Another day working on wheels (and so on).
A customer brought in a Speed 40T for repair.
Starting with the front wheel.
They mentioned that a nipple cracked from a crash,
but even before that, there was salt damage (or something similar) causing general corrosion of all the nipples,
so the crack (or discovering it was already cracked)
doesn't seem directly related to the crash.
There are some nasty scratches on the outer edge of the rim,
but it's still usable as-is.
The nipples are all rusted up, and many of them are cracked.
The spokes themselves seemed reusable,
but even the relatively less corroded nipples crumble to bits
the moment you apply a tool and try to turn them.
↑Like this.
I thought that if I relieved the spoke tension, they might turn,
so I first cut one-third of the 18 spokes (despite them being fine),
but they still wouldn't loosen. Then I cut more than half,
but got the same result—in the end, I only managed to salvage
2 reusable spokes from the whole wheel.
These special-dimension nipples
don't have a hexagonal grip area on the outer edge,
and since there are no holes on the outer edge of the rim
except for the valve hole, you can't use that method.
For WO rims, this design might be necessary to eliminate the need for rim tape,
but I'm not sure why it was necessary for a tubular rim.
There might be strength or manufacturing considerations I'm not aware of.
Speaking from personal experience, the tubular rim on my old
gold Shamal Ultra (Campagnolo Shamal Ultra) had
holes drilled specifically for nipple replacement.
I sometimes swapped it between WO and tubular builds,
and having those holes saved effort when converting from WO to tubular.
I have spare spokes for the Speed 40 for repairs,
but not enough for a complete wheel rebuild, so
I ordered new ones.
The image above includes spokes from another job mixed in.
I'm not joking around here.
I'm not sure what the intention was (※),
but it actually came in the delivery
from the distributor who knows Campagnolo better than anyone else in Japan.
※I'll ask them about it next time
I have plenty of nipples in stock.
Racing Zero and similar use reverse-drilled rims,
but Speed and current Bora models use normal drilling.
During the internal-nipple era, Racing Speed and Bora were reverse-drilled,
but switched to normal drilling when external nipples were introduced.
Bora WTO is reverse-drilled for some reason though.
I built it up.
I checked the spoke tension before disassembly—it was lower than expected
(clearly lower than Nomo Labs wheels),
so I determined the wheel had lost tension and tensioned it higher than the original.
So the ride feel changed as a side effect of the nipple replacement.
The ride feel changed as a side effect of the nipple replacement.
Not sure why I said that twice.
The rear wheel nipples are equally corroded,
but since the freewheel-side flange isn't a through-hole design but a catch design,
I'm hoping to recover more reusable spokes than from the front wheel,
which is all through-holes.
A customer brought in a Speed 40T for repair.
Starting with the front wheel.
They mentioned that a nipple cracked from a crash,
but even before that, there was salt damage (or something similar) causing general corrosion of all the nipples,
so the crack (or discovering it was already cracked)
doesn't seem directly related to the crash.
There are some nasty scratches on the outer edge of the rim,
but it's still usable as-is.
The nipples are all rusted up, and many of them are cracked.
The spokes themselves seemed reusable,
but even the relatively less corroded nipples crumble to bits
the moment you apply a tool and try to turn them.
↑Like this.
I thought that if I relieved the spoke tension, they might turn,
so I first cut one-third of the 18 spokes (despite them being fine),
but they still wouldn't loosen. Then I cut more than half,
but got the same result—in the end, I only managed to salvage
2 reusable spokes from the whole wheel.
These special-dimension nipples
don't have a hexagonal grip area on the outer edge,
and since there are no holes on the outer edge of the rim
except for the valve hole, you can't use that method.
For WO rims, this design might be necessary to eliminate the need for rim tape,
but I'm not sure why it was necessary for a tubular rim.
There might be strength or manufacturing considerations I'm not aware of.
Speaking from personal experience, the tubular rim on my old
gold Shamal Ultra (Campagnolo Shamal Ultra) had
holes drilled specifically for nipple replacement.
I sometimes swapped it between WO and tubular builds,
and having those holes saved effort when converting from WO to tubular.
I have spare spokes for the Speed 40 for repairs,
but not enough for a complete wheel rebuild, so
I ordered new ones.
The image above includes spokes from another job mixed in.
I'm not joking around here.
I'm not sure what the intention was (※),
but it actually came in the delivery
from the distributor who knows Campagnolo better than anyone else in Japan.
※I'll ask them about it next time
I have plenty of nipples in stock.
Racing Zero and similar use reverse-drilled rims,
but Speed and current Bora models use normal drilling.
During the internal-nipple era, Racing Speed and Bora were reverse-drilled,
but switched to normal drilling when external nipples were introduced.
Bora WTO is reverse-drilled for some reason though.
I built it up.
I checked the spoke tension before disassembly—it was lower than expected
(clearly lower than Nomo Labs wheels),
so I determined the wheel had lost tension and tensioned it higher than the original.
So the ride feel changed as a side effect of the nipple replacement.
The ride feel changed as a side effect of the nipple replacement.
Not sure why I said that twice.
The rear wheel nipples are equally corroded,
but since the freewheel-side flange isn't a through-hole design but a catch design,
I'm hoping to recover more reusable spokes than from the front wheel,
which is all through-holes.