It's wheels again today (and so on).
A customer brought in the rear wheel of a Bora Ultra 35 Tubular for service.
↑The rim is crumpled from buckling.
The rims on Bora One and Bora Ultra are identical except for the decal markings.
The decals are underneath clear coating, so they can't be peeled off and won't peel off.
That's why there's no single decal sold separately,
and for example you can't swap a Bora One to look like a Bora Ultra by replacing the decal.
Bora Ultra has spare rim availability as spare parts,
but Bora One doesn't.
The reason for this is that the rims for Bora Ultra and Bora One should theoretically be the same price in terms of specifications,
but that rim price is extremely close to the price of the Bora One wheel itself (especially the front wheel).
So if a Bora One gets damaged on just one side,
you could either buy another single Bora One
or rebuild it with a Bora Ultra rim,
but for the Bora One, unless there are special circumstances like having converted the hub to CULT specification,
buying the whole wheel as a single unit is more cost-effective.
In this case it was a Bora Ultra, so we went with a rim replacement.
This was brought in on January 20th of this year.
I ordered the rim right away, and it was supposed to arrive (just supposed to, mind you) around the end of February,
The customer absolutely needed this rear wheel by April 15th for the Ibuki Mountain Hill Climb,
but it didn't arrive by the end of February, nor even by the end of March, so
I thought "there's no way this is happening" and built up the rear wheel of the nomunlab Wheel No. 2 that I loan to customers (→here). That was on April 6th.
Then on Thursday, April 12th—just three days before the event—the spare rim finally arrived.
Seriously, it ended up being cutting it incredibly close.
But building the wheel on Thursday or Friday
and having the customer pick it up the next day was more hassle at that point anyway.
Plus the tubular tire would already be glued on with rim cement.
So in the end, I deliberately didn't tell the customer the rim had arrived,
and just built the wheel for the Ibuki ride the next day.
If only the rim had arrived a week earlier...
When I mentioned this story the other day to someone at a distributor who's incredibly knowledgeable about Campagnolo in Japan,
they said, "Sorry about that. Hehe."
By the way, I later received a comment from the customer saying they placed 4th
(I won't write which race category to avoid getting too specific)
on the nomunlab Wheel No. 2 rear wheel I lent them. That turned out great.
After
I didn't take a before photo, but cleaning the inside of the hub was nothing compared to the effort spent cleaning all the oil buildup around the flange.
Built.
The nomunlab Wheel No. 2 rear wheel I lent to the customer
has the new No. 2 rim that went from 19.1mm width to 20.5mm width,
making it about 30g heavier than the old No. 2.
Also, prioritizing spoke engagement, I built it with spoke tension equivalent to half-competition rather than semi-competition on purpose.
With the old rim using semi-competition, it was about the same weight as or slightly lighter than the Bora Ultra 35,
but the nomunlab Wheel No. 2 I lent out ended up slightly heavier than the Bora Ultra 35 before the rebuild.
Bora doesn't use unnecessarily thin-gauge spokes for no reason—21 spokes,
while nomunlab Wheel No. 2 is 100% 12 spokes + 65% 12 spokes, so
considering the difference in spoke count, the difference in spoke weight isn't that significant.
The Evolite hub should be lighter in any case, so
the Bora 35mm deep tubular rim should theoretically come in under 350g by rough estimate.
There's nothing particularly inconvenient about this reality, so no crab-ray eyes appearing,
↑Pre-rebuild rim, crumpled at the "5" phase.
↑Post-rebuild rim
What's remarkable about this rim is that it can take spoke tension
that belies how light the rim is.
With 24-hole rear wheels using spokes with higher gauge than Bora in a 2:1 build,
even with rim weights over 500g, you get crappy wheels that bottom out the seatstay or even touch the frame
(→here), so
clearly Bora stands out in both materials and design.
I have the customer's prior consent, but here's a note about the rim replacement.
Regarding Bora Ultra rims, apparently all spare rims have had their brake zones switched to AC3 specification
with a salmon-fillet-like file pattern.
A customer brought in the rear wheel of a Bora Ultra 35 Tubular for service.
↑The rim is crumpled from buckling.
The rims on Bora One and Bora Ultra are identical except for the decal markings.
The decals are underneath clear coating, so they can't be peeled off and won't peel off.
That's why there's no single decal sold separately,
and for example you can't swap a Bora One to look like a Bora Ultra by replacing the decal.
Bora Ultra has spare rim availability as spare parts,
but Bora One doesn't.
The reason for this is that the rims for Bora Ultra and Bora One should theoretically be the same price in terms of specifications,
but that rim price is extremely close to the price of the Bora One wheel itself (especially the front wheel).
So if a Bora One gets damaged on just one side,
you could either buy another single Bora One
or rebuild it with a Bora Ultra rim,
but for the Bora One, unless there are special circumstances like having converted the hub to CULT specification,
buying the whole wheel as a single unit is more cost-effective.
In this case it was a Bora Ultra, so we went with a rim replacement.
This was brought in on January 20th of this year.
I ordered the rim right away, and it was supposed to arrive (just supposed to, mind you) around the end of February,
The customer absolutely needed this rear wheel by April 15th for the Ibuki Mountain Hill Climb,
but it didn't arrive by the end of February, nor even by the end of March, so
I thought "there's no way this is happening" and built up the rear wheel of the nomunlab Wheel No. 2 that I loan to customers (→here). That was on April 6th.
Then on Thursday, April 12th—just three days before the event—the spare rim finally arrived.
Seriously, it ended up being cutting it incredibly close.
But building the wheel on Thursday or Friday
and having the customer pick it up the next day was more hassle at that point anyway.
Plus the tubular tire would already be glued on with rim cement.
So in the end, I deliberately didn't tell the customer the rim had arrived,
and just built the wheel for the Ibuki ride the next day.
If only the rim had arrived a week earlier...
When I mentioned this story the other day to someone at a distributor who's incredibly knowledgeable about Campagnolo in Japan,
they said, "Sorry about that. Hehe."
By the way, I later received a comment from the customer saying they placed 4th
(I won't write which race category to avoid getting too specific)
on the nomunlab Wheel No. 2 rear wheel I lent them. That turned out great.
After
I didn't take a before photo, but cleaning the inside of the hub was nothing compared to the effort spent cleaning all the oil buildup around the flange.
Built.
The nomunlab Wheel No. 2 rear wheel I lent to the customer
has the new No. 2 rim that went from 19.1mm width to 20.5mm width,
making it about 30g heavier than the old No. 2.
Also, prioritizing spoke engagement, I built it with spoke tension equivalent to half-competition rather than semi-competition on purpose.
With the old rim using semi-competition, it was about the same weight as or slightly lighter than the Bora Ultra 35,
but the nomunlab Wheel No. 2 I lent out ended up slightly heavier than the Bora Ultra 35 before the rebuild.
Bora doesn't use unnecessarily thin-gauge spokes for no reason—21 spokes,
while nomunlab Wheel No. 2 is 100% 12 spokes + 65% 12 spokes, so
considering the difference in spoke count, the difference in spoke weight isn't that significant.
The Evolite hub should be lighter in any case, so
the Bora 35mm deep tubular rim should theoretically come in under 350g by rough estimate.
There's nothing particularly inconvenient about this reality, so no crab-ray eyes appearing,
↑Pre-rebuild rim, crumpled at the "5" phase.
↑Post-rebuild rim
What's remarkable about this rim is that it can take spoke tension
that belies how light the rim is.
With 24-hole rear wheels using spokes with higher gauge than Bora in a 2:1 build,
even with rim weights over 500g, you get crappy wheels that bottom out the seatstay or even touch the frame
(→here), so
clearly Bora stands out in both materials and design.
I have the customer's prior consent, but here's a note about the rim replacement.
Regarding Bora Ultra rims, apparently all spare rims have had their brake zones switched to AC3 specification
with a salmon-fillet-like file pattern.