Another day, another wheel (and so on).
A customer brought in a rear wheel built with a Reynolds 66 tubular rim.
To be clear: a rear wheel "built with a 66 rim," not a "66 rear wheel."
The hub is a Tni wing hub, 20H all-black aero 4/0 lacing.
The freewheel side uses outpoke lacing.
I don't know the full history, but when it arrived,
one spoke on the freewheel side and two spokes on the outpoke side were missing.
While that definitely accounts for the lost tension,
I can tell the wheel was pretty loose even before those spokes broke.
The customer wants it rebuilt, but—
the nipples are oriented correctly on some,
and backwards on others.
These nipples have deep threading pockets before the thread begins,
so when used backwards at the proper length like this—
this side goes straight to the thread start,
but as you can see, no spoke threads are visible
(meaning the threads are nearly used up),
so there's no room for further tensioning adjustments.
The three broken spokes had nipples that are now missing,
so those need replacing. During rebuild I found nipples with stripped threads,
so I swapped out a considerable number for new ones.
A complete swap probably would've been better.
Built.
20H, black half-Champion 4/0 lacing.
I'll do the spoke tying later.
As for rim weight, accounting for the tubular vs. clincher difference,
it's about the same as the rim on Nomu Lab Wheel #1.
Nomu Lab Wheel #1's rim is 30mm tall; this one is 66mm tall.
Even if there were a 66mm-tall aluminum rim,
it would definitely weigh way more than 460g or so.
So this rim has a really impressive height-to-weight ratio when you factor in the rim depth.
There are plenty of rims lighter than this,
but not many that are this light at the same rim height—that's the thing.
My EDGE 1-68 tubular rim
(model "68" but 65mm tall) weighs 378g,
and all EDGE rims from that era had bizarrely good height-to-weight ratios,
so comparing them would be unfair.←Then why mention it?
A customer brought in a rear wheel built with a Reynolds 66 tubular rim.
To be clear: a rear wheel "built with a 66 rim," not a "66 rear wheel."
The hub is a Tni wing hub, 20H all-black aero 4/0 lacing.
The freewheel side uses outpoke lacing.
I don't know the full history, but when it arrived,
one spoke on the freewheel side and two spokes on the outpoke side were missing.
While that definitely accounts for the lost tension,
I can tell the wheel was pretty loose even before those spokes broke.
The customer wants it rebuilt, but—
the nipples are oriented correctly on some,
and backwards on others.
These nipples have deep threading pockets before the thread begins,
so when used backwards at the proper length like this—
this side goes straight to the thread start,
but as you can see, no spoke threads are visible
(meaning the threads are nearly used up),
so there's no room for further tensioning adjustments.
The three broken spokes had nipples that are now missing,
so those need replacing. During rebuild I found nipples with stripped threads,
so I swapped out a considerable number for new ones.
A complete swap probably would've been better.
Built.
20H, black half-Champion 4/0 lacing.
I'll do the spoke tying later.
As for rim weight, accounting for the tubular vs. clincher difference,
it's about the same as the rim on Nomu Lab Wheel #1.
Nomu Lab Wheel #1's rim is 30mm tall; this one is 66mm tall.
Even if there were a 66mm-tall aluminum rim,
it would definitely weigh way more than 460g or so.
So this rim has a really impressive height-to-weight ratio when you factor in the rim depth.
There are plenty of rims lighter than this,
but not many that are this light at the same rim height—that's the thing.
(model "68" but 65mm tall) weighs 378g,
and all EDGE rims from that era had bizarrely good height-to-weight ratios,
so comparing them would be unfair.←Then why mention it?