I received a wheel made in-house by PowerTap (a power meter and wheel manufacturer) from a customer.
The rim is a DT R460.
I'm saying it's PowerTap in-house because that's what the customer told me,
but the reversed Italian lacing pattern already gives that impression.
Building hand-built wheels with equal diameter and spoke count on both sides and a loose non-drive side
is just old-school and frankly stupid, so there's not much to be done about that.
But this wheel had something I found rather unforgivable and disturbing (more on that later).
The rim tape is branded PowerTap,
and the rim sticker is a dual-branding setup with DT stickers,
with a PowerTap one stuck on alongside it, but
it's not actually made by DT—it's just something that looks similar plastered next to it.
There was some centering offset and slight wobble,
so I fixed it.
Now, about that disturbing thing—this wheel has both 12mm and 14mm brass nipples mixed together.
If there was some intentional pattern, like maybe six longer nipples near the valve hole for balancing reasons,
that would make sense. But that's not the case. This is just too sloppy.
I inspected the front wheel too.
No centering offset, but there was a slight wobble.
The front wheel also had nipples of different lengths mixed in,
so apparently this is standard practice for PowerTap's in-house wheels.
I marked the 12mm brass nipple locations with tape
and inserted my tool at the valve hole.
There doesn't seem to be any particular logic to the arrangement.
The rim is a DT R460.
I'm saying it's PowerTap in-house because that's what the customer told me,
but the reversed Italian lacing pattern already gives that impression.
Building hand-built wheels with equal diameter and spoke count on both sides and a loose non-drive side
is just old-school and frankly stupid, so there's not much to be done about that.
But this wheel had something I found rather unforgivable and disturbing (more on that later).
The rim tape is branded PowerTap,
and the rim sticker is a dual-branding setup with DT stickers,
with a PowerTap one stuck on alongside it, but
it's not actually made by DT—it's just something that looks similar plastered next to it.
There was some centering offset and slight wobble,
so I fixed it.
Now, about that disturbing thing—this wheel has both 12mm and 14mm brass nipples mixed together.
If there was some intentional pattern, like maybe six longer nipples near the valve hole for balancing reasons,
that would make sense. But that's not the case. This is just too sloppy.
I inspected the front wheel too.
No centering offset, but there was a slight wobble.
The front wheel also had nipples of different lengths mixed in,
so apparently this is standard practice for PowerTap's in-house wheels.
I marked the 12mm brass nipple locations with tape
and inserted my tool at the valve hole.
There doesn't seem to be any particular logic to the arrangement.