Another day with wheels (and so on...).
A customer brought in a front wheel built with a ZIPP 400 rim.
Based on the rim logo (late 90s) and rim height, I thought it was a 440, but it's actually a 400. That said, I can't really say I was completely wrong—the 400 is essentially the 650C version of the 440, which is a 700C rim. Since full-carbon clincher rims didn't exist in this era, it's naturally a tubular rim.
※Don't make short sentences using "あながち." "That's not quite different. Ouch."
The hub is from the ZIPP brand
with a carbon hub shell, 16 holes, and DT spokes with slitted holes in a flat aero profile, built in a non-radial laced pattern.
The issue I was asked to address wasn't broken spokes, but
a cracked hub flange. The shock from the crack did deform the spokes, but neither spoke suffered a broken neck. In hubs from this era, the aluminum material and forging technology weren't as advanced as today, so hub flange cracks occasionally happen when built radially. Additionally, because the spoke holes in the flange were drilled on the outer side (whereas modern hubs tend to drill them more toward the inside), radial lacing applies force in the thinner direction, making cracks more likely. From what I know, TNT hubs had this happen frequently.
So I'm rebuilding this with a 16-hole hub, but 16-hole hubs with slitted holes are pretty rare. Dura-Ace (9000 series) slitted-hole versions come in 18 holes. If I build with a round-hole hub, using CX-RAY spokes with a 16-hole front wheel would be questionable in terms of lateral stiffness. (Shimano's C24 is a low-profile rim and does use that approach.) I could build with 14-gauge plain spokes to ensure rigidity, but 16-hole front wheels with round spokes feels a bit off. It's true that with 650C you don't need to worry as much about fewer spokes as you would with 700C.
So I decided to build it with a 16-hole Dura-Ace 9000-series hub. I know some of you are thinking "But you just said something different!" but I'm not lying.
Despite its appearance, the Dura-Ace hub has a small flange, so the rebuilt wheel's spoke length shortened considerably and I couldn't reuse the original spokes. I looked for alternatives with Sapim CX and so on, but couldn't find a suitable length, so I used my secret stash of star spokes—AeroStar Bright Type II.
It helped that the non-butted section on the spoke head side was unnecessarily long.
I cut the spoke head and threaded it to create a double-ended spoke.
The existing threads (rim side)
The threads I created (hub side). Perfect length!
This is kind of random, but this spoke has
some mark at the same position along its length. It might be a mark left during HOSHI's embossing process.
I threaded this spoke through the WH-9000-TL front hub
and after attaching a "hub nut"—the part that attaches to the hub-side threads—and pulling,
it looks like this.
The part number for this wheel's hub nuts is Y4G3080000, but when building this wheel I was short three hub nuts, so I ordered them from the distributor. However, there was a trap: entering Y4G3080000 on the distributor's ordering site resulted in me ordering Y4G3081000 instead, which is a different length.
This is Y4G3081000. It was originally made for the MTB wheel WH-M988. And we actually had stock of it in the shop.
When installing the longer one, the hub nut protrudes from the hub flange. It doesn't interfere with the rotating hub shaft, so that alone would be fine, but...
Because the hub-side is offset in phase with a non-radial zero-cross lacing, the hub nuts inserted later interfere with the ones inserted first, so I can't seat the spokes. Three hub nuts are missing, and while the longer nuts interfere with each other, a long-and-short combination doesn't interfere, so I could build the wheel by mixing them at three of the eight positions. But I don't want to do something that ugly unless absolutely necessary, so I decided not to build this today. I considered filing down the hub nut length, but considering the difficulty and effort involved, it's better to just reorder the shorter ones.
I called the distributor to order the shorter hub nuts (16 to be safe, when I only needed 3), but the manufacturer (Shimano) only has 14 in stock. It's probably not the case that they won't remanufacture them, but if they don't, it might become impossible to repair WH-9000-TL wheels. I decided to buy all 14, but this isn't hoarding. If I'd bought 100 or 200, that might be hoarding, but the distributor's stock was so low that I just ended up buying every last one.
↑The phase offset increases spoke length compared to radial lacing, and
by the time I'd installed 13 of the 16 spokes, I had confidence that the spoke length calculation wasn't off.
↑By the way, this can't be done with CL (clincher) hubs, only TL (tubeless). CL hubs use a pass-through design rather than a hook, so you can't thread the spoke's flattened section through. TL hubs are also pass-through, but the spoke head attachment part—the hub nut—can be added later, allowing spokes to be threaded from the outside.
Since today it's confirmed I can't build this front wheel, what's next is the Nomura Lab wheel #5 with a PowerTap hub, but that's short on spokes (and the reason it's short is the RR411db prototype wheel), so the one after that is
a Zonda front wheel rim replacement.
↑The bead hook deformation is only here, but when I spin the wheel it's immediately obvious that this is a wobble pattern that can't be fixed with truing—it looks like a potato chip. When I took off the rim, I could tell it was bent just by looking at it, without even placing it on a glass straightedge.
It's built. I reused all the original spokes. Any crappy bike shop employee who's ever told a customer that "Campagnolo or Fulcrum rim replacements also require a complete spoke replacement" will face judgment after death. ← there seem to be quite a few of them
I also tried to align the phase of the hub shell logo as seen through the valve hole.
When I compared it to the rim from before the replacement...
around the opposite side of the phase
there was about this much gap.
A customer brought in a front wheel built with a ZIPP 400 rim.
Based on the rim logo (late 90s) and rim height, I thought it was a 440, but it's actually a 400. That said, I can't really say I was completely wrong—the 400 is essentially the 650C version of the 440, which is a 700C rim. Since full-carbon clincher rims didn't exist in this era, it's naturally a tubular rim.
※Don't make short sentences using "あながち." "That's not quite different. Ouch."
The hub is from the ZIPP brand
with a carbon hub shell, 16 holes, and DT spokes with slitted holes in a flat aero profile, built in a non-radial laced pattern.
The issue I was asked to address wasn't broken spokes, but
a cracked hub flange. The shock from the crack did deform the spokes, but neither spoke suffered a broken neck. In hubs from this era, the aluminum material and forging technology weren't as advanced as today, so hub flange cracks occasionally happen when built radially. Additionally, because the spoke holes in the flange were drilled on the outer side (whereas modern hubs tend to drill them more toward the inside), radial lacing applies force in the thinner direction, making cracks more likely. From what I know, TNT hubs had this happen frequently.
So I'm rebuilding this with a 16-hole hub, but 16-hole hubs with slitted holes are pretty rare. Dura-Ace (9000 series) slitted-hole versions come in 18 holes. If I build with a round-hole hub, using CX-RAY spokes with a 16-hole front wheel would be questionable in terms of lateral stiffness. (Shimano's C24 is a low-profile rim and does use that approach.) I could build with 14-gauge plain spokes to ensure rigidity, but 16-hole front wheels with round spokes feels a bit off. It's true that with 650C you don't need to worry as much about fewer spokes as you would with 700C.
So I decided to build it with a 16-hole Dura-Ace 9000-series hub. I know some of you are thinking "But you just said something different!" but I'm not lying.
Despite its appearance, the Dura-Ace hub has a small flange, so the rebuilt wheel's spoke length shortened considerably and I couldn't reuse the original spokes. I looked for alternatives with Sapim CX and so on, but couldn't find a suitable length, so I used my secret stash of star spokes—AeroStar Bright Type II.
It helped that the non-butted section on the spoke head side was unnecessarily long.
I cut the spoke head and threaded it to create a double-ended spoke.
The existing threads (rim side)
The threads I created (hub side). Perfect length!
This is kind of random, but this spoke has
some mark at the same position along its length. It might be a mark left during HOSHI's embossing process.
I threaded this spoke through the WH-9000-TL front hub
and after attaching a "hub nut"—the part that attaches to the hub-side threads—and pulling,
it looks like this.
The part number for this wheel's hub nuts is Y4G3080000, but when building this wheel I was short three hub nuts, so I ordered them from the distributor. However, there was a trap: entering Y4G3080000 on the distributor's ordering site resulted in me ordering Y4G3081000 instead, which is a different length.
This is Y4G3081000. It was originally made for the MTB wheel WH-M988. And we actually had stock of it in the shop.
When installing the longer one, the hub nut protrudes from the hub flange. It doesn't interfere with the rotating hub shaft, so that alone would be fine, but...
Because the hub-side is offset in phase with a non-radial zero-cross lacing, the hub nuts inserted later interfere with the ones inserted first, so I can't seat the spokes. Three hub nuts are missing, and while the longer nuts interfere with each other, a long-and-short combination doesn't interfere, so I could build the wheel by mixing them at three of the eight positions. But I don't want to do something that ugly unless absolutely necessary, so I decided not to build this today. I considered filing down the hub nut length, but considering the difficulty and effort involved, it's better to just reorder the shorter ones.
I called the distributor to order the shorter hub nuts (16 to be safe, when I only needed 3), but the manufacturer (Shimano) only has 14 in stock. It's probably not the case that they won't remanufacture them, but if they don't, it might become impossible to repair WH-9000-TL wheels. I decided to buy all 14, but this isn't hoarding. If I'd bought 100 or 200, that might be hoarding, but the distributor's stock was so low that I just ended up buying every last one.
↑The phase offset increases spoke length compared to radial lacing, and
by the time I'd installed 13 of the 16 spokes, I had confidence that the spoke length calculation wasn't off.
↑By the way, this can't be done with CL (clincher) hubs, only TL (tubeless). CL hubs use a pass-through design rather than a hook, so you can't thread the spoke's flattened section through. TL hubs are also pass-through, but the spoke head attachment part—the hub nut—can be added later, allowing spokes to be threaded from the outside.
Since today it's confirmed I can't build this front wheel, what's next is the Nomura Lab wheel #5 with a PowerTap hub, but that's short on spokes (and the reason it's short is the RR411db prototype wheel), so the one after that is
a Zonda front wheel rim replacement.
↑The bead hook deformation is only here, but when I spin the wheel it's immediately obvious that this is a wobble pattern that can't be fixed with truing—it looks like a potato chip. When I took off the rim, I could tell it was bent just by looking at it, without even placing it on a glass straightedge.
It's built. I reused all the original spokes. Any crappy bike shop employee who's ever told a customer that "Campagnolo or Fulcrum rim replacements also require a complete spoke replacement" will face judgment after death. ← there seem to be quite a few of them
I also tried to align the phase of the hub shell logo as seen through the valve hole.
When I compared it to the rim from before the replacement...
around the opposite side of the phase
there was about this much gap.