Another day, another wheel (and so on).
A customer brought in a wheel built with an EDGE 1.38 rim.
One of our regulars had actually consulted me about this wheel when it showed up on a certain auction site—
"Should I bid on it? Quack quack quack" (that's the sound they made)
—but they hemmed and hawed, and someone else snatched it up instead.
Then later, that winning bidder brought the wheel into our shop,
which is how it ended up here.
This isn't the first time something like this has happened.
I've made the prediction plenty of times: "Whatever wheel shows up on an auction site, somebody's gonna end up buying it and bringing it in here eventually."
And I've been right about it more often than not.
This 1.38 rim is from EDGE's early days, back when they were still garage-brand scale,
so there aren't a ton of them in circulation.
The hub appears to be a Goldtec (that's the brand)
Pro Competition Road (that's the model name), probably.
I say "probably" because there's a chance Goldtec is the model name and
Pro Compe (etc.) is the brand name
(you know that feeling when you look at a CD jacket from a band you've never heard of and can't tell which is the band name and which is the song title?).
24H black CX-RAY outpoke radial lacing,
built with the rim treated as reversed.
Since there's no rim offset on the inner or outer side,
treating it as reversed doesn't really matter, but normally you wouldn't do this.
That said, certain vintage Reynolds wheels
are built with the front wheel in radial lacing treated as reversed,
and the rear wheel in tangent lacing (either side or freewheel side)
treated as standard.
The hub bearings are Enduro Zero Ceramic,
and they're grinding rough, so I'll swap them out for steel ball bearings of the same size.
These bearings have an extremely short window where they maintain their initial performance—
the ball races lose the battle against the hardness of the ceramic balls
and quickly develop spalling.
You see a lot of Easton R4SL hubs with gritty rotation, or rather,
pretty much any that have seen decent years of use end up that way,
and the fault lies not with Easton but with Enduro.
The ceramic ball grade is usually GRADE 3,
and you occasionally see GRADE 5 versions,
but before you even get to true sphericity issues, the ball race weakness problem hasn't been solved,
so they all grind up the same way eventually.
The hub axle isn't a straight cylinder but rather has an entasis shape—
maybe it was inspired by the colonnades of Horyu-ji Temple or the Parthenon.
Even though I know from experience that there's no strength problem without this shape,
they went ahead and did it anyway. That's some serious attention to detail.
And it's not even a visible part normally.
Got it built.
24H CX Sprint left drop standard rim Italian 4-cross lacing.
ADDENDUM: I've gotten comments asking why I switched from radial to tangent lacing,
but that was the customer's call, not mine.
They're prioritizing stiffness over spoke lightness, basically.
I did suggest, though: "If that's the case, why not go with CX Sprint instead of CX-RAY?"
A customer brought in a wheel built with an EDGE 1.38 rim.
One of our regulars had actually consulted me about this wheel when it showed up on a certain auction site—
"Should I bid on it? Quack quack quack" (that's the sound they made)
—but they hemmed and hawed, and someone else snatched it up instead.
Then later, that winning bidder brought the wheel into our shop,
which is how it ended up here.
This isn't the first time something like this has happened.
I've made the prediction plenty of times: "Whatever wheel shows up on an auction site, somebody's gonna end up buying it and bringing it in here eventually."
And I've been right about it more often than not.
This 1.38 rim is from EDGE's early days, back when they were still garage-brand scale,
so there aren't a ton of them in circulation.
The hub appears to be a Goldtec (that's the brand)
Pro Competition Road (that's the model name), probably.
I say "probably" because there's a chance Goldtec is the model name and
Pro Compe (etc.) is the brand name
(you know that feeling when you look at a CD jacket from a band you've never heard of and can't tell which is the band name and which is the song title?).
24H black CX-RAY outpoke radial lacing,
built with the rim treated as reversed.
Since there's no rim offset on the inner or outer side,
treating it as reversed doesn't really matter, but normally you wouldn't do this.
That said, certain vintage Reynolds wheels
are built with the front wheel in radial lacing treated as reversed,
and the rear wheel in tangent lacing (either side or freewheel side)
treated as standard.
The hub bearings are Enduro Zero Ceramic,
and they're grinding rough, so I'll swap them out for steel ball bearings of the same size.
These bearings have an extremely short window where they maintain their initial performance—
the ball races lose the battle against the hardness of the ceramic balls
and quickly develop spalling.
You see a lot of Easton R4SL hubs with gritty rotation, or rather,
pretty much any that have seen decent years of use end up that way,
and the fault lies not with Easton but with Enduro.
The ceramic ball grade is usually GRADE 3,
and you occasionally see GRADE 5 versions,
but before you even get to true sphericity issues, the ball race weakness problem hasn't been solved,
so they all grind up the same way eventually.
The hub axle isn't a straight cylinder but rather has an entasis shape—
maybe it was inspired by the colonnades of Horyu-ji Temple or the Parthenon.
Even though I know from experience that there's no strength problem without this shape,
they went ahead and did it anyway. That's some serious attention to detail.
And it's not even a visible part normally.
Got it built.
24H CX Sprint left drop standard rim Italian 4-cross lacing.
ADDENDUM: I've gotten comments asking why I switched from radial to tangent lacing,
but that was the customer's call, not mine.
They're prioritizing stiffness over spoke lightness, basically.
I did suggest, though: "If that's the case, why not go with CX Sprint instead of CX-RAY?"