Another day of wheel work (and so on).
A customer dropped off a Roval CLX50 front and rear wheel for me.
They want me to rebuild them better than they are now.
Today I'm just doing the front wheel though.
Oh, I don't usually need to mention this anymore, but
these are disc brake wheels, just so you know.
Since I'm disassembling it anyway, it doesn't really matter in the end, but
the centerline was way off.
This looks like a case of truing without a centering gauge
or a history of over-tightening.
It's hard to imagine it would be this misaligned straight from the factory.
This front hub on Roval's CLX and CL models—
I've mentioned before that they use bearings that are surprisingly small
relative to the hub shell.
These happen to be CeramicSpeed bearings.
And because of the fine thread pitch on Specialized's frame and fork
thru-axle, particularly with the relationship between fork and front wheel,
the wheel can be tightened well beyond the point where it's sufficiently secured,
with quite a bit of additional over-tightening possible.
Compared to the traditional 9mm hollow hub shaft,
if you replace the cam-lever quick-release with a threaded skewer
and crank it down excessively, the hub rotation becomes stiff
and bearing lifespan drops dramatically—
and the same thing happens with thru-axles.
On this front hub, bearing damage that can only be attributed
to over-tightening of the thru-axle has occurred, and the rotation is grinding.
I see this symptom pretty frequently on Roval front wheels.
I'm not saying to leave it loose,
but once side-to-side play is eliminated, that's sufficient.
Don't over-tighten the thru-axle.
The bearings are definitely going to need replacement,
but I haven't asked the customer yet, so I'll wait for their approval before replacing them.
Unless they have a particular preference, standard steel ball bearings are plenty.
Got it built up.
Swapped the drive side spokes from black Aerolite to black CX Sprint
and increased the spoke tension on the non-drive side.
I'll do the spoke lacing later.
A customer dropped off a Roval CLX50 front and rear wheel for me.
They want me to rebuild them better than they are now.
Today I'm just doing the front wheel though.
Oh, I don't usually need to mention this anymore, but
these are disc brake wheels, just so you know.
Since I'm disassembling it anyway, it doesn't really matter in the end, but
the centerline was way off.
This looks like a case of truing without a centering gauge
or a history of over-tightening.
It's hard to imagine it would be this misaligned straight from the factory.
This front hub on Roval's CLX and CL models—
I've mentioned before that they use bearings that are surprisingly small
relative to the hub shell.
These happen to be CeramicSpeed bearings.
And because of the fine thread pitch on Specialized's frame and fork
thru-axle, particularly with the relationship between fork and front wheel,
the wheel can be tightened well beyond the point where it's sufficiently secured,
with quite a bit of additional over-tightening possible.
Compared to the traditional 9mm hollow hub shaft,
if you replace the cam-lever quick-release with a threaded skewer
and crank it down excessively, the hub rotation becomes stiff
and bearing lifespan drops dramatically—
and the same thing happens with thru-axles.
On this front hub, bearing damage that can only be attributed
to over-tightening of the thru-axle has occurred, and the rotation is grinding.
I see this symptom pretty frequently on Roval front wheels.
I'm not saying to leave it loose,
but once side-to-side play is eliminated, that's sufficient.
Don't over-tighten the thru-axle.
The bearings are definitely going to need replacement,
but I haven't asked the customer yet, so I'll wait for their approval before replacing them.
Unless they have a particular preference, standard steel ball bearings are plenty.
Got it built up.
Swapped the drive side spokes from black Aerolite to black CX Sprint
and increased the spoke tension on the non-drive side.
I'll do the spoke lacing later.