A customer brought in a Bora One for service.
Starting with the rear wheel.
This is exactly what you'd call a "Bora One."
What I mean is, this is the little sibling of the "Bora Ultra Two," and it's from before the 35mm depth or WO rim versions came out—back when "Bora" meant nothing but a 50mm deep tubular wheel.
Of course it has internal nipples and what we'd call narrow rims nowadays.
By the way, it's brand new. I can't believe we still had this sitting around unused.
Just to be clear, later on the Bora Ultra 50 became the 50mm deep rim version and the Bora Ultra 35 became the 35mm version, but that doesn't mean the earlier Bora Ultra Two from before that had 2mm deep rims.
It came with a Campagnolo freebody, but the customer wants it swapped to a Shimano freebody.
Changing the freebody doesn't shift the wheel's center point, but there are extreme edge cases where one of the freebodies—either before or after the swap—has abnormally worn bearings, and the depth when tightening the right end is very slightly different. In cases like that, it's theoretically possible. Since both freeodies are brand new here, I checked center with a centering gauge after the swap just to be safe. If you take a rear wheel with perfect center alignment and let it sit unused for years, does the center drift? I'd say over a five to ten year span, yes it would. Separately, I've noticed that rear wheels with unequal spoke counts on left and right—where the left spokes carry more load and stretch more easily—seem to drift center faster from years of use compared to wheels with equal spoke counts. I'm pretty confident about this from experience. So I'd predicted that this brand new, long-stored Bora G3 would be off by about a sheet of paper on the freewheel side, but it turned out to be dead-on. Almost no wobble either.
Now the front wheel.
It was way off-center. Didn't expect that. With Campagnolo, you almost never see center drift to this degree—maybe once in several dozen wheels.
I wondered if maybe a spoke got bent during storage and was causing terrible lateral runout at that spot, and the centering gauge just happened to catch that area. But the wheel had almost no runout and the spokes looked fine. Campagnolo wheels are reliable enough that I found myself second-guessing the situation.
This is the point after I snugged up the nipples on the right side (opposite the bearing cone adjustment nut) and removed the slight lateral runout. There's still about two sheets of paper of center drift left.
Center is dialed in.
Starting with the rear wheel.
This is exactly what you'd call a "Bora One."
What I mean is, this is the little sibling of the "Bora Ultra Two," and it's from before the 35mm depth or WO rim versions came out—back when "Bora" meant nothing but a 50mm deep tubular wheel.
Of course it has internal nipples and what we'd call narrow rims nowadays.
By the way, it's brand new. I can't believe we still had this sitting around unused.
Just to be clear, later on the Bora Ultra 50 became the 50mm deep rim version and the Bora Ultra 35 became the 35mm version, but that doesn't mean the earlier Bora Ultra Two from before that had 2mm deep rims.
It came with a Campagnolo freebody, but the customer wants it swapped to a Shimano freebody.
Changing the freebody doesn't shift the wheel's center point, but there are extreme edge cases where one of the freebodies—either before or after the swap—has abnormally worn bearings, and the depth when tightening the right end is very slightly different. In cases like that, it's theoretically possible. Since both freeodies are brand new here, I checked center with a centering gauge after the swap just to be safe. If you take a rear wheel with perfect center alignment and let it sit unused for years, does the center drift? I'd say over a five to ten year span, yes it would. Separately, I've noticed that rear wheels with unequal spoke counts on left and right—where the left spokes carry more load and stretch more easily—seem to drift center faster from years of use compared to wheels with equal spoke counts. I'm pretty confident about this from experience. So I'd predicted that this brand new, long-stored Bora G3 would be off by about a sheet of paper on the freewheel side, but it turned out to be dead-on. Almost no wobble either.
Now the front wheel.
It was way off-center. Didn't expect that. With Campagnolo, you almost never see center drift to this degree—maybe once in several dozen wheels.
I wondered if maybe a spoke got bent during storage and was causing terrible lateral runout at that spot, and the centering gauge just happened to catch that area. But the wheel had almost no runout and the spokes looked fine. Campagnolo wheels are reliable enough that I found myself second-guessing the situation.
This is the point after I snugged up the nipples on the right side (opposite the bearing cone adjustment nut) and removed the slight lateral runout. There's still about two sheets of paper of center drift left.
Center is dialed in.