Another day with wheels (and so on).
I received a Shamal Mille rear wheel from a customer.
The rim is badly dented.
This angle might make it clearer.
It looks like a bite mark from a stag beetle, but that's not what happened—
apparently the customer had a crash.
Regarding whether to repair it or not,
a Shamal Mille rear rim (without sticker) has a retail price of ¥48,966 including tax.
At that price, you might as well just buy a whole new rear wheel, right?
But this hub has been upgraded from USB bearings (※１) to CULT bearings (※２).
So it seemed wasteful to throw away this hub, and we decided to
rebuild it with a Shamal Ultra rear rim (no sticker, retail price ¥23,195 including tax).
※２ Ceramic Ultimate Level Technology bearing
※１ Ultra Smooth Bearing bearing
And yes, at my age, the notation "USB bearing" bothers me.
The spokes around the dented area appear to be bent.
As I mentioned in an earlier post,
the current Mega G3 hub has spokes on the anti-porcupine side hooked from inside the flange, making spoke replacement easy.
And when both sides of a hub have hook-type spokes,
you can carefully disassemble about half the wheel and slide the hub out.
That spoke at the problem area was definitely no good.
All built up.
The wheel magnet was mounted on the anti-freehub-side spokes, positioned almost directly across from the valve hole, so I kept that same orientation after the rebuild.
Without a sticker, the rim seam looks like this,
and the Shamal Mille looks pretty much the same.
Jumping back in time a bit here,
the new centering gauge makes this small gap a bit hard to see.
I did center it afterwards, just to be safe.
I replaced a total of three spokes.
Unless the customer specifically requests a full rebuild,
I tend to be pretty conservative about reusing spokes, but
that one that was bent badly in the lateral direction, and
these two here—I determined they needed to be replaced.
I received a Shamal Mille rear wheel from a customer.
The rim is badly dented.
This angle might make it clearer.
It looks like a bite mark from a stag beetle, but that's not what happened—
apparently the customer had a crash.
Regarding whether to repair it or not,
a Shamal Mille rear rim (without sticker) has a retail price of ¥48,966 including tax.
At that price, you might as well just buy a whole new rear wheel, right?
But this hub has been upgraded from USB bearings (※１) to CULT bearings (※２).
So it seemed wasteful to throw away this hub, and we decided to
rebuild it with a Shamal Ultra rear rim (no sticker, retail price ¥23,195 including tax).
※２ Ceramic Ultimate Level Technology bearing
※１ Ultra Smooth Bearing bearing
And yes, at my age, the notation "USB bearing" bothers me.
The spokes around the dented area appear to be bent.
As I mentioned in an earlier post,
the current Mega G3 hub has spokes on the anti-porcupine side hooked from inside the flange, making spoke replacement easy.
And when both sides of a hub have hook-type spokes,
you can carefully disassemble about half the wheel and slide the hub out.
That spoke at the problem area was definitely no good.
All built up.
The wheel magnet was mounted on the anti-freehub-side spokes, positioned almost directly across from the valve hole, so I kept that same orientation after the rebuild.
Without a sticker, the rim seam looks like this,
and the Shamal Mille looks pretty much the same.
Jumping back in time a bit here,
the new centering gauge makes this small gap a bit hard to see.
I did center it afterwards, just to be safe.
I replaced a total of three spokes.
Unless the customer specifically requests a full rebuild,
I tend to be pretty conservative about reusing spokes, but
that one that was bent badly in the lateral direction, and
these two here—I determined they needed to be replaced.