Another wheel day (and so on).
A customer brought me a front wheel with a Prime carbon tubeless ready rim.
Apparently the rim completely shattered when they tried to pressurize it to about 6 bar.
Yikes...
The carbon splinters are dangerous—if you're not careful, they'll stick in your hand and stay there.
I have a replacement rim on hand, but
since the original rim is 50mm deep and the replacement is 38mm deep,
I can't just swap them over.
A shallower rim means longer spokes,
so reusing the spokes is impossible.
Even if the dimensions were reversed, the spokes are CX-RAY, so
with a maximum cuttable adjustment (around minus 6mm, or 8mm at most),
the spoke length difference is too great to reuse them.
The hub is 24H with straight-pull spokes,
12 spokes per side with a 6H offset, so
calculating spoke length gets a bit tricky.
I wasn't 100% confident in my correction value (maybe 99%), so
I did a trial build using three cross points—one final cross I was checking
plus the opposite spoke on the same side and the corresponding spoke on the other side.
It's hard to put into words, but
if I don't sense a "strong feeling of wrongness," then the length is correct.
For this trial build, I use a rule: "screw the spoke threads into a 12mm nipple until they're just hidden,"
and I stick with 12mm nipples even when building with 14mm or 16mm nipples.
I judge by the hub's play at that point,
and this time it checked out. Black CX-RAY spokes are expensive,
so I really don't want to waste them.
Got it built.
RD-010 straight-pull 24H hub
Black CX-RAY in a forced 4-cross pattern
Just like before the rebuild, neither side has the final cross woven in.
I stuck to a straightforward rim replacement on this complete wheel—
no different-diameter spoke patterns or lacing.
At the customer's request, I carefully recovered the spokes.
Even though they're unusable, that's about ¥500 per spoke—¥12,000 worth of parts across 24 spokes.
I would've preferred to cut and discard them (and not just for time reasons, though that's true too),
mainly because I really didn't want to handle that splintered rim more than necessary.
I didn't reuse the 14mm black aluminum nipples either (they can be turned from the outside).
I switched to DT 12mm black aluminum nipples instead.
A customer brought me a front wheel with a Prime carbon tubeless ready rim.
Apparently the rim completely shattered when they tried to pressurize it to about 6 bar.
Yikes...
The carbon splinters are dangerous—if you're not careful, they'll stick in your hand and stay there.
I have a replacement rim on hand, but
since the original rim is 50mm deep and the replacement is 38mm deep,
I can't just swap them over.
A shallower rim means longer spokes,
so reusing the spokes is impossible.
Even if the dimensions were reversed, the spokes are CX-RAY, so
with a maximum cuttable adjustment (around minus 6mm, or 8mm at most),
the spoke length difference is too great to reuse them.
The hub is 24H with straight-pull spokes,
12 spokes per side with a 6H offset, so
calculating spoke length gets a bit tricky.
I wasn't 100% confident in my correction value (maybe 99%), so
I did a trial build using three cross points—one final cross I was checking
plus the opposite spoke on the same side and the corresponding spoke on the other side.
It's hard to put into words, but
if I don't sense a "strong feeling of wrongness," then the length is correct.
For this trial build, I use a rule: "screw the spoke threads into a 12mm nipple until they're just hidden,"
and I stick with 12mm nipples even when building with 14mm or 16mm nipples.
I judge by the hub's play at that point,
and this time it checked out. Black CX-RAY spokes are expensive,
so I really don't want to waste them.
Got it built.
RD-010 straight-pull 24H hub
Black CX-RAY in a forced 4-cross pattern
Just like before the rebuild, neither side has the final cross woven in.
I stuck to a straightforward rim replacement on this complete wheel—
no different-diameter spoke patterns or lacing.
At the customer's request, I carefully recovered the spokes.
Even though they're unusable, that's about ¥500 per spoke—¥12,000 worth of parts across 24 spokes.
I would've preferred to cut and discard them (and not just for time reasons, though that's true too),
mainly because I really didn't want to handle that splintered rim more than necessary.
I didn't reuse the 14mm black aluminum nipples either (they can be turned from the outside).
I switched to DT 12mm black aluminum nipples instead.