Another day of wheels (and so on).
Continuing from yesterday.
I'm rebuilding the rear wheel with the Mechnico 25mm high rim.
A sibling hub to the Reif hub—20 spoke, all black CX-RAY Yonzero laced.
As far as I can tell, this is pretty much the worst combination of spoke count and gauge.
These wheels here generally have no centering issues (nailed it again this time) and
usually the wobble is properly corrected,
but there's a tendency to tension the spokes extremely tight.
This rim doesn't have maximum tension specs marked on it, so I can't say for sure,
but it was tensioned to a dangerous degree. I wouldn't pull that tight myself.
Conversely, a 20-spoke anti-freewheel side radial laced rear wheel
won't be usable without being tensioned this tightly.
The fact that they probably know this (←so then why use this spoke count and lacing pattern?)
and have the skill to actually achieve this tension is pretty impressive, I have to say.
By the way, original tension depends on the rim.
You couldn't tension a 20-spoke Nomu Lab Wheel #5 rim this tightly.
The freewheel body says "ceramic" on it,
but the bearing rotation is grinding, so they want it replaced.
To cut to the chase, the four bearings total—two in the hub body and two in the freewheel body—
had the original ceramic bearings go bad and been swapped out,
and all four were steel ball bearings.
Those steel ball bearings have all gone bad again.
The image above is where I peeled back the seal to check the material.
From the freewheel body's grinding and the brake marks on the rim,
it doesn't look like this wheel's been used much, yet the bearings are damaged.
Bearings don't usually wear evenly—there's almost always variance in how bad each one gets—
but all four bearings in this hub deteriorated the same way,
which suggests to me that the newly installed steel ball bearings were all damaged
from being hammered in with force against the inner race.
I replaced the bearings with new ones and rebuilt the wheel.
20 spoke, black half Champion Yonzero laced.
I'll do the spoke twist later.
About yesterday's article title,
I got one comment asking "Rim weight?"
Correct. Not bad at all.
The customer had also asked me to weigh it when I took it apart.
Front rim 2⁸=256
Rear rim 6¹+6²+6³=258
Continuing from yesterday.
I'm rebuilding the rear wheel with the Mechnico 25mm high rim.
A sibling hub to the Reif hub—20 spoke, all black CX-RAY Yonzero laced.
As far as I can tell, this is pretty much the worst combination of spoke count and gauge.
These wheels here generally have no centering issues (nailed it again this time) and
usually the wobble is properly corrected,
but there's a tendency to tension the spokes extremely tight.
This rim doesn't have maximum tension specs marked on it, so I can't say for sure,
but it was tensioned to a dangerous degree. I wouldn't pull that tight myself.
Conversely, a 20-spoke anti-freewheel side radial laced rear wheel
won't be usable without being tensioned this tightly.
The fact that they probably know this (←so then why use this spoke count and lacing pattern?)
and have the skill to actually achieve this tension is pretty impressive, I have to say.
By the way, original tension depends on the rim.
You couldn't tension a 20-spoke Nomu Lab Wheel #5 rim this tightly.
The freewheel body says "ceramic" on it,
but the bearing rotation is grinding, so they want it replaced.
To cut to the chase, the four bearings total—two in the hub body and two in the freewheel body—
had the original ceramic bearings go bad and been swapped out,
and all four were steel ball bearings.
Those steel ball bearings have all gone bad again.
The image above is where I peeled back the seal to check the material.
From the freewheel body's grinding and the brake marks on the rim,
it doesn't look like this wheel's been used much, yet the bearings are damaged.
Bearings don't usually wear evenly—there's almost always variance in how bad each one gets—
but all four bearings in this hub deteriorated the same way,
which suggests to me that the newly installed steel ball bearings were all damaged
from being hammered in with force against the inner race.
I replaced the bearings with new ones and rebuilt the wheel.
20 spoke, black half Champion Yonzero laced.
I'll do the spoke twist later.
About yesterday's article title,
I got one comment asking "Rim weight?"
Correct. Not bad at all.
The customer had also asked me to weigh it when I took it apart.
Front rim 2⁸=256
Rear rim 6¹+6²+6³=258