Another day of wheel work (and so on).
I received a front wheel from a customer—a Reynolds Strike SLG rim.
The bead hook has come loose from buckling, making the wheel unusable,
so the customer wants to replace the rim.
About how we obtained a Reynolds rim as a spare part—
it was originally purchased as a wheel included with a mail-order complete bike,
but rather than going through that complete bike brand's distributor,
Canni... a Reynolds wholesaler in Japan actually stepped in
and invoked the warranty with Reynolds headquarters. This is quite remarkable, because normally you'd be told,
"We carry Reynolds wheels, but for rim sets that came as part of a complete bike,
please contact that complete bike brand,"
and then when you reach out to the complete bike distributor,
they say the same thing back to you about the rim and frame separately—
basically a round of hot potato with zero resolution. For this to be handled so smoothly, it may have been Reynolds headquarters' policy
rather than the Japanese distributor's approach. Incidentally, the customer thought the person who helped them, Zack Reynolds,
was a Reynolds employee,
but he actually works at the Reynolds wholesaler
and is a seriously strong track cyclist—his having the same name is just a coincidence.
Anyway, once I have a rim, the reassembly work is manageable.
In the image above—not before and after rebuild rims,
but the lower one is the Strike rim before rebuild,
and the upper one is from the Nomu Lab Wheel No. 7 rim.
Finished assembling.
One more important thing the customer told me:
Reynolds' tubeless rim bead hooks are out of spec
from the ETRTO standard, so IRC has asked
customers not to install their tires on them
(→here).
When a Specialized tubeless tire was installed on this Strike SLG,
it tore exactly as described in the warning.
Moving on to another job... but first.
This is an LEW (Leu) carbon wheel.
Wing hub 18H CX-RAY reverse radial laced—
I built this one.
At this point, when it came to "LEW carbon rim," this was the only one,
so it didn't have a specific model name, but before this
there was XNG! (a brand name or model name—unclear which).
XNG! is pronounced "Zan," not "ex-en-jee exclamation mark."
XNG! or early LEW rim is characterized by
"a two-panel joint construction."
↑Carbon rims are made by joining several panels together.
The image above shows the ZIPP seam, but if you cut the rim right at the seam,
you can see wrinkles in the tire bead at the seam point.
Even when cosmetic carbon is applied to the outermost layer of the rim sidewall
so the seams aren't visible, you can still identify them from the outer edge of the rim.
The number of panels varies by rim,
but it's usually around 4, 6, or 8 pieces.
With LEW rims, two half-moon-shaped panels of 180° each are
joined to form the rim,
and reinforcing carbon is overlaid on the joint area—that's the distinctive feature.
One of the two reinforcements has the valve hole drilled through it,
and only the reinforcement area is filled with polyurethane foam.
Because the rim has extremely heavy weight concentrations at two points,
there's an interesting phenomenon I can observe, which I won't describe here,
but I'm happy to show visiting customers if they're interested.
When I say "extremely heavy," I mean relative to the lightweight panel portions,
not that the rim is heavy overall—it's around 280g total weight.
The rim width measures 17.2mm, and with a sharp curve profile,
the tires that can be mounted are quite limited:
Veloflex Corsa (nominally 20C, more like 19C—discontinued model),
Continental Competition in nominally 19C
or Podium TT (actually measures more like 20C),
and maybe some TUFO 19C or 20C models.
The reinforcement uses some serious thick carbon.
I cut one up to examine it more closely.
↑The area outside the reinforcement section
↑The area directly under the reinforcement
When I say I cut it, I didn't destroy the whole wheel—
I have a separate cutaway model.
LEW went out of business,
and their CEO was recruited by Reynolds,
so now it's organized as Reynolds' wheel division.I'm glossing over this, but if I wrote the full details it would be a long, messy story, so I'll skip it.
I received a Reynolds Stratos from a customer.
This is an early Reynolds rim from when they were making LEW-style wheels.
The valve hole, and
on the opposite side, that reinforcement,
but it's much thinner compared to LEW—
it feels more like it's there for weight balance than as structural reinforcement.
There's no seam directly under the reinforcement, but
the seams are at different positions, and it's not a two-panel construction,
so it's basically a different design that only borrows the appearance of early LEW.
Evolite hub 20H, black and silver radial 40-spoke laced.
It's got an aggressive left-right unequal spoke tension of 100/65%,
but the non-drive side is still a bit soft, so the customer wants me to reuse
the drive-side spokes and rebuild the non-drive side with four CX-RAY spokes
with cross lacing.
The drive-side spoke tension is right up against the wall,
with virtually no center offset,
so even if I build it, it'll end up the same.
In fact, the drive-side spoke tension after rebuild
came out exactly the same as before.
Finished building.
Black and silver radial 44-spoke with cross lacing.
The drive-side spokes are reused, but I had to cut them down by about 2mm
because they were too long.
When doing so, I made sure that original radial spokes stayed radial
and original cross spokes stayed cross,
because the bend pattern that forms at the spoke shoulder differs
between radial and cross orientation.
The original nipples were split between silver and black on drive and non-drive sides,
but they were both brass.
I thought, "They're being fancy so maybe the non-drive side is aluminum,"
but no dice.
After rebuilding, everything is silver aluminum nipples.
So, I'm pretty stuffed with Reynolds at this point, but
There's more! (Now get building.)
To be continued.
I received a front wheel from a customer—a Reynolds Strike SLG rim.
The bead hook has come loose from buckling, making the wheel unusable,
so the customer wants to replace the rim.
About how we obtained a Reynolds rim as a spare part—
it was originally purchased as a wheel included with a mail-order complete bike,
but rather than going through that complete bike brand's distributor,
and invoked the warranty with Reynolds headquarters. This is quite remarkable, because normally you'd be told,
"We carry Reynolds wheels, but for rim sets that came as part of a complete bike,
please contact that complete bike brand,"
and then when you reach out to the complete bike distributor,
they say the same thing back to you about the rim and frame separately—
basically a round of hot potato with zero resolution. For this to be handled so smoothly, it may have been Reynolds headquarters' policy
rather than the Japanese distributor's approach. Incidentally, the customer thought the person who helped them, Zack Reynolds,
was a Reynolds employee,
but he actually works at the Reynolds wholesaler
and is a seriously strong track cyclist—his having the same name is just a coincidence.
Anyway, once I have a rim, the reassembly work is manageable.
In the image above—not before and after rebuild rims,
but the lower one is the Strike rim before rebuild,
and the upper one is from the Nomu Lab Wheel No. 7 rim.
Finished assembling.
One more important thing the customer told me:
Reynolds' tubeless rim bead hooks are out of spec
from the ETRTO standard, so IRC has asked
customers not to install their tires on them
(→here).
When a Specialized tubeless tire was installed on this Strike SLG,
it tore exactly as described in the warning.
Moving on to another job... but first.
This is an LEW (Leu) carbon wheel.
Wing hub 18H CX-RAY reverse radial laced—
I built this one.
At this point, when it came to "LEW carbon rim," this was the only one,
so it didn't have a specific model name, but before this
there was XNG! (a brand name or model name—unclear which).
XNG! is pronounced "Zan," not "ex-en-jee exclamation mark."
XNG! or early LEW rim is characterized by
"a two-panel joint construction."
↑Carbon rims are made by joining several panels together.
The image above shows the ZIPP seam, but if you cut the rim right at the seam,
you can see wrinkles in the tire bead at the seam point.
Even when cosmetic carbon is applied to the outermost layer of the rim sidewall
so the seams aren't visible, you can still identify them from the outer edge of the rim.
The number of panels varies by rim,
but it's usually around 4, 6, or 8 pieces.
With LEW rims, two half-moon-shaped panels of 180° each are
joined to form the rim,
and reinforcing carbon is overlaid on the joint area—that's the distinctive feature.
One of the two reinforcements has the valve hole drilled through it,
and only the reinforcement area is filled with polyurethane foam.
Because the rim has extremely heavy weight concentrations at two points,
there's an interesting phenomenon I can observe, which I won't describe here,
but I'm happy to show visiting customers if they're interested.
When I say "extremely heavy," I mean relative to the lightweight panel portions,
not that the rim is heavy overall—it's around 280g total weight.
The rim width measures 17.2mm, and with a sharp curve profile,
the tires that can be mounted are quite limited:
Veloflex Corsa (nominally 20C, more like 19C—discontinued model),
Continental Competition in nominally 19C
or Podium TT (actually measures more like 20C),
and maybe some TUFO 19C or 20C models.
The reinforcement uses some serious thick carbon.
I cut one up to examine it more closely.
↑The area outside the reinforcement section
↑The area directly under the reinforcement
When I say I cut it, I didn't destroy the whole wheel—
I have a separate cutaway model.
LEW went out of business,
and their CEO was recruited by Reynolds,
so now it's organized as Reynolds' wheel division.
I received a Reynolds Stratos from a customer.
This is an early Reynolds rim from when they were making LEW-style wheels.
The valve hole, and
on the opposite side, that reinforcement,
but it's much thinner compared to LEW—
it feels more like it's there for weight balance than as structural reinforcement.
There's no seam directly under the reinforcement, but
the seams are at different positions, and it's not a two-panel construction,
so it's basically a different design that only borrows the appearance of early LEW.
Evolite hub 20H, black and silver radial 40-spoke laced.
It's got an aggressive left-right unequal spoke tension of 100/65%,
but the non-drive side is still a bit soft, so the customer wants me to reuse
the drive-side spokes and rebuild the non-drive side with four CX-RAY spokes
with cross lacing.
The drive-side spoke tension is right up against the wall,
with virtually no center offset,
so even if I build it, it'll end up the same.
In fact, the drive-side spoke tension after rebuild
came out exactly the same as before.
Finished building.
Black and silver radial 44-spoke with cross lacing.
The drive-side spokes are reused, but I had to cut them down by about 2mm
because they were too long.
When doing so, I made sure that original radial spokes stayed radial
and original cross spokes stayed cross,
because the bend pattern that forms at the spoke shoulder differs
between radial and cross orientation.
The original nipples were split between silver and black on drive and non-drive sides,
but they were both brass.
I thought, "They're being fancy so maybe the non-drive side is aluminum,"
but no dice.
After rebuilding, everything is silver aluminum nipples.
So, I'm pretty stuffed with Reynolds at this point, but
There's more! (Now get building.)
To be continued.