Another day with wheels (et cetera).
A customer left me a pair of wheels built with Chris King hubs.
The front rim is a DT RR440,
and the rear is an RR440 Asymmetric, which is an offset version of the R440.
Apparently they were built at a local shop,
and the customer told me which one before I even asked.
It was a shop name I'd never heard of, but since the location is on the route I ride home on during my night rides,
I managed to spot it the other day when passing through. Hmm.
When ordering, the customer said something like "I haven't really done wheel building much before...",
so even with that level of self-awareness,
they used expensive materials like Chris King. That's something else.
Starting with the front wheel.
32H all-black competition reverse-butted radial lacing.
And apparently this front wheel shoots and touches the shoe when doing standing climbs.
When I grabbed the spokes, they were floppy.
The radial and lateral runout are fairly decent.
Slightly worse than a stock Shimano wheel, I'd say.
The center offset was about two sheets of paper thick.
Depending on the precision of the center gauge, this might be flagged as "off".
Both wheels have silver aluminum nipples.
After reassembly, the customer wants nipples in a color as close as possible to the hub's anodizing,
so I'll use DT Turquoise.
Built.
Black CX-RAY reverse-butted radial lacing.
The choice of CX-RAY was the customer's request.
The rim tape installed was 17mm wide, but that's too narrow for this rim.
That said, if it had been a normal clincher rim, it probably would have just barely worked.
Shifting this way
and that way is because
the rim tape is sagging into the bead seat depression for tubeless tires, losing width.
I installed a 21mm wide Stans rim tape.
This is probably irrelevant, but I open the valve hole on this rim tape using the heat of a soldering iron.
In the manufacturer's official video, they carve it out with a small knife,
but using the method where you place a Phillips screwdriver and tap it out,
the valve hole sometimes splits lengthwise,
and in that case you can't use it for tubeless setups with a tubeless valve installed.
In the image above, I'm opening the hole to the full diameter of the outer rim hole,
but for tubeless valve applications, I keep it just large enough for the valve to pass through.
After installing the rim tape...
I put on some random tire and tube and inflated to 9 bar once.
The tape follows the rim profile nicely with no overhanging sections.
Next, the rear wheel.
The rim is heavily offset toward the freewheel side.
When I grab the spokes,
they flex this much—but this is the freewheel side.
The spokes are all-black competition, but have been arrogantly laced 4-cross.
For a hack who can barely build something this pathetic,
doing 4-cross lacing is pointless.
Of course, someone with this level of building skill could never reach the concept of left-right asymmetric lacing in a lifetime,
so I suspect this is copied from me, but if the state of this wheel is being used to evaluate the efficacy of asymmetric lacing,
that would be absolutely infuriating.
Just to be clear, I'm not saying don't do 4-cross lacing—
I'm saying build a proper wheel.
Honestly, I feel bad for the Chris King hub.
I reused the freewheel side competition spokes.
Since there was no threadlocker on the spoke threads and some weird oil was smeared on,
it was a pain to degrease.
When reassembling, I didn't remove the freewheel side spokes from the hub,
to distinguish between normal and reverse-butted spokes.
The spoke length is flush with the nipple slot, so by my standard where the edge of the nipple itself represents correct length,
it's "no problem but slightly short"—
but actually, this is exactly the length I think is correct.
Even though I reused the same length spokes,
they ended up flush with the nipple edge.
Considering that the reassembly was clearly under-tensioned before,
I predicted this is where it would end up after rebuilding.
The non-freewheel side is black CX-RAY.
The spoke ends are silver-colored not because they were cut, but because paint isn't applied to the thread ends from the start.
Built.
Black semi-competition 4-cross lacing.
I'll do the lacing tie later.
While building, I was struck by how clearly the offset rim was working—I could feel I could still tension the non-freewheel side more.
Squeezing the freewheel side spokes after reassembly.
To be fair, I squeezed with more force than before rebuilding.
Of course the wheel is centered.
A customer left me a pair of wheels built with Chris King hubs.
The front rim is a DT RR440,
and the rear is an RR440 Asymmetric, which is an offset version of the R440.
Apparently they were built at a local shop,
and the customer told me which one before I even asked.
It was a shop name I'd never heard of, but since the location is on the route I ride home on during my night rides,
I managed to spot it the other day when passing through. Hmm.
When ordering, the customer said something like "I haven't really done wheel building much before...",
so even with that level of self-awareness,
they used expensive materials like Chris King. That's something else.
Starting with the front wheel.
32H all-black competition reverse-butted radial lacing.
And apparently this front wheel shoots and touches the shoe when doing standing climbs.
When I grabbed the spokes, they were floppy.
The radial and lateral runout are fairly decent.
Slightly worse than a stock Shimano wheel, I'd say.
The center offset was about two sheets of paper thick.
Depending on the precision of the center gauge, this might be flagged as "off".
Both wheels have silver aluminum nipples.
After reassembly, the customer wants nipples in a color as close as possible to the hub's anodizing,
so I'll use DT Turquoise.
Built.
Black CX-RAY reverse-butted radial lacing.
The choice of CX-RAY was the customer's request.
The rim tape installed was 17mm wide, but that's too narrow for this rim.
That said, if it had been a normal clincher rim, it probably would have just barely worked.
Shifting this way
and that way is because
the rim tape is sagging into the bead seat depression for tubeless tires, losing width.
I installed a 21mm wide Stans rim tape.
This is probably irrelevant, but I open the valve hole on this rim tape using the heat of a soldering iron.
In the manufacturer's official video, they carve it out with a small knife,
but using the method where you place a Phillips screwdriver and tap it out,
the valve hole sometimes splits lengthwise,
and in that case you can't use it for tubeless setups with a tubeless valve installed.
In the image above, I'm opening the hole to the full diameter of the outer rim hole,
but for tubeless valve applications, I keep it just large enough for the valve to pass through.
After installing the rim tape...
I put on some random tire and tube and inflated to 9 bar once.
The tape follows the rim profile nicely with no overhanging sections.
Next, the rear wheel.
The rim is heavily offset toward the freewheel side.
When I grab the spokes,
they flex this much—but this is the freewheel side.
The spokes are all-black competition, but have been arrogantly laced 4-cross.
For a hack who can barely build something this pathetic,
doing 4-cross lacing is pointless.
Of course, someone with this level of building skill could never reach the concept of left-right asymmetric lacing in a lifetime,
so I suspect this is copied from me, but if the state of this wheel is being used to evaluate the efficacy of asymmetric lacing,
that would be absolutely infuriating.
Just to be clear, I'm not saying don't do 4-cross lacing—
I'm saying build a proper wheel.
Honestly, I feel bad for the Chris King hub.
I reused the freewheel side competition spokes.
Since there was no threadlocker on the spoke threads and some weird oil was smeared on,
it was a pain to degrease.
When reassembling, I didn't remove the freewheel side spokes from the hub,
to distinguish between normal and reverse-butted spokes.
The spoke length is flush with the nipple slot, so by my standard where the edge of the nipple itself represents correct length,
it's "no problem but slightly short"—
but actually, this is exactly the length I think is correct.
Even though I reused the same length spokes,
they ended up flush with the nipple edge.
Considering that the reassembly was clearly under-tensioned before,
I predicted this is where it would end up after rebuilding.
The non-freewheel side is black CX-RAY.
The spoke ends are silver-colored not because they were cut, but because paint isn't applied to the thread ends from the start.
Built.
Black semi-competition 4-cross lacing.
I'll do the lacing tie later.
While building, I was struck by how clearly the offset rim was working—I could feel I could still tension the non-freewheel side more.
Squeezing the freewheel side spokes after reassembly.
To be fair, I squeezed with more force than before rebuilding.
Of course the wheel is centered.