Another wheel day today (details omitted).
A customer left me with the rear wheel from an EA90SLX.
The rim was warped, and when I tried to true it,
there were nipples so loose that truing became impossible.
So we decided to replace the rim.
To jump ahead a bit—I placed the disassembled rim on a glass surface plate
and showed the customer the prominent distortion.
I mentioned recently that R4SL hubs are stiff quite often,
but this one seemed salvageable.
I wanted to reuse the spokes too, but
the EA90SLX rim's inner diameter falls between XR300 and XR200—
closer to XR200—so
XR200 spokes would be slightly too short to build with.
With XR300, the plain section above the threaded part is longer,
so I could trim it and reuse them.
I tried switching to Nomulabo Wheel #1, but...
Freewheel side
Non-freewheel side
This wheel's spokes are obviously too long.
The threaded portion length isn't specially set,
and the nipples are just standard parts, so they're clearly oversized.
But this time, that extra length saved me.
↑Carefully loosened 21 of the 24 nipples
Here's one of the remaining 3.
Since no nipples were loosened at all, the wheel was assembled in this state.
If building to the end face of the nipple, there's 3 threads of clearance,
and if building to below the slot, there's 6-7 threads of clearance.
Thanks to this, I realized that when building with an XR200 rim,
I could assemble it just past the slot.
One of the freewheel-side spokes had a nipple that was slightly seized,
so I cleaned it.
The threaded length is standard off-the-shelf.
↑As examples of proprietary designs: above is a Cosmic Carbone spoke, #13 gauge with extended threads,
and below is from a WH-6800, which uses a hollow nipple threaded through
and then fixed with a brass cup (the Mavic-style Zicral spoke format),
so the length is only what the cup requires.
Built it up.
Replaced with new red aluminum nipples.
The rim weight dropped about 70g,
so compared to the old rim, it feels like you've eliminated the tube weight.
A customer left me with the rear wheel from an EA90SLX.
The rim was warped, and when I tried to true it,
there were nipples so loose that truing became impossible.
So we decided to replace the rim.
To jump ahead a bit—I placed the disassembled rim on a glass surface plate
and showed the customer the prominent distortion.
I mentioned recently that R4SL hubs are stiff quite often,
but this one seemed salvageable.
I wanted to reuse the spokes too, but
the EA90SLX rim's inner diameter falls between XR300 and XR200—
closer to XR200—so
XR200 spokes would be slightly too short to build with.
With XR300, the plain section above the threaded part is longer,
so I could trim it and reuse them.
I tried switching to Nomulabo Wheel #1, but...
Freewheel side
Non-freewheel side
This wheel's spokes are obviously too long.
The threaded portion length isn't specially set,
and the nipples are just standard parts, so they're clearly oversized.
But this time, that extra length saved me.
↑Carefully loosened 21 of the 24 nipples
Here's one of the remaining 3.
Since no nipples were loosened at all, the wheel was assembled in this state.
If building to the end face of the nipple, there's 3 threads of clearance,
and if building to below the slot, there's 6-7 threads of clearance.
Thanks to this, I realized that when building with an XR200 rim,
I could assemble it just past the slot.
One of the freewheel-side spokes had a nipple that was slightly seized,
so I cleaned it.
The threaded length is standard off-the-shelf.
↑As examples of proprietary designs: above is a Cosmic Carbone spoke, #13 gauge with extended threads,
and below is from a WH-6800, which uses a hollow nipple threaded through
and then fixed with a brass cup (the Mavic-style Zicral spoke format),
so the length is only what the cup requires.
Built it up.
Replaced with new red aluminum nipples.
The rim weight dropped about 70g,
so compared to the old rim, it feels like you've eliminated the tube weight.