Another wheel day (and so on).
I've taken in a rebuild of a 32H wheel with an Open Pro rim and 7800 Dura-Ace hub.
The customer also wants a hub overhaul.
The spokes on the freewheel side of the rear wheel have been gouged up from chain drops, which is one reason for wanting the rebuild.
Both front and rear are currently laced 6-6-6, but the customer wants the rear wheel done 4-cross lacing.
Using my own informal notation, I call them by applying the lacing numbers in this order: "front wheel, rear freewheel side, rear non-freewheel side."
In this case, the pre-rebuild is "6・6・6" and post-rebuild is "6・4・8".
Nowadays, a 32H wheel like this is built with classical low-profile rims in almost all cases, except when building something like an XR300 semi-aero rim with a PowerTap.
Depending on the bike, when prioritizing character and durability with tangent lacing on the front wheel, I often do 6-cross lacing, so "6・4・8" is basically our shop's standard for low-profile rims with tangent lacing front and rear.
The front wheel is already 6-cross laced. Regardless of the customer's wishes, I'm not the type who's itching to rebuild wheels just for the sake of it.
If there's no real "glad we rebuilt it" benefit, I think in cases like this, it might be fine to just do truing and re-tensioning.
The current lacing is JIS pattern, so I'll change it to Italian lacing.
When disassembling a wheel, in most cases I don't reuse the spokes.
So I cut them with clippers, but if you just cut them straight, the spoke tension drops all at once and shock transfers to the rim, so I loosen the nipples to release the tension first.
Loosening for about half the wheel's circumference is enough, but the nipples in the image above are on the side that hasn't been loosened at all.
The spoke length is clearly too short.
I'm finding more and more reasons why rebuilding is the right call.
We're upgrading from 2.0mm plain spokes to butted spokes and from brass nipples to aluminum nipples, so there's definitely weight savings to be had with the rebuild.
I opened up the rear hub first and it was almost too late.
But there's still time to save it with greasing and such.
I cleaned everything from the axle on down.
Dura-Ace hubs excel in smoothness, so even if the internals are pretty rough, you can't tell by just looking at the axle rotation.
I didn't expect this hub to be in this condition.
The front hub wasn't in as bad shape as the rear.
Anyway, I overhauled both hubs.
As a side note, the Open Pro rim doesn't have any obvious visual markers that determine front/rear or left/right orientation.
As for the sticker orientation, from the position shown in the image above, the opposite side is
↑like this.
It doesn't seem like there's a determined side that should be "to the right relative to direction of travel."
However, the rim joint sticker does have front/rear information.
So I lace it so that when you look through the valve hole, both the label text on the rim joint sticker and the hub markings read correctly in the forward direction.
It doesn't affect performance, but it's like the convention of positioning the WO tire label at the valve hole.
Sometimes I see wheels laced with this sticker backwards and it bugs me.
This Open Pro is from one generation back in terms of stickers.
On current Open Pro models, these instructions are printed on both the left and right stickers, so there's no front/rear/left/right orientation element on the rim itself.
(Maybe just the serial number sticker on the tape strip side.)
Front wheel is laced.
↑This is what I was talking about earlier.
The spoke length is proper.
Six-cross Italian lacing is complete.
Rear wheel is laced too.
Four-cross Italian lacing
with alternating lacing on the non-freewheel side.
I've taken in a rebuild of a 32H wheel with an Open Pro rim and 7800 Dura-Ace hub.
The customer also wants a hub overhaul.
The spokes on the freewheel side of the rear wheel have been gouged up from chain drops, which is one reason for wanting the rebuild.
Both front and rear are currently laced 6-6-6, but the customer wants the rear wheel done 4-cross lacing.
Using my own informal notation, I call them by applying the lacing numbers in this order: "front wheel, rear freewheel side, rear non-freewheel side."
In this case, the pre-rebuild is "6・6・6" and post-rebuild is "6・4・8".
Nowadays, a 32H wheel like this is built with classical low-profile rims in almost all cases, except when building something like an XR300 semi-aero rim with a PowerTap.
Depending on the bike, when prioritizing character and durability with tangent lacing on the front wheel, I often do 6-cross lacing, so "6・4・8" is basically our shop's standard for low-profile rims with tangent lacing front and rear.
The front wheel is already 6-cross laced. Regardless of the customer's wishes, I'm not the type who's itching to rebuild wheels just for the sake of it.
If there's no real "glad we rebuilt it" benefit, I think in cases like this, it might be fine to just do truing and re-tensioning.
The current lacing is JIS pattern, so I'll change it to Italian lacing.
When disassembling a wheel, in most cases I don't reuse the spokes.
So I cut them with clippers, but if you just cut them straight, the spoke tension drops all at once and shock transfers to the rim, so I loosen the nipples to release the tension first.
Loosening for about half the wheel's circumference is enough, but the nipples in the image above are on the side that hasn't been loosened at all.
The spoke length is clearly too short.
I'm finding more and more reasons why rebuilding is the right call.
We're upgrading from 2.0mm plain spokes to butted spokes and from brass nipples to aluminum nipples, so there's definitely weight savings to be had with the rebuild.
I opened up the rear hub first and it was almost too late.
But there's still time to save it with greasing and such.
I cleaned everything from the axle on down.
Dura-Ace hubs excel in smoothness, so even if the internals are pretty rough, you can't tell by just looking at the axle rotation.
I didn't expect this hub to be in this condition.
The front hub wasn't in as bad shape as the rear.
Anyway, I overhauled both hubs.
As a side note, the Open Pro rim doesn't have any obvious visual markers that determine front/rear or left/right orientation.
As for the sticker orientation, from the position shown in the image above, the opposite side is
↑like this.
It doesn't seem like there's a determined side that should be "to the right relative to direction of travel."
However, the rim joint sticker does have front/rear information.
So I lace it so that when you look through the valve hole, both the label text on the rim joint sticker and the hub markings read correctly in the forward direction.
It doesn't affect performance, but it's like the convention of positioning the WO tire label at the valve hole.
Sometimes I see wheels laced with this sticker backwards and it bugs me.
This Open Pro is from one generation back in terms of stickers.
On current Open Pro models, these instructions are printed on both the left and right stickers, so there's no front/rear/left/right orientation element on the rim itself.
(Maybe just the serial number sticker on the tape strip side.)
Front wheel is laced.
↑This is what I was talking about earlier.
The spoke length is proper.
Six-cross Italian lacing is complete.
Rear wheel is laced too.
Four-cross Italian lacing
with alternating lacing on the non-freewheel side.