Another day, another wheel (and so on).
A customer brought in a rear wheel with a Smart Envie 2.2
WO (tubeless ready) rim.
This customer said the stock wheel had brake rub,
so I rebuilt it and the rub went away,
but then they crashed and crushed the rim, so they bought a new one.
Turns out it rubs again, so they want me to rebuild it.
There was something odd, so I asked the customer about it
and the story I mentioned above was slightly off. More on that later.
Rim's off-center.
The rim is drifted to the right, and yet it's rubbing on the brake?
(Usually brake rub happens on the left brake zone).
This is an ENVE carbon hub 24H—even if you count holes and build it as a 4-spoke pattern, it comes out equivalent to a 6-spoke—
black CX-RAY in a reverse Italian weave.
The customer wants it rebuilt in a half-champ Italian weave.
Built it.
Half-champ Italian weave.
The customer didn't want spoke lacing soldered, so I skipped that.
This hub was originally laced in reverse Italian, but
↑Freewheel side
↑Non-freewheel side
it bears traces of having been laced Italian.
At first I thought the customer bought a new unit of the same model,
but when I asked later, they said
ENVE did a rim replacement—either crash replacement or warranty—
and sent it back.
So this hub is from the original wheel that got crashed.
Following the hub's history:
Factory build (laced by ENVE)
Rebuilt to half-champ Italian (I laced it)
Rim replaced (ENVE relaced it, again in reverse Italian with all CX-RAY)
Rebuilt to half-champ Italian (I laced it)
When I laced it the second time (this time),
the spoke threads had no loctite applied,
so when ENVE did the rim replacement, they didn't reuse the spokes on the non-freewheel side.
They put in new ones. That much, at least, deserves some credit.
↑Non-freewheel side
↑Freewheel side
Going back in time a bit, at the point of ENVE's rim replacement,
the spoke lengths were off: non-freewheel side a bit short,
freewheel side way too long.
By nipple-end standards,
the freewheel side was plus 3 threads, non-freewheel side minus 3 threads.
A 6-thread difference is sketchy.
If the freewheel side is flush with the nipple end and the non-freewheel side is minus 6 threads from that,
the non-freewheel side is too short.
And if the non-freewheel side is flush and the freewheel side is plus 6 threads from there...
that won't work.
At plus 3 threads, you're basically out of thread.
Both spokes have black ends, which means
they used pre-cut lengths as-is, no trimming.
But if you're not building with mystery rims—if both hub and rim are in-house—
you should have a large stock of spokes at just the right length,
where the nipple looks balanced on both sides visually.
If both sides are close and just slightly short or long,
fine—maybe that's the company's philosophy.
But this? This is completely ad-hoc
(you don't seriously think there's some merit or technical reason to make only the freewheel side long, do you?).
In the original state, as I said at the start,
the rim was drifted to the right,
but even if I loosened the freewheel side to center it,
it wouldn't take 6 full turns of the nipple, not even close.
Maybe barely 1 turn.
In other words, even after centering,
the pattern of spoke threads visible from the nipple wouldn't change much.
In my opinion, this nipple would work fine
even at the length shown in the non-freewheel photo above.
The freewheel side has basically used up all its threads.
So after rebuilding, the half-champ length looks like this.
The black spokes have silver ends because
I cut them to length,
and the faint blue tint is loctite color.
The rim replacement showed poor centering, unstable spoke length,
and the wheel went right back to rubbing.
That's the level of ENVE's stock builds.
Anyway, on another note,
this hub is 24H with dense/sparse phase (12H per side),
but laced as a 4-spoke by hole count.
So each spoke has 2 crossings,
which reads as 2-cross on paper.
If you laced it as a 6-spoke by hole count (3-cross on paper),
you'd get clearance before the final crossing, so
you could potentially do a double-cross.
↑Final crossing
↑One before the final
(I tried it temporarily for photos, so
the angles aren't isosceles)
Even if a double-cross rear wheel is somewhat stiffer than a regular one,
when a spoke breaks, you have to unlace the adjacent crossing,
and to unlace that, you have to unlace the next one over, and so on.
At minimum you'd have to partially disassemble the wheel,
which kills maintainability. The upside is thin.
Also, spoke length changes, so
you can't reuse the black CX-RAY on the non-freewheel side.
And if you did it, a 4-spoke build by count becomes a 6-spoke build by count,
so to make it Italian, you'd have to flip which flanges get inpokes vs. outpokes.
I didn't do it this time, but there's a treatment with almost no maintainability impact
and stiffness gains equal to or better than double-cross.
It's called spoke lacing with solder joints.
A customer brought in a rear wheel with a Smart Envie 2.2
WO (tubeless ready) rim.
This customer said the stock wheel had brake rub,
so I rebuilt it and the rub went away,
but then they crashed and crushed the rim, so they bought a new one.
Turns out it rubs again, so they want me to rebuild it.
There was something odd, so I asked the customer about it
and the story I mentioned above was slightly off. More on that later.
Rim's off-center.
The rim is drifted to the right, and yet it's rubbing on the brake?
(Usually brake rub happens on the left brake zone).
This is an ENVE carbon hub 24H—even if you count holes and build it as a 4-spoke pattern, it comes out equivalent to a 6-spoke—
black CX-RAY in a reverse Italian weave.
The customer wants it rebuilt in a half-champ Italian weave.
Built it.
Half-champ Italian weave.
The customer didn't want spoke lacing soldered, so I skipped that.
This hub was originally laced in reverse Italian, but
↑Freewheel side
↑Non-freewheel side
it bears traces of having been laced Italian.
At first I thought the customer bought a new unit of the same model,
but when I asked later, they said
ENVE did a rim replacement—either crash replacement or warranty—
and sent it back.
So this hub is from the original wheel that got crashed.
Following the hub's history:
Factory build (laced by ENVE)
Rebuilt to half-champ Italian (I laced it)
Rim replaced (ENVE relaced it, again in reverse Italian with all CX-RAY)
Rebuilt to half-champ Italian (I laced it)
When I laced it the second time (this time),
the spoke threads had no loctite applied,
so when ENVE did the rim replacement, they didn't reuse the spokes on the non-freewheel side.
They put in new ones. That much, at least, deserves some credit.
↑Non-freewheel side
↑Freewheel side
Going back in time a bit, at the point of ENVE's rim replacement,
the spoke lengths were off: non-freewheel side a bit short,
freewheel side way too long.
By nipple-end standards,
the freewheel side was plus 3 threads, non-freewheel side minus 3 threads.
A 6-thread difference is sketchy.
If the freewheel side is flush with the nipple end and the non-freewheel side is minus 6 threads from that,
the non-freewheel side is too short.
And if the non-freewheel side is flush and the freewheel side is plus 6 threads from there...
that won't work.
At plus 3 threads, you're basically out of thread.
Both spokes have black ends, which means
they used pre-cut lengths as-is, no trimming.
But if you're not building with mystery rims—if both hub and rim are in-house—
you should have a large stock of spokes at just the right length,
where the nipple looks balanced on both sides visually.
If both sides are close and just slightly short or long,
fine—maybe that's the company's philosophy.
But this? This is completely ad-hoc
(you don't seriously think there's some merit or technical reason to make only the freewheel side long, do you?).
In the original state, as I said at the start,
the rim was drifted to the right,
but even if I loosened the freewheel side to center it,
it wouldn't take 6 full turns of the nipple, not even close.
Maybe barely 1 turn.
In other words, even after centering,
the pattern of spoke threads visible from the nipple wouldn't change much.
In my opinion, this nipple would work fine
even at the length shown in the non-freewheel photo above.
The freewheel side has basically used up all its threads.
So after rebuilding, the half-champ length looks like this.
The black spokes have silver ends because
I cut them to length,
and the faint blue tint is loctite color.
The rim replacement showed poor centering, unstable spoke length,
and the wheel went right back to rubbing.
That's the level of ENVE's stock builds.
Anyway, on another note,
this hub is 24H with dense/sparse phase (12H per side),
but laced as a 4-spoke by hole count.
So each spoke has 2 crossings,
which reads as 2-cross on paper.
If you laced it as a 6-spoke by hole count (3-cross on paper),
you'd get clearance before the final crossing, so
you could potentially do a double-cross.
↑Final crossing
↑One before the final
(I tried it temporarily for photos, so
the angles aren't isosceles)
Even if a double-cross rear wheel is somewhat stiffer than a regular one,
when a spoke breaks, you have to unlace the adjacent crossing,
and to unlace that, you have to unlace the next one over, and so on.
At minimum you'd have to partially disassemble the wheel,
which kills maintainability. The upside is thin.
Also, spoke length changes, so
you can't reuse the black CX-RAY on the non-freewheel side.
And if you did it, a 4-spoke build by count becomes a 6-spoke build by count,
so to make it Italian, you'd have to flip which flanges get inpokes vs. outpokes.
I didn't do it this time, but there's a treatment with almost no maintainability impact
and stiffness gains equal to or better than double-cross.
It's called spoke lacing with solder joints.