A customer brought in a wheel built with a Smart Envision System 3.4 WO rim and PowerTap hubs front and rear.
The front wheel has a 35mm deep rim and the rear is 45mm deep, with the rim width also differing front to rear.
The front hub is also a PowerTap.
The front wheel had quite a bit of runout. When I touched the loose rim side with the gauge, it rattled like crazy.
I'm not sure if it's because there was some time between when they dropped it off and when I got around to it, but the front wheel was flat despite them riding it in.
The cause was probably this. There's a PowerTap rim tape installed, but the width doesn't match at all. The Smart Envision WO rim should come with a dedicated width rim tape (with properly different widths front and rear), but it looks like the wheel builder pocketed it. Setting that aside though, you'd think they'd notice the width didn't match when installing it...
I tried using the spare tubes from the customer's saddle bag for the repair, but both of them had holes in them—probably punctured by a multi-tool or something.
I guessed that the wheel builder was American, and I was right—
Only Americans build road bike rear wheels with reverse Italian lacing.
The rear wheel—the anti-freewheel side seemed noticeably loose (I thought), but the freewheel side was laced all the way tight, so expecting the rim to be shifted significantly toward the freewheel side (which would allow tension on the anti-freewheel side), I checked with the centering gauge and confirmed it was shifted toward the freewheel side, but only by about the thickness of a piece of paper. It's basically centered. So what I thought was loose was just my imagination—with a 24H full CX-RAY (Campagnolo Record) reverse build on a hub this size, this is about the best you can do even with maximum effort.
If hand-built wheel limits are really this tight, then pre-built wheels actually do make sense.
The front wheel has a 35mm deep rim and the rear is 45mm deep, with the rim width also differing front to rear.
The front hub is also a PowerTap.
The front wheel had quite a bit of runout. When I touched the loose rim side with the gauge, it rattled like crazy.
I'm not sure if it's because there was some time between when they dropped it off and when I got around to it, but the front wheel was flat despite them riding it in.
The cause was probably this. There's a PowerTap rim tape installed, but the width doesn't match at all. The Smart Envision WO rim should come with a dedicated width rim tape (with properly different widths front and rear), but it looks like the wheel builder pocketed it. Setting that aside though, you'd think they'd notice the width didn't match when installing it...
I tried using the spare tubes from the customer's saddle bag for the repair, but both of them had holes in them—probably punctured by a multi-tool or something.
I guessed that the wheel builder was American, and I was right—
Only Americans build road bike rear wheels with reverse Italian lacing.
The rear wheel—the anti-freewheel side seemed noticeably loose (I thought), but the freewheel side was laced all the way tight, so expecting the rim to be shifted significantly toward the freewheel side (which would allow tension on the anti-freewheel side), I checked with the centering gauge and confirmed it was shifted toward the freewheel side, but only by about the thickness of a piece of paper. It's basically centered. So what I thought was loose was just my imagination—with a 24H full CX-RAY (Campagnolo Record) reverse build on a hub this size, this is about the best you can do even with maximum effort.
If hand-built wheel limits are really this tight, then pre-built wheels actually do make sense.