A customer brought in a Planet X rear wheel for me to work on.
The outermost layer is decorative carbon similar to my Noma Lab Wheel No. 2,
so it's easy to spot, but it's an Equinox rim.
The finish is different in terms of gloss, though.
It was built with Pillar flat aero spokes with 100% equivalent spoke density
in a 24H radial four-cross pattern, but the tension had sagged somewhat from years of use.
That said, even if I tensioned the freewheel side up to the limit,
I don't think it would become much of a wheel (I'll explain why later).
According to the customer, it actually experiences spoke rub,
and they want me to rebuild it stiffer.
Since they also own other wheels I've built,
I don't really need to explain how it will transform.
Noma Lab Wheel No. 3 uses a WH139 rim,
which is 2mm lower in height and slightly wider than this one.
Based on the serial number, the rim is definitely from 2010,
and the wheel is the same year or at the latest from 2011.
Built.
Reef hub, 24H, half-championship laced with bracing.
In the case of Noma Lab Wheel No. 3, the front rim is 20H and
the rear rim is 24H,
and the rear rim has directional specification (a designation of which way the freebody should face),
so although it doesn't look like an offset rim, it's rear-"specific,"
but the front rim can be used as a rear rim.
In most cases, I build the rear wheel with the front 20H,
because I judge that 24H would become (for most riders) unnecessarily stiff.
This rim has rim height and allowable tension nearly identical to the WH139,
so it can be tensioned the same way, but since it's 24H, half-championship
isn't really necessary—half-competition would be enough—but the customer requested half-championship.
Nice. Hehehehe.
As for the Planet X hub,
in terms of Tni hubs, it's a Novatech hub equivalent to the Evohub, the predecessor to the Evolite hub,
but with narrower flange widths.
When I align the Reef hub's right flange as shown in the image above,
the left flange is this narrow.
This is why the pre-rebuild wheel, no matter how you tensioned it,
wouldn't amount to much.
It felt noticeably heavier in my hand, so I weighed it.
It bounced between 299g, but this is what it read at the moment I took the photo.
The Reef hub is as you see.
However, I don't weight hub mass that heavily,
so strictly speaking, if it's necessary to accept a 183g hub before rebuild
and a 300g hub after rebuild to get the difference in stiffness,
I don't think there's any problem.
In reality it's the opposite, so it worked out well in terms of weight reduction too.
The outermost layer is decorative carbon similar to my Noma Lab Wheel No. 2,
so it's easy to spot, but it's an Equinox rim.
The finish is different in terms of gloss, though.
It was built with Pillar flat aero spokes with 100% equivalent spoke density
in a 24H radial four-cross pattern, but the tension had sagged somewhat from years of use.
That said, even if I tensioned the freewheel side up to the limit,
I don't think it would become much of a wheel (I'll explain why later).
According to the customer, it actually experiences spoke rub,
and they want me to rebuild it stiffer.
Since they also own other wheels I've built,
I don't really need to explain how it will transform.
Noma Lab Wheel No. 3 uses a WH139 rim,
which is 2mm lower in height and slightly wider than this one.
Based on the serial number, the rim is definitely from 2010,
and the wheel is the same year or at the latest from 2011.
Built.
Reef hub, 24H, half-championship laced with bracing.
In the case of Noma Lab Wheel No. 3, the front rim is 20H and
the rear rim is 24H,
and the rear rim has directional specification (a designation of which way the freebody should face),
so although it doesn't look like an offset rim, it's rear-"specific,"
but the front rim can be used as a rear rim.
In most cases, I build the rear wheel with the front 20H,
because I judge that 24H would become (for most riders) unnecessarily stiff.
This rim has rim height and allowable tension nearly identical to the WH139,
so it can be tensioned the same way, but since it's 24H, half-championship
isn't really necessary—half-competition would be enough—but the customer requested half-championship.
Nice. Hehehehe.
As for the Planet X hub,
in terms of Tni hubs, it's a Novatech hub equivalent to the Evohub, the predecessor to the Evolite hub,
but with narrower flange widths.
When I align the Reef hub's right flange as shown in the image above,
the left flange is this narrow.
This is why the pre-rebuild wheel, no matter how you tensioned it,
wouldn't amount to much.
It felt noticeably heavier in my hand, so I weighed it.
It bounced between 299g, but this is what it read at the moment I took the photo.
The Reef hub is as you see.
However, I don't weight hub mass that heavily,
so strictly speaking, if it's necessary to accept a 183g hub before rebuild
and a 300g hub after rebuild to get the difference in stiffness,
I don't think there's any problem.
In reality it's the opposite, so it worked out well in terms of weight reduction too.