A customer dropped off the front wheel of an Iron Cross bike.
We'd just built this one recently at the shop with RS-770 hubs front and rear, but
the customer told me: "When I got home and tried to install it, the fork's through-axle wasn't 12mm—it was 15mm!"
Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa!!
Okay, calm down. We can figure this out.
Lucky for us, this Iron Cross is 32-hole. Not 28-hole.
With Shimano MTB hubs, only the XNTR (list price ¥17,624 excluding tax) comes in 28-hole,
but XT (¥5,824) is available in 32-hole, so
we can rebuild it without breaking the bank.
The semi-comp CX-RAY (Fulcrum wheel) side is bladed spoked, so
we can't reuse those spokes.
I removed the final two crossing spokes from the comp side
and transferred them to the XT hub while maintaining the same lacing pattern.
I wanted a nice photo with both hubs side by side,
but that proved difficult, so I disassembled the CX-RAY side a bit as well.
Moved the spokes.
Spokes have been moved.
Built it up fresh with a new CX-RAY.
I'll blade the spokes later.
Technically this doesn't meet the condition of "today's also a wheel" (you know the rest), but since I've already satisfied that elsewhere, it's whatever.
15mm diameter.
During the hub relocation, I didn't remove the tubeless valve or rim tape.
Left them as-is.
Peeling off the rim tape would've saved labor time, and honestly,
at the comp spoke price point, it'd probably pay for itself in labor savings,
but I chose the more tedious approach
because the photo of the hub getting moved seemed like good content value.
Not that I'm actually charging labor for this rebuild anyway.
We'd just built this one recently at the shop with RS-770 hubs front and rear, but
the customer told me: "When I got home and tried to install it, the fork's through-axle wasn't 12mm—it was 15mm!"
Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa!!
Okay, calm down. We can figure this out.
Lucky for us, this Iron Cross is 32-hole. Not 28-hole.
With Shimano MTB hubs, only the XNTR (list price ¥17,624 excluding tax) comes in 28-hole,
but XT (¥5,824) is available in 32-hole, so
we can rebuild it without breaking the bank.
The semi-comp CX-RAY (Fulcrum wheel) side is bladed spoked, so
we can't reuse those spokes.
I removed the final two crossing spokes from the comp side
and transferred them to the XT hub while maintaining the same lacing pattern.
I wanted a nice photo with both hubs side by side,
but that proved difficult, so I disassembled the CX-RAY side a bit as well.
Moved the spokes.
Spokes have been moved.
Built it up fresh with a new CX-RAY.
I'll blade the spokes later.
Technically this doesn't meet the condition of "today's also a wheel" (you know the rest), but since I've already satisfied that elsewhere, it's whatever.
15mm diameter.
During the hub relocation, I didn't remove the tubeless valve or rim tape.
Left them as-is.
Peeling off the rim tape would've saved labor time, and honestly,
at the comp spoke price point, it'd probably pay for itself in labor savings,
but I chose the more tedious approach
because the photo of the hub getting moved seemed like good content value.