A customer sent me a 7801 hub freeebody.
This person is a reader of this blog and has left comments before.
The freeebody that arrived had two issues:
The bearing rotation was grinding and needed replacement, and
one of the ratchet pawls was lost and they wanted me to fix it.
This really should have been discussed by phone first.
Because I would have said no.
It's quite an unreasonable request, especially since I never said I had pawl stock.
Anyway, the dust seal orientation is backwards here.
I wonder why everyone gets this wrong.
(→here) and (→here) for example.
There's a distributor called Seven Bicycle.
They're the only official Japanese distributor for Jessem, an Italian brand,
but rather than just importing and selling Jessem apparel,
they've partnered with Jessem to sell apparel under their own brand and design
called 7ITA (pronounced "seven-a-t-a," though
I call it "Nanaita").
Jessem is a pretty established old company,
and the apparel they make isn't bad quality,
but before Seven Bicycle had the exclusive contract,
when multiple wholesalers carried it,
there was a lot of distressed selling, so
veteran cyclists tend to see it as a cheap brand.
To shake off that image,
they're emphasizing the 7ITA brand rather than just moving Jessem stock.
The flower arrangement in the photo above
was a gift sent by the president of Seven Bicycle when our shop opened.
This freeebody arrived quite some time ago,
but aside from bearing replacement,
the ratchet pawls are proprietary parts, and
for some reason Shimano only used a pawl spring design on
the 7800 and 7801 hubs,
and even the Altegra and 105 of that era didn't use this system,
so 7800-series hub service parts can't be substituted with
lower-grade or different-year versions.
Being Shimano, of course the spare parts are discontinued,
so I just have to wait and hope to find
a used junker hub for parts.
That was the situation, but
recently I managed to get a used rear hub.
Well, that's a relief.
↑I mean, I didn't need that many
(though writing about it here might change that).
Recently I bought a 7ITA jersey.
The jersey I used to wear a lot (not from Seven Bicycle)
was starting to come undone at the seams, so I sent it in for repair, and
in the meantime my cycling shorts ran out, which was another reason.
↑Current Jessem logo
There's a big snail drawn on the back.
Cats, snails, and smiley faces are
frequently used design motifs in 7ITA.
In the past there was a jersey with a samurai silhouette (a ronin, not full armor),
and apparently foreigners in Tokyo bought them frequently.
↑This is a Campagnolo freeebody, but
the inner bearing has a snap ring installed as a retainer.
A snap ring is a C-ring with holes for snap ring pliers,
but on 7800-series hubs the inner bearing is retained by
a C-ring without snap ring holes.
Since it does have a groove, it's not easy, but it is possible to remove.
I've done it before (that's how I know the shape).
↑Snap ring
↑Grooved C-ring
When I felt the bearings on the freeebody we received,
both the front and rear needed replacement.
Rather than just replacing bearings and making a makeshift repair
with a missing ratchet pawl,
I thought the better solution would be to
swap in a rear hub from our stock of used hubs
that has good bearing condition,
and return the original freeebody as-is without any work
(actually it becomes our spare pawl source)
since this involves no labor and no bearing costs.
Since our shop can't sell used parts,
we'll provide the junked (though in good condition) freeebody to the customer for free.
The customer had already prepared a Letter Pack for return postage,
so there's no cost for that.
Technically we could "sell" it under the pretense of a private transaction,
but this time we decided to gift the freeebody.
Latest 7ITA winter gloves.
These have a smiley face design.
Winter gear from European brands tends to be seriously warm
because it gets really cold over there.
Seven Bicycle doesn't just change the design on Jessem's stock sizing;
they also adjust for the Japanese market—shortening sleeves on
European brand jerseys and jackets that tend to be too long,
and specifying Asian fit dimensions, etc.
Winter long racing shorts, especially those with bibs,
sometimes have a band at the heel that pulls over the foot,
but that's actually supposed to go under your shoe sole.
However, from a Japanese hygiene standpoint,
that usage isn't common.
It'd get shredded from walking! You can mostly avoid that
by wearing a full shoe cover too, but
even in winter I usually just wear toe covers,
so that approach won't work for me (we're talking feet here).
That heel band—when you're not putting it under the sole,
you either slip it on your foot before the socks or
after the socks, and
this reminds me a bit of the "garter belt over or under the panties" debate.
In my case (just to be clear, we're talking about the heel band, not a garter belt),
if it goes inside the shoe it gets bunched up, so I just cut it off.
7ITA winter pants also come with that heel band,
but I've never heard anyone say it's popular;
I have heard complaints, so
the Seven Bicycle president was saying they'd ask Jessem to stop including it.
This is a separate issue from the freeebody story earlier, but
a customer left a WH-7801 with me.
Tubular rim version.
This is my personal 7ITA cat-motif winter jacket
from last year's model. Cute. Plus insanely warm.
Below it is a 7ITA winter glove from a few years ago,
camouflage pattern in several colors, this one in blue camo.
Right now this alone is enough for winter.
What I do with most gloves is
remove the palm padding.
The shiny part is where I dripped cyanoacrylate
to prevent unraveling from the stitch line.
The spoke arrangement is a knockoff of Mavic's Isopulse, but
in my assessment, this is the best road bike wheel
Shimano has ever made.
The R9200-series wheels could change that.
One spoke is bent, and I thought it was at the tape marking,
but
it was actually closer to the hub. The red mark is also
from the customer.
It's hard to see under tension, but
it was bent enough to require replacement.
This spoke has flats with dimensions that probably
don't exist on any other Shimano wheel or other brands
(though they look like they could be straight CX spokes...).
Also, if the spoke breaks leaving the threaded portion
inside the nipple,
the nipple also needs replacing, and
that's a special nipple currently unavailable.
If doing just a single improvised fix,
if the spoke weight differs greatly from other spokes, it's bad,
so you'd need the same spoke weight
or, if you can't get the OEM spoke (and you can't),
you need to replace the entire one side.
Even then,
if a spoke breaks and gets stuck inside the nipple,
you'll run out of nipples and can't complete the repair.
7ITA gilet.
In road racing, there's a simple shoulder bag for feed called a sacoche,
but now the apparel industry uses "sacoche" for any bag of similar shape
without particularly thinking of it as cycling-derived.
The gilet doesn't come from cycling; it's a French term for
a sleeveless vest-like garment worn under a jacket.
Strictly speaking the definition differs, but
it covers roughly the same body area as a vest.
You could call it a waistcoat too.
It breaks wind from the front,
but it's made of such thin material that you can ball or fold it
without it taking up much space.
You can keep it in a jersey pocket or,
if you're wearing it on descents and there's room after the climb,
it's recommended to toss it in your tool bag.
↑Back view
Cat motif.
The back is mesh fabric so heat doesn't build up.
You can put your hands in the jersey pockets even while wearing the gilet.
Pearl Izumi once made a wind vest with a slit for jersey pocket access,
but it was only made for one model year and then discontinued—
I think it was a 2-year model run.
That one had vertical side slits,
but this gilet has horizontal slits at the top.
And while I was troubled by this,
someone offered to donate a WH-7801 wheel to me.
From here, after confirming they understood it was used,
I'll be salvaging parts from it for repairs.
As I mentioned, I don't charge for the parts.
When a customer with a damaged 7800-series hub or wheel comes in,
the owner of this donated wheel happens to be there,
and offers "I'm okay with my wheel parts being used for your repairs"—
this interpretation is that it's happening in different timelines,
not the same timeline.
By the way, this one is WO rim version.
The brake zone is worn down so much that
I can't salvage the rim parts.
↑This rim-side spoke head washer is also a hard-to-find part.
I replaced the spoke, tightened that area until the runout
wasn't the biggest in that spot anymore,
then did fine truing at a few points and
only then first checked with the centering gauge—it was spot on.
I continued some truing after that, but
not enough to throw the center off.
Just to be safe I check once more at the very end.
Fixed.
↑The replaced spoke
Next, the front wheel. This one was just an inspection, but
the preliminary center was spot on (photo above),
I did some fine truing but there was almost no runout,
and when I checked with the gauge after, it was still spot on.
...The reason this post keeps having
Seven Bicycle advertisements tucked in
is because that donated WH-7801 wheel came from
the Seven Bicycle president.
I recently sold him my Nomu Lab Wheel #5,
and when he asked me to dispose of his old wheel,
instead of quietly taking it I asked "Can I use this to help someone I don't know?"
and got permission.
By the way, this isn't the first time the president has used a wheel I built;
he's also been using another one of my wheels since before Nomu Lab opened.
I've also prepared a connection between Shimano and Jessem.
This is an ancient Jessem-made Shimano jersey.
Back then the romanization varied—Jessem, Jisseiyi, etc.—
and the name wasn't standardized.
The logo is of course the old version, and it's unused with the tag still attached.
↑Like this
The chest zip only opens enough to pass your head through, and
the print is off-register and cut right at the zipper.
The back has the same design.
It has two pockets, not three.
When you put a phone in a protective case
into a jersey pocket,
it effectively uses up one of three pockets.
I think this is why jersey pockets wear out faster,
so maybe two pockets is actually more practical for today,
don't you think?
If some big brand starts doing this, it'll probably become trendy overnight.
Speaking of this "Shimano jersey,"
there's still a mystery I don't understand—whether
Shimano specified the design or if
the Italians just did this without quite understanding...
↑The text on the side says
"Shimano Fishing Gear."
This person is a reader of this blog and has left comments before.
The freeebody that arrived had two issues:
The bearing rotation was grinding and needed replacement, and
one of the ratchet pawls was lost and they wanted me to fix it.
This really should have been discussed by phone first.
Because I would have said no.
It's quite an unreasonable request, especially since I never said I had pawl stock.
Anyway, the dust seal orientation is backwards here.
I wonder why everyone gets this wrong.
(→here) and (→here) for example.
There's a distributor called Seven Bicycle.
They're the only official Japanese distributor for Jessem, an Italian brand,
but rather than just importing and selling Jessem apparel,
they've partnered with Jessem to sell apparel under their own brand and design
called 7ITA (pronounced "seven-a-t-a," though
I call it "Nanaita").
Jessem is a pretty established old company,
and the apparel they make isn't bad quality,
but before Seven Bicycle had the exclusive contract,
when multiple wholesalers carried it,
there was a lot of distressed selling, so
veteran cyclists tend to see it as a cheap brand.
To shake off that image,
they're emphasizing the 7ITA brand rather than just moving Jessem stock.
The flower arrangement in the photo above
was a gift sent by the president of Seven Bicycle when our shop opened.
This freeebody arrived quite some time ago,
but aside from bearing replacement,
the ratchet pawls are proprietary parts, and
for some reason Shimano only used a pawl spring design on
the 7800 and 7801 hubs,
and even the Altegra and 105 of that era didn't use this system,
so 7800-series hub service parts can't be substituted with
lower-grade or different-year versions.
Being Shimano, of course the spare parts are discontinued,
so I just have to wait and hope to find
a used junker hub for parts.
That was the situation, but
recently I managed to get a used rear hub.
Well, that's a relief.
↑I mean, I didn't need that many
(though writing about it here might change that).
Recently I bought a 7ITA jersey.
The jersey I used to wear a lot (not from Seven Bicycle)
was starting to come undone at the seams, so I sent it in for repair, and
in the meantime my cycling shorts ran out, which was another reason.
↑Current Jessem logo
There's a big snail drawn on the back.
Cats, snails, and smiley faces are
frequently used design motifs in 7ITA.
In the past there was a jersey with a samurai silhouette (a ronin, not full armor),
and apparently foreigners in Tokyo bought them frequently.
↑This is a Campagnolo freeebody, but
the inner bearing has a snap ring installed as a retainer.
A snap ring is a C-ring with holes for snap ring pliers,
but on 7800-series hubs the inner bearing is retained by
a C-ring without snap ring holes.
Since it does have a groove, it's not easy, but it is possible to remove.
I've done it before (that's how I know the shape).
↑Snap ring
↑Grooved C-ring
When I felt the bearings on the freeebody we received,
both the front and rear needed replacement.
Rather than just replacing bearings and making a makeshift repair
with a missing ratchet pawl,
I thought the better solution would be to
swap in a rear hub from our stock of used hubs
that has good bearing condition,
and return the original freeebody as-is without any work
(actually it becomes our spare pawl source)
since this involves no labor and no bearing costs.
Since our shop can't sell used parts,
we'll provide the junked (though in good condition) freeebody to the customer for free.
The customer had already prepared a Letter Pack for return postage,
so there's no cost for that.
Technically we could "sell" it under the pretense of a private transaction,
but this time we decided to gift the freeebody.
Latest 7ITA winter gloves.
These have a smiley face design.
Winter gear from European brands tends to be seriously warm
because it gets really cold over there.
Seven Bicycle doesn't just change the design on Jessem's stock sizing;
they also adjust for the Japanese market—shortening sleeves on
European brand jerseys and jackets that tend to be too long,
and specifying Asian fit dimensions, etc.
Winter long racing shorts, especially those with bibs,
sometimes have a band at the heel that pulls over the foot,
but that's actually supposed to go under your shoe sole.
However, from a Japanese hygiene standpoint,
that usage isn't common.
It'd get shredded from walking! You can mostly avoid that
by wearing a full shoe cover too, but
even in winter I usually just wear toe covers,
so that approach won't work for me (we're talking feet here).
That heel band—when you're not putting it under the sole,
you either slip it on your foot before the socks or
after the socks, and
this reminds me a bit of the "garter belt over or under the panties" debate.
In my case (just to be clear, we're talking about the heel band, not a garter belt),
if it goes inside the shoe it gets bunched up, so I just cut it off.
7ITA winter pants also come with that heel band,
but I've never heard anyone say it's popular;
I have heard complaints, so
the Seven Bicycle president was saying they'd ask Jessem to stop including it.
This is a separate issue from the freeebody story earlier, but
a customer left a WH-7801 with me.
Tubular rim version.
This is my personal 7ITA cat-motif winter jacket
from last year's model. Cute. Plus insanely warm.
Below it is a 7ITA winter glove from a few years ago,
camouflage pattern in several colors, this one in blue camo.
Right now this alone is enough for winter.
What I do with most gloves is
remove the palm padding.
The shiny part is where I dripped cyanoacrylate
to prevent unraveling from the stitch line.
The spoke arrangement is a knockoff of Mavic's Isopulse, but
in my assessment, this is the best road bike wheel
Shimano has ever made.
The R9200-series wheels could change that.
One spoke is bent, and I thought it was at the tape marking,
but
it was actually closer to the hub. The red mark is also
from the customer.
It's hard to see under tension, but
it was bent enough to require replacement.
This spoke has flats with dimensions that probably
don't exist on any other Shimano wheel or other brands
(though they look like they could be straight CX spokes...).
Also, if the spoke breaks leaving the threaded portion
inside the nipple,
the nipple also needs replacing, and
that's a special nipple currently unavailable.
If doing just a single improvised fix,
if the spoke weight differs greatly from other spokes, it's bad,
so you'd need the same spoke weight
or, if you can't get the OEM spoke (and you can't),
you need to replace the entire one side.
Even then,
if a spoke breaks and gets stuck inside the nipple,
you'll run out of nipples and can't complete the repair.
7ITA gilet.
In road racing, there's a simple shoulder bag for feed called a sacoche,
but now the apparel industry uses "sacoche" for any bag of similar shape
without particularly thinking of it as cycling-derived.
The gilet doesn't come from cycling; it's a French term for
a sleeveless vest-like garment worn under a jacket.
Strictly speaking the definition differs, but
it covers roughly the same body area as a vest.
You could call it a waistcoat too.
It breaks wind from the front,
but it's made of such thin material that you can ball or fold it
without it taking up much space.
You can keep it in a jersey pocket or,
if you're wearing it on descents and there's room after the climb,
it's recommended to toss it in your tool bag.
↑Back view
Cat motif.
The back is mesh fabric so heat doesn't build up.
You can put your hands in the jersey pockets even while wearing the gilet.
Pearl Izumi once made a wind vest with a slit for jersey pocket access,
but it was only made for one model year and then discontinued—
I think it was a 2-year model run.
That one had vertical side slits,
but this gilet has horizontal slits at the top.
And while I was troubled by this,
someone offered to donate a WH-7801 wheel to me.
From here, after confirming they understood it was used,
I'll be salvaging parts from it for repairs.
As I mentioned, I don't charge for the parts.
When a customer with a damaged 7800-series hub or wheel comes in,
the owner of this donated wheel happens to be there,
and offers "I'm okay with my wheel parts being used for your repairs"—
this interpretation is that it's happening in different timelines,
not the same timeline.
By the way, this one is WO rim version.
The brake zone is worn down so much that
I can't salvage the rim parts.
↑This rim-side spoke head washer is also a hard-to-find part.
I replaced the spoke, tightened that area until the runout
wasn't the biggest in that spot anymore,
then did fine truing at a few points and
only then first checked with the centering gauge—it was spot on.
I continued some truing after that, but
not enough to throw the center off.
Just to be safe I check once more at the very end.
Fixed.
↑The replaced spoke
Next, the front wheel. This one was just an inspection, but
the preliminary center was spot on (photo above),
I did some fine truing but there was almost no runout,
and when I checked with the gauge after, it was still spot on.
...The reason this post keeps having
Seven Bicycle advertisements tucked in
is because that donated WH-7801 wheel came from
the Seven Bicycle president.
I recently sold him my Nomu Lab Wheel #5,
and when he asked me to dispose of his old wheel,
instead of quietly taking it I asked "Can I use this to help someone I don't know?"
and got permission.
By the way, this isn't the first time the president has used a wheel I built;
he's also been using another one of my wheels since before Nomu Lab opened.
I've also prepared a connection between Shimano and Jessem.
This is an ancient Jessem-made Shimano jersey.
Back then the romanization varied—Jessem, Jisseiyi, etc.—
and the name wasn't standardized.
The logo is of course the old version, and it's unused with the tag still attached.
↑Like this
The chest zip only opens enough to pass your head through, and
the print is off-register and cut right at the zipper.
The back has the same design.
It has two pockets, not three.
When you put a phone in a protective case
into a jersey pocket,
it effectively uses up one of three pockets.
I think this is why jersey pockets wear out faster,
so maybe two pockets is actually more practical for today,
don't you think?
Speaking of this "Shimano jersey,"
there's still a mystery I don't understand—whether
Shimano specified the design or if
the Italians just did this without quite understanding...
↑The text on the side says
"Shimano Fishing Gear."