A customer brought in a Fulcrum
Red Wind XLR50 rear wheel for repair.
This is the equivalent wheel to what Campagnolo calls the Bullet Ultra.
To be precise, the Red Wind XLR and Bullet Ultra
come in USB spec and CULT spec versions,
and they have cup-and-cone style hub bearings.
In contrast, the lower-priced Red Wind and Bullet models
use cartridge-style bearings, so CULT conversion and such aren't possible.
So there's one "ordinary" spoke with a broken neck,
and separately there are 2 bent spokes.
Even though I say "ordinary," spoke breakage at the neck
is actually a rare case,
and much more commonly spoke replacement becomes necessary
after a crash, or when shopping bags, cable locks, rear derailleurs,
or kickstands get caught up in the rear wheel.
↑The spoke neck breakage location
↑Near the opposite side phase,
2 consecutive spokes in the direction of the outer porcupine have deformed.
These two problems appear to have different causes.
The reason I can't say for certain is because the customer doesn't know either.
Since this isn't the wheel's original owner.
If the original owner had seen this, they'd definitely know.
What worried me was whether this wheel,
which has a hybrid rim of aluminum and carbon,
had the aluminum section plastically deformed beyond repair,
and was then disposed of through an auction.
As it turned out, that wasn't the case.
I don't think many shops stock spare spokes for this wheel,
but selling a wheel with 3 broken spokes
shows some real nerve.
After replacing the 3 spokes and doing a rough truing,
the rim was shifted toward the non-freewheel side.
Only the nipples at the replaced spoke locations were touched
to remove lateral runout,
and no general tightening was done that would pull the rim toward the freewheel side.
And this is after tightening the freewheel side somewhat—
originally this gap was about 1.5 times larger than in the image.
Someone definitely tightened only the non-freewheel side with so-called "truing play,"
and the nipples show those marks.
Plus there was vertical runout in amounts and patterns that wouldn't be possible from a factory-built wheel.
Fixing this is equivalent to being handed someone else's half-built wheel
and asked to finish it.
I fixed it.
Not just the centering deviation—I chased down both lateral and vertical runout as much as possible.
↑The replaced spokes
2 bent spokes and 1 broken neck.
Red Wind XLR50 rear wheel for repair.
This is the equivalent wheel to what Campagnolo calls the Bullet Ultra.
To be precise, the Red Wind XLR and Bullet Ultra
come in USB spec and CULT spec versions,
and they have cup-and-cone style hub bearings.
In contrast, the lower-priced Red Wind and Bullet models
use cartridge-style bearings, so CULT conversion and such aren't possible.
So there's one "ordinary" spoke with a broken neck,
and separately there are 2 bent spokes.
Even though I say "ordinary," spoke breakage at the neck
is actually a rare case,
and much more commonly spoke replacement becomes necessary
after a crash, or when shopping bags, cable locks, rear derailleurs,
or kickstands get caught up in the rear wheel.
↑The spoke neck breakage location
↑Near the opposite side phase,
2 consecutive spokes in the direction of the outer porcupine have deformed.
These two problems appear to have different causes.
The reason I can't say for certain is because the customer doesn't know either.
Since this isn't the wheel's original owner.
If the original owner had seen this, they'd definitely know.
What worried me was whether this wheel,
which has a hybrid rim of aluminum and carbon,
had the aluminum section plastically deformed beyond repair,
and was then disposed of through an auction.
As it turned out, that wasn't the case.
I don't think many shops stock spare spokes for this wheel,
but selling a wheel with 3 broken spokes
shows some real nerve.
After replacing the 3 spokes and doing a rough truing,
the rim was shifted toward the non-freewheel side.
Only the nipples at the replaced spoke locations were touched
to remove lateral runout,
and no general tightening was done that would pull the rim toward the freewheel side.
And this is after tightening the freewheel side somewhat—
originally this gap was about 1.5 times larger than in the image.
Someone definitely tightened only the non-freewheel side with so-called "truing play,"
and the nipples show those marks.
Plus there was vertical runout in amounts and patterns that wouldn't be possible from a factory-built wheel.
Fixing this is equivalent to being handed someone else's half-built wheel
and asked to finish it.
I fixed it.
Not just the centering deviation—I chased down both lateral and vertical runout as much as possible.
↑The replaced spokes
2 bent spokes and 1 broken neck.