim weight was lighter than I expected—
pleasantly surprised in a good way.
↑XR200 rim.
I just grabbed one from the box without any selection.
The lightest XR200 I've seen was 369g, the heaviest 398g,
with an average of 384g (according to our measurements),
so this one is on the lighter side.
↑Pre-rebuild
↑Post-rebuild (will be a few grams heavier once laced)
Roughly speaking, there's a 50g rim weight difference and a 100g wheel weight difference,
but the pre-rebuild image shows rim tape installed, so it's really an 80g difference.
The difference outside the rim amounts to 30g,
but just swapping 12 spokes on the non-drive side from comp-equivalent 4x to CX-RAY 6x
shouldn't lighten things by 30g.
Actually, the black nipples on the pre-rebuild were brass.
So the 80g breakdown is roughly 50g rim, 15g nipples, 15g spokes,
meaning almost all of it is outer diameter weight reduction.
Needless to say, lightening the tire and tube is also important.
You might think the pre-rebuild drive-side spokes didn't need replacing,
but having comp-equivalent specific gravity doesn't mean they're comp-equivalent in spoke strength,
so replacement was indeed necessary.