Another wheel day (and so on).
A customer brought in the rear wheel from a Smart Envy System 4.5 (a high-end rim brake road wheelset).
Actually, I had once inspected this wheel when the customer asked me to tension it properly, but the spokes were clearly too long, so I couldn't tighten it much at all.
It's a DT 240S hub, 24 spokes, all-black CX-RAY 6-cross lacing. If the manufacturer had used DT hubs in-house, the spokes would be the same, but it would be 4-cross laced in that case—so this isn't factory work.
It's the handiwork of some hack shop somewhere in Japan. And here's why it's hack work: when I disassembled the wheel and carelessly yanked the spokes out of the hub flanges, I found not just one or two, but numerous scratches on the hub body where the threaded end of the spokes had gouged it. If someone was competent, they'd be extra careful after making even one mistake like that, but apparently this person had no such concept.
The hub shows signs of previous rebuilds because the rim was once buckled and replaced.
If they were just swapping rims, there'd be no need to pull the spokes out of the hub at all. And they didn't seem to have any strong reason to change from 4-cross to 6-cross either. You could tell if that were the case by seeing two different sets of hole patterns on the hub flange.
If this had originally been all CX-RAY 4-cross and they wanted to make it semi-competitione 4-6 mixed lacing, the free side would need different-length spokes (not reusable) and the non-drive side would have longer spokes due to the different lacing pattern (also not reusable)—meaning a complete spoke replacement. But in this case, the non-drive side CX-RAY 6-cross spokes can be reused.
The rim model was 56AC. Later models, regardless of whether they're tubular, clincher, or tubeless, are designated A56. The "C" after "A" probably indicates clincher.
By the way, as you can see from the rim tape in the image above, this rim is tubeless-compatible...
It isn't.
Looking from the free side, I disassembled counterclockwise from the valve hole, leaving the final 4 spokes of the last-cross pair untouched—just left and right.
There's a reason I didn't pull all the non-drive side spokes from the flange. I'll explain later.
By doing this, I can clearly see the original spoke length...
↑Next to the valve hole, a non-drive side spoke.
↑Same non-drive spoke as the previous image
↑One over from that, also non-drive side
↑Both of these are free side spokes.
The last image shows threads fully used up.
Normally, even if spoke length is off, all spokes on one side are long and all on the other are short, so the visible thread engagement looks roughly consistent on each side. But this wheel isn't like that. I measured and found a 2mm difference between free and non-drive sides, but same sides are consistent.
(You can also tell by looking at the end face or the plain portion of the threaded end.) These were uncut CX-RAY spokes (both even-millimeter lengths), so there's maybe 0.5mm variation between individual spokes. (This is why spokes cut with a cutter rather than off-the-shelf spokes show less initial runout during rough assembly.) But this exceeds that variation. (↑I'm using a lot of parentheses today)
Here's what's going on:
Lightweight, low-profile rims like Nomu Lab Wheel No. 5 or Shimano C24 WO rims shrink noticeably inward under spoke tension.
With a taller or stiffer rim, even under significant tension, the area around the holes on the inner side deforms inward, but the outer edge doesn't deform as much inward.
(With normal equal-sided spoke wheels) the final-cross inner two spokes and outer two spokes are always one from each side left and right, but if the inner pair's tension is low and the outer pair's is high, or vice versa...
...then a low-profile rim will show radial runout. These four ENVE spokes had the outer pair tensioned higher, so I drew it that way. With a rim like this, if the final-cross pair on the same side differs by three thread wraps (which this wheel does), you get terrible radial runout, so tensioning out the runout alone reduces spoke tension variance quite a bit.
But with an ENVE rim like this one—extraordinarily stiff against spoke tension—while not perfectly rigid, tension variance barely shows up as radial runout on the rim's outer edge. In fact, when I inspected it before, there was no obvious radial runout (despite three thread-wrap difference in the final cross!). I noticed the tension variance, but fixing it would mean loosening the nipples back to rough-assembly state and re-tensioning, which takes almost as much effort as a full rebuild, so I didn't bother.
As for lateral runout, if the adjacent final-cross pair also shows the same "high-low-low-high" pattern, the highs on free and non-drive sides cancel each other out pretty nicely.
Built it.
Black semi-competitione 4-6 mixed lacing with spoking wire.
Before
After
Changed from JIS lacing to Italian lacing. I had to cut the non-drive side spokes a bit shorter, and as usual, to distinguish original vs. original non-drive spokes, I didn't pull them all from the flange even when I had only 4 left disassembled (though I could've just taken them all out and kept them sorted).
This rim is similar in profile height and width to yesterday's Reynolds. The SES 56AC was lighter, but the Reynolds is a tubeless-ready rim, so if the world only had 56AC or AR58 to choose from, it would be a tough call.
On a different note, if you search our blog archives for something like "yaaaah ZIPP" (ZIPP in full-width characters), only posts where I've leaked ZIPP rim actual weights come up. It's a bit of a collection now.
I'm not planning to expand it further, so I'm not going to publish this rim's actual weight. Let me keep the difference from Reynolds to myself.
↑what a jerk I sound like
So rry for the wait!
The re ason I ha ve thr ee ver sio ns of thi s ima ge wi ll be exp lai ned la ter!
For now, ple ase che ck ou t thi s ima ge!
↑sto p it!
A customer brought in the rear wheel from a Smart Envy System 4.5 (a high-end rim brake road wheelset).
Actually, I had once inspected this wheel when the customer asked me to tension it properly, but the spokes were clearly too long, so I couldn't tighten it much at all.
It's a DT 240S hub, 24 spokes, all-black CX-RAY 6-cross lacing. If the manufacturer had used DT hubs in-house, the spokes would be the same, but it would be 4-cross laced in that case—so this isn't factory work.
It's the handiwork of some hack shop somewhere in Japan. And here's why it's hack work: when I disassembled the wheel and carelessly yanked the spokes out of the hub flanges, I found not just one or two, but numerous scratches on the hub body where the threaded end of the spokes had gouged it. If someone was competent, they'd be extra careful after making even one mistake like that, but apparently this person had no such concept.
The hub shows signs of previous rebuilds because the rim was once buckled and replaced.
If they were just swapping rims, there'd be no need to pull the spokes out of the hub at all. And they didn't seem to have any strong reason to change from 4-cross to 6-cross either. You could tell if that were the case by seeing two different sets of hole patterns on the hub flange.
If this had originally been all CX-RAY 4-cross and they wanted to make it semi-competitione 4-6 mixed lacing, the free side would need different-length spokes (not reusable) and the non-drive side would have longer spokes due to the different lacing pattern (also not reusable)—meaning a complete spoke replacement. But in this case, the non-drive side CX-RAY 6-cross spokes can be reused.
The rim model was 56AC. Later models, regardless of whether they're tubular, clincher, or tubeless, are designated A56. The "C" after "A" probably indicates clincher.
By the way, as you can see from the rim tape in the image above, this rim is tubeless-compatible...
It isn't.
Looking from the free side, I disassembled counterclockwise from the valve hole, leaving the final 4 spokes of the last-cross pair untouched—just left and right.
There's a reason I didn't pull all the non-drive side spokes from the flange. I'll explain later.
By doing this, I can clearly see the original spoke length...
↑Next to the valve hole, a non-drive side spoke.
↑Same non-drive spoke as the previous image
↑One over from that, also non-drive side
↑Both of these are free side spokes.
The last image shows threads fully used up.
Normally, even if spoke length is off, all spokes on one side are long and all on the other are short, so the visible thread engagement looks roughly consistent on each side. But this wheel isn't like that. I measured and found a 2mm difference between free and non-drive sides, but same sides are consistent.
(You can also tell by looking at the end face or the plain portion of the threaded end.) These were uncut CX-RAY spokes (both even-millimeter lengths), so there's maybe 0.5mm variation between individual spokes. (This is why spokes cut with a cutter rather than off-the-shelf spokes show less initial runout during rough assembly.) But this exceeds that variation. (↑I'm using a lot of parentheses today)
Here's what's going on:
Lightweight, low-profile rims like Nomu Lab Wheel No. 5 or Shimano C24 WO rims shrink noticeably inward under spoke tension.
With a taller or stiffer rim, even under significant tension, the area around the holes on the inner side deforms inward, but the outer edge doesn't deform as much inward.
(With normal equal-sided spoke wheels) the final-cross inner two spokes and outer two spokes are always one from each side left and right, but if the inner pair's tension is low and the outer pair's is high, or vice versa...
...then a low-profile rim will show radial runout. These four ENVE spokes had the outer pair tensioned higher, so I drew it that way. With a rim like this, if the final-cross pair on the same side differs by three thread wraps (which this wheel does), you get terrible radial runout, so tensioning out the runout alone reduces spoke tension variance quite a bit.
But with an ENVE rim like this one—extraordinarily stiff against spoke tension—while not perfectly rigid, tension variance barely shows up as radial runout on the rim's outer edge. In fact, when I inspected it before, there was no obvious radial runout (despite three thread-wrap difference in the final cross!). I noticed the tension variance, but fixing it would mean loosening the nipples back to rough-assembly state and re-tensioning, which takes almost as much effort as a full rebuild, so I didn't bother.
As for lateral runout, if the adjacent final-cross pair also shows the same "high-low-low-high" pattern, the highs on free and non-drive sides cancel each other out pretty nicely.
Built it.
Black semi-competitione 4-6 mixed lacing with spoking wire.
Before
After
Changed from JIS lacing to Italian lacing. I had to cut the non-drive side spokes a bit shorter, and as usual, to distinguish original vs. original non-drive spokes, I didn't pull them all from the flange even when I had only 4 left disassembled (though I could've just taken them all out and kept them sorted).
This rim is similar in profile height and width to yesterday's Reynolds. The SES 56AC was lighter, but the Reynolds is a tubeless-ready rim, so if the world only had 56AC or AR58 to choose from, it would be a tough call.
On a different note, if you search our blog archives for something like "yaaaah ZIPP" (ZIPP in full-width characters), only posts where I've leaked ZIPP rim actual weights come up. It's a bit of a collection now.
I'm not planning to expand it further, so I'm not going to publish this rim's actual weight. Let me keep the difference from Reynolds to myself.
↑what a jerk I sound like
So rry for the wait!
The re ason I ha ve thr ee ver sio ns of thi s ima ge wi ll be exp lai ned la ter!
For now, ple ase che ck ou t thi s ima ge!
↑sto p it!