A customer dropped off a carbon wheel from a certain brand.
I'll keep the specific brand name out of this post.
They didn't mention anything being loose, but
if we can tighten it up further, that's great! And they gave the okay to lace it too!
So I'll do my best to make it as tight as possible.
It has a sticker for Vision Metron 40, which is FSA's wheel brand.
The rim's claimed depth is 40mm, and my measurement with calipers also confirmed 38mm.
Well, there are wheels out there claiming to be C60 when they're actually 50mm deep,
so this discrepancy isn't a big deal.
The hub is a Novatech FS522SB.
It says DT Swiss, but don't pay attention to that.
The spokes on both sides are black, equivalent to CX-RAY grade,
but they're neither Sapim nor DT.
They're a bit lighter in black than genuine black CX-RAYs, but they stick firmly to a magnet,
so I'll trust them and reuse the non-drive side spokes.
There's a slight lateral offset, but virtually no runout.
The spoke tension was really high—
if I were to build a rear wheel with this material myself,
I'm not sure I'd tension it this tight.
Since these are straight-gauge spokes,
my only options are to change the spoke gauge (weight) on the drive side
and lace the non-drive side.
The lacing is straightforward since the final cross was already woven in from the start.
On a different note, we just got in spare spokes for the new Zonda that was widened to a C17 rim
and no longer uses different gauges left and right.
I stock enough spokes to handle immediate requests, though complete spoke replacements aren't that common.
The part numbers have moved from WH-016/018/019ZOC
to 116/118/119, with the hundreds place incrementing by one.
I thought the front and rear left would use the same spoke,
but the nipples were changed to ones with a threaded-locking feature,
and since those nipples have different lengths, the spoke lengths differ too.
The rear-right 118 for this seemed like it might match the rear-right spoke length of this wheel,
so I checked and found they differ by only 0.5mm in actual measurement.
With this wheel, the flange diameter is smaller, the rim height is taller, and the lacing is different from Zonda—
it all worked out such that the spoke length came out nearly identical.
I'm probably going to get told off for immediately repurposing brand-new spokes in this unconventional way,
but I checked the spoke gauges and there was negligible difference,
so that idea got rejected.
Since the hub is designed for straight spokes, I can't use different gauges left and right,
so I went all-in on different gauges and ended up using a 14-gauge plain leader for the drive side.
Built it.
Changed the drive-side spokes to black straight-gauge leader spokes,
And laced the final cross on the non-drive side.
It has a DT 240S hub sticker, though a 240S hub should have a star-ratchet freebody.
I lined it up with the rear wheel from the Novatech hub Iamx Cross rim I built recently.
There's a white band with the hub model name on it, and the DT sticker is positioned along that border... (more on this later).
I also have the front wheel here.
The spokes are the same as the rear wheel, so I don't see any need to change parts—
I'll just inspect it.
It's perfectly centered with virtually no runout, but
what caught my attention is that it's also tensioned just as tight as the rear wheel.
I haven't confirmed with the customer, but
I suspect this wheel was tensioned even tighter than it left the factory.
Also, in rebuilding the wheel, I reused the aluminum nipples despite publicly stating I don't do that normally,
but that's because this wheel's nipples have a shape where you can turn them from the outer edge too,
like internal nipples.
Grabbing the inner side and tensioning it this tight isn't impossible, but it's very difficult.
The hub is a Novatech AS511SB,
and following the rule of positioning the DT sticker along the white band with the model name,
it ends up shifted to the left.
I'll keep the specific brand name out of this post.
They didn't mention anything being loose, but
if we can tighten it up further, that's great! And they gave the okay to lace it too!
So I'll do my best to make it as tight as possible.
It has a sticker for Vision Metron 40, which is FSA's wheel brand.
The rim's claimed depth is 40mm, and my measurement with calipers also confirmed 38mm.
Well, there are wheels out there claiming to be C60 when they're actually 50mm deep,
so this discrepancy isn't a big deal.
The hub is a Novatech FS522SB.
It says DT Swiss, but don't pay attention to that.
The spokes on both sides are black, equivalent to CX-RAY grade,
but they're neither Sapim nor DT.
They're a bit lighter in black than genuine black CX-RAYs, but they stick firmly to a magnet,
so I'll trust them and reuse the non-drive side spokes.
There's a slight lateral offset, but virtually no runout.
The spoke tension was really high—
if I were to build a rear wheel with this material myself,
I'm not sure I'd tension it this tight.
Since these are straight-gauge spokes,
my only options are to change the spoke gauge (weight) on the drive side
and lace the non-drive side.
The lacing is straightforward since the final cross was already woven in from the start.
On a different note, we just got in spare spokes for the new Zonda that was widened to a C17 rim
and no longer uses different gauges left and right.
I stock enough spokes to handle immediate requests, though complete spoke replacements aren't that common.
The part numbers have moved from WH-016/018/019ZOC
to 116/118/119, with the hundreds place incrementing by one.
I thought the front and rear left would use the same spoke,
but the nipples were changed to ones with a threaded-locking feature,
and since those nipples have different lengths, the spoke lengths differ too.
The rear-right 118 for this seemed like it might match the rear-right spoke length of this wheel,
so I checked and found they differ by only 0.5mm in actual measurement.
With this wheel, the flange diameter is smaller, the rim height is taller, and the lacing is different from Zonda—
it all worked out such that the spoke length came out nearly identical.
I'm probably going to get told off for immediately repurposing brand-new spokes in this unconventional way,
but I checked the spoke gauges and there was negligible difference,
so that idea got rejected.
Since the hub is designed for straight spokes, I can't use different gauges left and right,
so I went all-in on different gauges and ended up using a 14-gauge plain leader for the drive side.
Built it.
Changed the drive-side spokes to black straight-gauge leader spokes,
And laced the final cross on the non-drive side.
It has a DT 240S hub sticker, though a 240S hub should have a star-ratchet freebody.
I lined it up with the rear wheel from the Novatech hub Iamx Cross rim I built recently.
There's a white band with the hub model name on it, and the DT sticker is positioned along that border... (more on this later).
I also have the front wheel here.
The spokes are the same as the rear wheel, so I don't see any need to change parts—
I'll just inspect it.
It's perfectly centered with virtually no runout, but
what caught my attention is that it's also tensioned just as tight as the rear wheel.
I haven't confirmed with the customer, but
I suspect this wheel was tensioned even tighter than it left the factory.
Also, in rebuilding the wheel, I reused the aluminum nipples despite publicly stating I don't do that normally,
but that's because this wheel's nipples have a shape where you can turn them from the outer edge too,
like internal nipples.
Grabbing the inner side and tensioning it this tight isn't impossible, but it's very difficult.
The hub is a Novatech AS511SB,
and following the rule of positioning the DT sticker along the white band with the model name,
it ends up shifted to the left.