Another day, another wheel (and so on).
A customer brought in a wheel built with an EDGE 1.38 rim.
One of our regular customers had asked me about this wheel that appeared on a certain auction site:
"Should I buy it? Quack quack quack (←sound effect)"
But while I was hemming and hawing, someone else won the bid,
and later that winning bidder brought it to our shop—
and that's how it ended up here.
This isn't the first time something like this has happened.
My prediction that "that wheel on the auction site will eventually end up at our shop, no matter who buys it" has come true many times.
This 1.38 rim is from EDGE's early days when they were still garage-scale operation,
so there aren't many of them in circulation.
The hub appears to be Goldtec (a brand name) Pro Competition Road (a model name).
I say "appears" because there's a possibility that Goldtec is the model name
and Pro Compe (and so on) is the brand name
(that phenomenon where you look at a CD jacket from a band you don't know well
and can't tell which is the band name and which is the song title).
24H black CX-RAY counter-spoke radial laced
and built treating it as an inside-out rim.
Since there's no rim offset on either the inner or outer edge,
there's no particular problem with treating it as inside-out, but normally you wouldn't do this.
However, Reynolds wheels from certain eras
have front wheel radial lacing treated as inside-out,
and rear wheel tangential lacing (left and right or freewheel side)
treated as normal rim orientation.
The hub bearings are Enduro Zero Ceramic,
and since the rotation is grinding, I'm replacing them with same-size steel ball bearings.
These bearings maintain their initial performance for a very short time,
and the ball races apparently can't handle the hardness of the ceramic balls,
causing spalling almost immediately.
You see a lot of Easton R4SL hubs with gritty rotation, or rather
nearly all ones that have been in use for a reasonable amount of time are like this—
and that's Enduro's fault, not Easton's.
The ceramic ball grade is usually GRADE 3,
and occasionally I see GRADE 5 ones,
but even setting aside the question of spherical accuracy, the weak ball race problem remains unsolved,
so they all get gritty quickly anyway.
The hub axle isn't a straight cylinder but has an entasis shape—
maybe it was influenced by the columns of Hōryū-ji temple or the Parthenon.
Even though I know from experience that there's no strength problem without this shape,
they went out of their way to do it anyway. That's pretty meticulous.
And it's not even a part you normally see.
Built it.
24H CX Sprint left-side leading normal rim orientation 4-4 Italian laced.
Addendum: Regarding the comments about why I changed from radial to tangential lacing,
that was the customer's preference, not mine.
It seems they prioritized rigidity over spoke lightness.
I was the one who suggested, "Well then, how about CX Sprint instead of CX-RAY?"
A customer brought in a wheel built with an EDGE 1.38 rim.
One of our regular customers had asked me about this wheel that appeared on a certain auction site:
"Should I buy it? Quack quack quack (←sound effect)"
But while I was hemming and hawing, someone else won the bid,
and later that winning bidder brought it to our shop—
and that's how it ended up here.
This isn't the first time something like this has happened.
My prediction that "that wheel on the auction site will eventually end up at our shop, no matter who buys it" has come true many times.
This 1.38 rim is from EDGE's early days when they were still garage-scale operation,
so there aren't many of them in circulation.
The hub appears to be Goldtec (a brand name) Pro Competition Road (a model name).
I say "appears" because there's a possibility that Goldtec is the model name
and Pro Compe (and so on) is the brand name
(that phenomenon where you look at a CD jacket from a band you don't know well
and can't tell which is the band name and which is the song title).
24H black CX-RAY counter-spoke radial laced
and built treating it as an inside-out rim.
Since there's no rim offset on either the inner or outer edge,
there's no particular problem with treating it as inside-out, but normally you wouldn't do this.
However, Reynolds wheels from certain eras
have front wheel radial lacing treated as inside-out,
and rear wheel tangential lacing (left and right or freewheel side)
treated as normal rim orientation.
The hub bearings are Enduro Zero Ceramic,
and since the rotation is grinding, I'm replacing them with same-size steel ball bearings.
These bearings maintain their initial performance for a very short time,
and the ball races apparently can't handle the hardness of the ceramic balls,
causing spalling almost immediately.
You see a lot of Easton R4SL hubs with gritty rotation, or rather
nearly all ones that have been in use for a reasonable amount of time are like this—
and that's Enduro's fault, not Easton's.
The ceramic ball grade is usually GRADE 3,
and occasionally I see GRADE 5 ones,
but even setting aside the question of spherical accuracy, the weak ball race problem remains unsolved,
so they all get gritty quickly anyway.
The hub axle isn't a straight cylinder but has an entasis shape—
maybe it was influenced by the columns of Hōryū-ji temple or the Parthenon.
Even though I know from experience that there's no strength problem without this shape,
they went out of their way to do it anyway. That's pretty meticulous.
And it's not even a part you normally see.
Built it.
24H CX Sprint left-side leading normal rim orientation 4-4 Italian laced.
Addendum: Regarding the comments about why I changed from radial to tangential lacing,
that was the customer's preference, not mine.
It seems they prioritized rigidity over spoke lightness.
I was the one who suggested, "Well then, how about CX Sprint instead of CX-RAY?"