A customer brought in the front wheel from a Scott complete bike.
It's a wheel with an ALEXRIMS rim labeled Syncros—
a parts brand that once was a premium brand itself
but is now under Scott's umbrella.
The nipples had completely loosened and fallen inside the rim.
The customer asked me, "Does the rim need to be replaced?"
With effectively one spoke missing,
the rim was wobbling like a potato chip,
so I figured that's why they thought that.
But actually, that wasn't the whole story. Without naming names,
there's a big bike shop near us that sells complete bikes for several hundred thousand yen
but can't even fix a single wheel—
it's embarrassing and crooked business, really.
They told the customer,
"We won't know until we try to repair it, but rim replacement is possible,"
so the customer was half-believing them.
But since they were half-skeptical,
I think that's why they brought it to our shop.
I recovered the nipples that had fallen into the rim,
applied threadlocker to the spoke threads,
and trued the wheel with a general tendency toward tightening.
The spokes are from a brand called Richman's,
the cheapest tier in their lineup
(cheaper spokes don't have any marking at all).
Pillar makes a square aero spoke with a spoke weight and cross-section dimension
that DT and Sapim don't have,
but Richman's has the exact same spoke.
Aside from the head stamp, I can't visually tell what's different.
And as I've written before,
Richman's and Pillar have the same headquarters address.
Now for the title topic.
The rim tape width didn't match at all,
and at many (though not all) rim holes, the tape had shifted
exposing the holes.
On Scott road bike complete bikes,
about ten years ago the cheaper grade models of the Speedster
came with hand-built wheels assembled with ALEXRIMS RACE28 rims.
This is the same rim tape that came in those wheels.
As times changed, rim inner widths got wider, and
I don't know if this rim is tubeless-ready
(there was no clear marking on rim-side stickers,
though there are hump-like protrusions),
but even if it's not, because they share manufacturing processes,
there are round depressions in the rim center.
With pressure, the tape gets pulled into the center,
so even with stretch-band type rim tape that's exactly the rim width,
it won't work.
So I installed tubeless-compatible
tape-type rim tape instead.
Probably because the manufacturer still has thousands of them left lying around,
I hate how complete bikes get assembled with these half-baked parts
that don't match the specs.
I asked the customer to show me the rear wheel too.
The front wheel image doesn't have consecutive rim holes,
but the image above has three in a row.
I'm amazed it didn't get a flat and managed to be ridden like this.
It's a wheel with an ALEXRIMS rim labeled Syncros—
a parts brand that once was a premium brand itself
but is now under Scott's umbrella.
The nipples had completely loosened and fallen inside the rim.
The customer asked me, "Does the rim need to be replaced?"
With effectively one spoke missing,
the rim was wobbling like a potato chip,
so I figured that's why they thought that.
But actually, that wasn't the whole story. Without naming names,
there's a big bike shop near us that sells complete bikes for several hundred thousand yen
but can't even fix a single wheel—
it's embarrassing and crooked business, really.
They told the customer,
"We won't know until we try to repair it, but rim replacement is possible,"
so the customer was half-believing them.
But since they were half-skeptical,
I think that's why they brought it to our shop.
I recovered the nipples that had fallen into the rim,
applied threadlocker to the spoke threads,
and trued the wheel with a general tendency toward tightening.
The spokes are from a brand called Richman's,
the cheapest tier in their lineup
(cheaper spokes don't have any marking at all).
Pillar makes a square aero spoke with a spoke weight and cross-section dimension
that DT and Sapim don't have,
but Richman's has the exact same spoke.
Aside from the head stamp, I can't visually tell what's different.
And as I've written before,
Richman's and Pillar have the same headquarters address.
Now for the title topic.
The rim tape width didn't match at all,
and at many (though not all) rim holes, the tape had shifted
exposing the holes.
On Scott road bike complete bikes,
about ten years ago the cheaper grade models of the Speedster
came with hand-built wheels assembled with ALEXRIMS RACE28 rims.
This is the same rim tape that came in those wheels.
As times changed, rim inner widths got wider, and
I don't know if this rim is tubeless-ready
(there was no clear marking on rim-side stickers,
though there are hump-like protrusions),
but even if it's not, because they share manufacturing processes,
there are round depressions in the rim center.
With pressure, the tape gets pulled into the center,
so even with stretch-band type rim tape that's exactly the rim width,
it won't work.
So I installed tubeless-compatible
tape-type rim tape instead.
Probably because the manufacturer still has thousands of them left lying around,
I hate how complete bikes get assembled with these half-baked parts
that don't match the specs.
I asked the customer to show me the rear wheel too.
The front wheel image doesn't have consecutive rim holes,
but the image above has three in a row.
I'm amazed it didn't get a flat and managed to be ridden like this.