I received a rear wheel built with a Stans Olympic rim from a customer.
It's a 26-inch wheel built with an XTR hub.
The customer said a spoke broke, but to be precise,
the nipple fractured under tension.
This is a nipple (that hasn't broken yet),
a Sapim 14mm nipple.
It's also the freebie nipple that comes with the CX-RAY,
but I don't use it.
From experience, it's clearly weak under pulling tension.
That's why I use DT aluminum nipples instead.
The difference between DT and Sapim nipples isn't just material strength—
Sapim nipples corrode more easily (silver especially shows this),
so maybe that's another reason why fractures happen frequently.
It's corroding...it was all too soon.
But what's important here is
not to misjudge the significance of different factors
just because I want to argue that "Sapim nipples are bad."
The real cause of the fracture in this case wasn't
"because it's a Sapim nipple" or "because corrosion had progressed,"
but rather "the spoke length is extremely short."
Both sides are equally short, so it's not a case of
lazily building the rear wheel with spokes that are the same length on both sides.
If you think "this relationship between the nipple and spoke end is good enough"
when building wheels,
you'll probably learn your lesson the hard way after building quite a few.
This time, I repaired just the broken section
with a DT 12mm nipple.
Even accounting for the fact that this nipple is new,
the next time a nipple breaks, it should be one of the Sapim ones.
This kind of work is something I do routinely
and wouldn't normally write about (or photograph),
but this time I'm writing about it because this Olympic rim is relatively rare.
The rim's cross-section is triangular, closely resembling a 700C Iron Cross.
Chronologically, it's likely that "the Olympic adapted to 700C for cyclocross became the Iron Cross."
↑This is an Iron Cross; the one in back has the final version sticker,
the one in front is the previous version (it's mine, by the way).
Both the rim height and ridge width are remarkably similar to the Olympic.
I thought this older Iron Cross and this Olympic were from the same era, but
↑this Notubes logo, an enlargement of the image at the beginning,
represents an even earlier generation that doesn't even appear on the older Iron Cross.
↑This is a tag from Stans tubeless tape
in an old bagged package version.
Incidentally, the contents are exactly the same as today's version.
↑It was the same logo.
It's a 26-inch wheel built with an XTR hub.
The customer said a spoke broke, but to be precise,
the nipple fractured under tension.
This is a nipple (that hasn't broken yet),
a Sapim 14mm nipple.
It's also the freebie nipple that comes with the CX-RAY,
but I don't use it.
From experience, it's clearly weak under pulling tension.
That's why I use DT aluminum nipples instead.
The difference between DT and Sapim nipples isn't just material strength—
Sapim nipples corrode more easily (silver especially shows this),
so maybe that's another reason why fractures happen frequently.
It's corroding...
But what's important here is
not to misjudge the significance of different factors
just because I want to argue that "Sapim nipples are bad."
The real cause of the fracture in this case wasn't
"because it's a Sapim nipple" or "because corrosion had progressed,"
but rather "the spoke length is extremely short."
Both sides are equally short, so it's not a case of
lazily building the rear wheel with spokes that are the same length on both sides.
If you think "this relationship between the nipple and spoke end is good enough"
when building wheels,
you'll probably learn your lesson the hard way after building quite a few.
This time, I repaired just the broken section
with a DT 12mm nipple.
Even accounting for the fact that this nipple is new,
the next time a nipple breaks, it should be one of the Sapim ones.
This kind of work is something I do routinely
and wouldn't normally write about (or photograph),
but this time I'm writing about it because this Olympic rim is relatively rare.
The rim's cross-section is triangular, closely resembling a 700C Iron Cross.
Chronologically, it's likely that "the Olympic adapted to 700C for cyclocross became the Iron Cross."
↑This is an Iron Cross; the one in back has the final version sticker,
the one in front is the previous version (it's mine, by the way).
Both the rim height and ridge width are remarkably similar to the Olympic.
I thought this older Iron Cross and this Olympic were from the same era, but
↑this Notubes logo, an enlargement of the image at the beginning,
represents an even earlier generation that doesn't even appear on the older Iron Cross.
↑This is a tag from Stans tubeless tape
in an old bagged package version.
Incidentally, the contents are exactly the same as today's version.
↑It was the same logo.