Another day, another wheel (and so on).
A customer brought in a front wheel built with an ENVE 1-45 tubular rim.
It's built with a Chris King R45 hub, 20H, black CX-RAY,
laced radial outpoke, but they want me to rebuild it with a Tni Evolite hub.
Since the Chris King has a larger flange-hole spacing,
I can't reuse the spokes when rebuilding with the Evolite hub.
It would be possible if it were the other way around.
Anyway, the customer wanted silver spokes for the rebuild,
so spoke reuse wasn't an option either way.
The hub's bearing cone had completely loosened and was biting into the shaft,
creating such severe lateral play that the wheel was unusable.
Since we're not continuing with this hub anyway,
I went ahead and adjusted the bearing play.
At that point, the lateral runout was about one sheet of paper,
so the wheel was buildable.
You occasionally see this on radial-laced front wheels with dishing-free rims,
but this front wheel was built as a reverse rim.
To be precise, I don't think they consciously intended to build it as a reverse rim—
it just ended up that way from sloppy assembly.
There was one bent spoke.
While disassembling, I noticed something, so I left the nipples
in the four holes next to the valve hole completely untightened
and removed all the others.
I pull the nipples out from the rim without loosening them at all.
These are built with the second-generation internal nipple from the four generations
that span EDGE through ENVE.
The first and second-generation nipples have hexagonal gripping surfaces,
but the first generation also has nylon locking compound embedded on one side,
so you can tell intuitively which end faces outward.
The third and fourth generations have square gripping surfaces
shaped like a standard nipple in reverse,
so you can't install them backwards.
Only the second generation can be installed backwards,
and that's exactly what happened with this wheel before the rebuild.
This nipple's length is about the same as the threaded section of a standard spoke.
The problem with installing it backwards is that you go straight to the thread start,
which means you've used up all the spoke's threads.
This makes later truing (tension increases) impossible
and makes spoke breakage at the thread-start area more likely.
The spoke end is protruding from the nipple—too much.
This nipple also has shallow thread depth, so even when installed correctly,
the acceptable spoke length range is very tight.
The light blue stuff stuck on it is threadlocker from Wheelsmith.
↑Because it's installed backwards, the thread pocket faces outward.
↑On the inner side, you go straight to the thread start,
and it looks like all the threads are used up.
I cut off the spoke since we're not reusing it.
I put reference tape right at the spoke end.
Loosened it a bit,
and flipped it over.
Sure enough, the spoke threads are completely used up.
Against an aluminum nipple, you could sometimes force it another turn or so from the bottom-out point,
but this looks like it's been screwed in all the way.
This second-generation nipple was used on EDGE rims, not ENVE,
so it's not impossible, but the timeline doesn't match.
The ENVE sticker on the rim was probably not factory-applied—
it's likely a separately-sold sticker that comes in various colors,
and someone applied the white one later.
So is this an EDGE-era rim with an ENVE sticker? Not quite,
because the serial number is in the 116,000s—six digits—
so this is actually a later-production ENVE-era rim.
I can't explain why the second-generation nipple is there.
My thought was maybe they did a rim swap, reusing nipples from a broken EDGE 1-45,
but the customer also brought in a same-era rear wheel wanting the same rebuild,
so that seems unlikely.
Also, this wheel's current owner isn't the original owner, so
I can't figure out exactly where the shop that
got the nipple direction and spoke length wrong is.
Built.
Evolite hub, 20H, silver CX-RAY, radial outpoke lacing.
Normally when I use silver spokes, I write just "CX-RAY" rather than "silver CX-RAY"
(same with semi-comp), but this time I wrote "silver CX-RAY"
to emphasize that we changed from black.
↑The bent spoke.
A customer brought in a front wheel built with an ENVE 1-45 tubular rim.
It's built with a Chris King R45 hub, 20H, black CX-RAY,
laced radial outpoke, but they want me to rebuild it with a Tni Evolite hub.
Since the Chris King has a larger flange-hole spacing,
I can't reuse the spokes when rebuilding with the Evolite hub.
It would be possible if it were the other way around.
Anyway, the customer wanted silver spokes for the rebuild,
so spoke reuse wasn't an option either way.
The hub's bearing cone had completely loosened and was biting into the shaft,
creating such severe lateral play that the wheel was unusable.
Since we're not continuing with this hub anyway,
I went ahead and adjusted the bearing play.
At that point, the lateral runout was about one sheet of paper,
so the wheel was buildable.
You occasionally see this on radial-laced front wheels with dishing-free rims,
but this front wheel was built as a reverse rim.
To be precise, I don't think they consciously intended to build it as a reverse rim—
it just ended up that way from sloppy assembly.
There was one bent spoke.
While disassembling, I noticed something, so I left the nipples
in the four holes next to the valve hole completely untightened
and removed all the others.
I pull the nipples out from the rim without loosening them at all.
These are built with the second-generation internal nipple from the four generations
that span EDGE through ENVE.
The first and second-generation nipples have hexagonal gripping surfaces,
but the first generation also has nylon locking compound embedded on one side,
so you can tell intuitively which end faces outward.
The third and fourth generations have square gripping surfaces
shaped like a standard nipple in reverse,
so you can't install them backwards.
Only the second generation can be installed backwards,
and that's exactly what happened with this wheel before the rebuild.
This nipple's length is about the same as the threaded section of a standard spoke.
The problem with installing it backwards is that you go straight to the thread start,
which means you've used up all the spoke's threads.
This makes later truing (tension increases) impossible
and makes spoke breakage at the thread-start area more likely.
The spoke end is protruding from the nipple—too much.
This nipple also has shallow thread depth, so even when installed correctly,
the acceptable spoke length range is very tight.
The light blue stuff stuck on it is threadlocker from Wheelsmith.
↑Because it's installed backwards, the thread pocket faces outward.
↑On the inner side, you go straight to the thread start,
and it looks like all the threads are used up.
I cut off the spoke since we're not reusing it.
I put reference tape right at the spoke end.
Loosened it a bit,
and flipped it over.
Sure enough, the spoke threads are completely used up.
Against an aluminum nipple, you could sometimes force it another turn or so from the bottom-out point,
but this looks like it's been screwed in all the way.
This second-generation nipple was used on EDGE rims, not ENVE,
so it's not impossible, but the timeline doesn't match.
The ENVE sticker on the rim was probably not factory-applied—
it's likely a separately-sold sticker that comes in various colors,
and someone applied the white one later.
So is this an EDGE-era rim with an ENVE sticker? Not quite,
because the serial number is in the 116,000s—six digits—
so this is actually a later-production ENVE-era rim.
I can't explain why the second-generation nipple is there.
My thought was maybe they did a rim swap, reusing nipples from a broken EDGE 1-45,
but the customer also brought in a same-era rear wheel wanting the same rebuild,
so that seems unlikely.
Also, this wheel's current owner isn't the original owner, so
I can't figure out exactly where the shop that
got the nipple direction and spoke length wrong is.
Built.
Evolite hub, 20H, silver CX-RAY, radial outpoke lacing.
Normally when I use silver spokes, I write just "CX-RAY" rather than "silver CX-RAY"
(same with semi-comp), but this time I wrote "silver CX-RAY"
to emphasize that we changed from black.
↑The bent spoke.