I received a Reynolds DV46 (Reynolds tube brand) from a customer.
They asked me to increase the spoke tension a bit more if possible.
Since it's laced with radial spokes on the non-freewheel side,
without a complete relacing it won't improve dramatically,
but I'll do what I can.
It appears to have no centering offset, but actually it's about one sheet of paper off toward the freewheel side.
You can't tell from the photo range.
The shots didn't come out well, so I gave up on capturing it.
The freewheel side uses Competition spokes and the non-freewheel side uses Aero-Lite spokes,
making it officially a half-Competition configuration,
which is considerably better than all-Aero-Lite.
This rear wheel is tensioned more than the average off-the-shelf wheel
or it's had the tension increased at a nearby shop.
It's a 46-spoke build, but if we were to relace it,
it wouldn't be enough to just switch the non-freewheel side to CX-RAY 6-spoke.
This is because the freewheel side is currently the same as reverse-Italian lacing,
and we'd be changing it to Italian lacing.
When I rotated the hub axle by hand, there was some slight looseness, so
I removed the freewheel body and the looseness disappeared.
This means the wear isn't in the hub shell itself
but in the bearings of the freewheel body.
Among hubs made "by DT" rather than "by DT Swiss," GIANT and Roval
use slightly smaller bearing sizes in the hub shell,
but Reynolds hubs from this era adopted bearings as large as DT's.
So they have high durability and don't wear easily.
As for the freewheel body,
↑inside
↑outside
it uses the "SL" specification that's only found on Shimano versions,
with an extremely rare bearing size of 6702.
SL is indeed well-named as an acronym for "Short Life."
The 6702 has inner/outer/thickness (mm) dimensions of 15/21/4,
and because the outer diameter must fit within the inadequate weight-reduction holes of the freewheel body relative to the 15mm hub axle diameter,
the gap between inner and outer diameter is kept small, and the thickness is only 4mm.
I call them inadequate weight-reduction holes, but
this revolver-like hole pattern saves less than 2 grams.
The reason the SL freewheel body is lighter than the standard model
is mostly due to the smaller size of the bearings themselves—those chunks of steel.
This 6702 bearing is easy to source in open type (unsealed) or
with metal shields (which are basically unsuitable for water protection),
but the double rubber-sealed version is hard to find.
Maybe something from EZO (Kita-Nippon Seiki),
In this case, replacement wasn't necessary, so I left it as-is.
A DT distributor will start handling bearing spare parts next year.
The part numbers include inner/outer/thickness in mm notation,
and among them, 15/28/7 matches the standard bearing 6902.
6902 is a size used in the right side of hub shells and freewheel bodies,
but a 28mm outer diameter doesn't allow enough thickness for the freewheel body,
so recently a bearing with just the outer diameter reduced from 6902 to 26mm—called 152267—
is commonly used.
This is a non-standard bearing with dimensions 15/26/7 simply lined up,
used on Evolite hubs' right-side hub shell and both sides of the freewheel body.
There's demand for this size as repair parts too,
and it used to be available as Tni spare parts,
but for some reason it's not stocked anymore(I used to buy them all up whenever they came in).
What I'm getting at is that starting next year,
it will be easily available from DT (information for fellow workshop owners).
I greased up the star ratchet.
First, I tensioned the freewheel side as much as possible.
I may have tensioned it more than I would for a 46-spoke build.
The rim shifted significantly toward the freewheel side, but
by tightening the non-freewheel side by about 3/4 the number of rotations of the freewheel-side nipples,
the center came back into alignment.
The rim's lateral movement per nipple rotation is less on the freewheel side than the non-freewheel side,
but with radial lacing, the movement becomes even larger
perhaps because there's no loss from angle.
This rear wheel's non-freewheel side shows only traces of reverse-radial lacing,
but the freewheel side has marks of Italian lacing being roughly tensioned during trial-build.
However, it's almost certainly a factory-supplied wheel,
so the most likely scenario is they noticed they were building it Italian-laced
and took it apart.
Next, the front wheel.
While the rear wheel is built with a standard rim, the front is built with the rim flipped.
No centering offset, slight wobble, and
though not as much as the rear, I increased tension there too.
During inspection, I removed the tubular tire,
and after work I installed the customer's supplied tire.
Finally: The DT freewheel body was Shimano 10-speed,
so if replaced with Shimano 11-speed, the rim will shift toward the non-freewheel side
relative to the new wheel center.
They asked me to increase the spoke tension a bit more if possible.
Since it's laced with radial spokes on the non-freewheel side,
without a complete relacing it won't improve dramatically,
but I'll do what I can.
It appears to have no centering offset, but actually it's about one sheet of paper off toward the freewheel side.
You can't tell from the photo range.
The shots didn't come out well, so I gave up on capturing it.
The freewheel side uses Competition spokes and the non-freewheel side uses Aero-Lite spokes,
making it officially a half-Competition configuration,
which is considerably better than all-Aero-Lite.
This rear wheel is tensioned more than the average off-the-shelf wheel
or it's had the tension increased at a nearby shop.
It's a 46-spoke build, but if we were to relace it,
it wouldn't be enough to just switch the non-freewheel side to CX-RAY 6-spoke.
This is because the freewheel side is currently the same as reverse-Italian lacing,
and we'd be changing it to Italian lacing.
When I rotated the hub axle by hand, there was some slight looseness, so
I removed the freewheel body and the looseness disappeared.
This means the wear isn't in the hub shell itself
but in the bearings of the freewheel body.
Among hubs made "by DT" rather than "by DT Swiss," GIANT and Roval
use slightly smaller bearing sizes in the hub shell,
but Reynolds hubs from this era adopted bearings as large as DT's.
So they have high durability and don't wear easily.
As for the freewheel body,
↑inside
↑outside
it uses the "SL" specification that's only found on Shimano versions,
with an extremely rare bearing size of 6702.
The 6702 has inner/outer/thickness (mm) dimensions of 15/21/4,
and because the outer diameter must fit within the inadequate weight-reduction holes of the freewheel body relative to the 15mm hub axle diameter,
the gap between inner and outer diameter is kept small, and the thickness is only 4mm.
I call them inadequate weight-reduction holes, but
this revolver-like hole pattern saves less than 2 grams.
The reason the SL freewheel body is lighter than the standard model
is mostly due to the smaller size of the bearings themselves—those chunks of steel.
This 6702 bearing is easy to source in open type (unsealed) or
with metal shields (which are basically unsuitable for water protection),
but the double rubber-sealed version is hard to find.
Maybe something from EZO (Kita-Nippon Seiki),
In this case, replacement wasn't necessary, so I left it as-is.
A DT distributor will start handling bearing spare parts next year.
The part numbers include inner/outer/thickness in mm notation,
and among them, 15/28/7 matches the standard bearing 6902.
6902 is a size used in the right side of hub shells and freewheel bodies,
but a 28mm outer diameter doesn't allow enough thickness for the freewheel body,
so recently a bearing with just the outer diameter reduced from 6902 to 26mm—called 152267—
is commonly used.
This is a non-standard bearing with dimensions 15/26/7 simply lined up,
used on Evolite hubs' right-side hub shell and both sides of the freewheel body.
There's demand for this size as repair parts too,
and it used to be available as Tni spare parts,
but for some reason it's not stocked anymore
What I'm getting at is that starting next year,
it will be easily available from DT (information for fellow workshop owners).
I greased up the star ratchet.
First, I tensioned the freewheel side as much as possible.
I may have tensioned it more than I would for a 46-spoke build.
The rim shifted significantly toward the freewheel side, but
by tightening the non-freewheel side by about 3/4 the number of rotations of the freewheel-side nipples,
the center came back into alignment.
The rim's lateral movement per nipple rotation is less on the freewheel side than the non-freewheel side,
but with radial lacing, the movement becomes even larger
perhaps because there's no loss from angle.
This rear wheel's non-freewheel side shows only traces of reverse-radial lacing,
but the freewheel side has marks of Italian lacing being roughly tensioned during trial-build.
However, it's almost certainly a factory-supplied wheel,
so the most likely scenario is they noticed they were building it Italian-laced
and took it apart.
Next, the front wheel.
While the rear wheel is built with a standard rim, the front is built with the rim flipped.
No centering offset, slight wobble, and
though not as much as the rear, I increased tension there too.
During inspection, I removed the tubular tire,
and after work I installed the customer's supplied tire.
Finally: The DT freewheel body was Shimano 10-speed,
so if replaced with Shimano 11-speed, the rim will shift toward the non-freewheel side
relative to the new wheel center.