Another wheel day (and so on).
Today I built a wheel with a Capreo (small-wheel hub system) hub.
But there was a problem before building.
The Capreo hub is designed for 135mm over-locknut dimension.
The small-wheeled bike I'm fitting it to has 130mm dropouts,
so I need to cut 5mm off the axle shaft.
I'd anticipated this situation and thought maybe there would be three 5mm spacers included,
but that wasn't the case.
It was three 3.8mm spacers instead.
There are 0.5mm spacers and
some spacers slightly thicker than those, so
somehow
I managed to get it down to 130mm.
However, the spoke angle on the freewheel side becomes quite steep,
so this hub has an inherent disadvantage when it comes to spoke tension balance between left and right.
I went with a 4-cross lacing pattern.
I could have done 8-cross as well, but since the rim is only 18 inches,
with 8-cross lacing I was concerned that
the spoke heads might interfere with the opposite spokes, like the red spokes in the image above.
With the actual 6-cross pattern it looks like this,
so that concern might have been unfounded.
It's built. This is the matching wheel for that dynamo hub from before.
Since the spoke length is short, there's almost zero spoke flex.
The same goes for the non-freewheel side, so whether the 4-cross lacing had any effect
isn't as obvious as it would be on a 700C wheel (by feel at least).
The nipples getting tighter and the spoke tension imbalance increasing is probably
something that's happening,
but I can't really feel the difference by touch.
One more thing about the included quick release.
On a proper quick release that isn't chasing pure lightness, the axle shaft diameter
is outbatted from the threaded section.
Therefore, after cutting threads and then cutting the shaft down
for use with 130mm dropouts, you shouldn't do that.
The thread width is designed to accommodate everything from thin steel frame dropouts
to thick aluminum frame dropouts,
not to allow cutting it down to fit 130mm dropouts.
Today I built a wheel with a Capreo (small-wheel hub system) hub.
But there was a problem before building.
The Capreo hub is designed for 135mm over-locknut dimension.
The small-wheeled bike I'm fitting it to has 130mm dropouts,
so I need to cut 5mm off the axle shaft.
I'd anticipated this situation and thought maybe there would be three 5mm spacers included,
but that wasn't the case.
It was three 3.8mm spacers instead.
There are 0.5mm spacers and
some spacers slightly thicker than those, so
somehow
I managed to get it down to 130mm.
However, the spoke angle on the freewheel side becomes quite steep,
so this hub has an inherent disadvantage when it comes to spoke tension balance between left and right.
I went with a 4-cross lacing pattern.
I could have done 8-cross as well, but since the rim is only 18 inches,
with 8-cross lacing I was concerned that
the spoke heads might interfere with the opposite spokes, like the red spokes in the image above.
With the actual 6-cross pattern it looks like this,
so that concern might have been unfounded.
It's built. This is the matching wheel for that dynamo hub from before.
Since the spoke length is short, there's almost zero spoke flex.
The same goes for the non-freewheel side, so whether the 4-cross lacing had any effect
isn't as obvious as it would be on a 700C wheel (by feel at least).
The nipples getting tighter and the spoke tension imbalance increasing is probably
something that's happening,
but I can't really feel the difference by touch.
One more thing about the included quick release.
On a proper quick release that isn't chasing pure lightness, the axle shaft diameter
is outbatted from the threaded section.
Therefore, after cutting threads and then cutting the shaft down
for use with 130mm dropouts, you shouldn't do that.
The thread width is designed to accommodate everything from thin steel frame dropouts
to thick aluminum frame dropouts,
not to allow cutting it down to fit 130mm dropouts.