A customer brought in the rear wheel of a Smart Envision System 4.5 NEW for service.
The "NEW" after SES 4.5 is part of the official model name, for what it's worth.
↑On the NEW, the "4.5" is rendered in gold lettering.
I'm only working on the rear wheel this time, but
whereas the old SES 4.5 had a rim height of 48mm front / 56mm rear,
the SES 4.5 NEW comes in at 50mm front / 56mm rear,
and the rim width and cross-section are completely different.
You can't tell from photos, but the front and rear rims of the old SES 4.5 and
the front rim of the SES 4.5 NEW both have
a U-shaped cross-section at the inner apex—so wide you could lay sushi on it—while
this SES 4.5 NEW rear rim has a distinctly sharp V-shaped cross-section.
Where the old one was a hooked rim,
the NEW is now a hookless rim with an internal width of 25mm.
Also, I can't verify how much of this is true, but
the official rim weight has gone from 489g (old) to 415g (NEW).
That's an exceptionally impressive height-to-weight ratio (if true). ENVE used to beef up their rims out of paranoia about brake-heat-induced buckling, so maybe they've returned to the path of the god-tier rim. My personal EDGE 1-65 tubular (the rim sticker says 68) actually measures 66mm high and weighs 378g, so for a wide, hookless, ear-equipped rim to come in at 56mm height / 415g is practically in the same ballpark.
The official wheel weight hasn't changed much—803g (old) to 790g (NEW)—mainly because the old one ran a carbon hub while the NEW uses an aluminum hub.
ENVE publicly states their rim weights, so you can reverse-engineer what's inside the wheel, which is really helpful. If they kept that secret, you'd end up with a shallow take like "okay, so a rear wheel around 800g in both generations," which tells you almost nothing. When two wheels weigh nearly the same overall but you've shifted about 70g of mass from the rim toward the hub, the total weight might be essentially identical, but the character of the wheel is completely different.
The reason I took it in: a chain drop damaged six inpokes, and the customer wants them replaced.
I'm a bit concerned about the reverse-Italian lacing pattern, but
I'll let that slide for now.
The builder appears to be Japanese, but
the lacing follows ENVE's method, so it's reverse-Italian.
One advantage of reverse-Italian lacing, at least in theory, is that
the inpokes resist bending during chain drops—which is exactly what happened here.
When this hub was designed, ENVE was under the Mavic umbrella,
so the freebody is an Instant Drive 360.
The wheel came with an inspection sheet—pretty official stuff—but
the only issues were some minor lateral runout that would show up after three days of riding anyway.
The centering was spot-on, and radial runout was basically nonexistent.
That's a relief. Otherwise I would've had to do a proper wheel build before removing those six inpokes.
I removed the six damaged inpokes.
If we call the rim holes where the spokes were removed "O,"
the pattern is: left, right, left, O, left, right, left, O, left, right, left, O, left, right, left, O, left, right, left, O, left, right, left, O
and the remaining left-right-left sequences serve as guides to keep the wheel centered.
So after replacing those six inpokes, all I have to do is
tension them evenly until the center is dialed in,
and the wheel is basically complete—just minor truing at the end.
The centering came right in. I also trued out any minor lateral runout that appeared during the work.
All fixed.
↑The replaced spokes... and the one that got binned.
↑The six replacement spokes.
Found a defective spoke and rejected it.
The neck wasn't perpendicular to the flattened section—it was twisted about 80 degrees off.
What a mess.
The "NEW" after SES 4.5 is part of the official model name, for what it's worth.
↑On the NEW, the "4.5" is rendered in gold lettering.
I'm only working on the rear wheel this time, but
whereas the old SES 4.5 had a rim height of 48mm front / 56mm rear,
the SES 4.5 NEW comes in at 50mm front / 56mm rear,
and the rim width and cross-section are completely different.
You can't tell from photos, but the front and rear rims of the old SES 4.5 and
the front rim of the SES 4.5 NEW both have
a U-shaped cross-section at the inner apex—so wide you could lay sushi on it—while
this SES 4.5 NEW rear rim has a distinctly sharp V-shaped cross-section.
Where the old one was a hooked rim,
the NEW is now a hookless rim with an internal width of 25mm.
Also, I can't verify how much of this is true, but
the official rim weight has gone from 489g (old) to 415g (NEW).
That's an exceptionally impressive height-to-weight ratio (if true). ENVE used to beef up their rims out of paranoia about brake-heat-induced buckling, so maybe they've returned to the path of the god-tier rim. My personal EDGE 1-65 tubular (the rim sticker says 68) actually measures 66mm high and weighs 378g, so for a wide, hookless, ear-equipped rim to come in at 56mm height / 415g is practically in the same ballpark.
The official wheel weight hasn't changed much—803g (old) to 790g (NEW)—mainly because the old one ran a carbon hub while the NEW uses an aluminum hub.
ENVE publicly states their rim weights, so you can reverse-engineer what's inside the wheel, which is really helpful. If they kept that secret, you'd end up with a shallow take like "okay, so a rear wheel around 800g in both generations," which tells you almost nothing. When two wheels weigh nearly the same overall but you've shifted about 70g of mass from the rim toward the hub, the total weight might be essentially identical, but the character of the wheel is completely different.
The reason I took it in: a chain drop damaged six inpokes, and the customer wants them replaced.
I'm a bit concerned about the reverse-Italian lacing pattern, but
I'll let that slide for now.
The builder appears to be Japanese, but
the lacing follows ENVE's method, so it's reverse-Italian.
One advantage of reverse-Italian lacing, at least in theory, is that
the inpokes resist bending during chain drops—which is exactly what happened here.
When this hub was designed, ENVE was under the Mavic umbrella,
so the freebody is an Instant Drive 360.
The wheel came with an inspection sheet—pretty official stuff—but
the only issues were some minor lateral runout that would show up after three days of riding anyway.
The centering was spot-on, and radial runout was basically nonexistent.
That's a relief. Otherwise I would've had to do a proper wheel build before removing those six inpokes.
I removed the six damaged inpokes.
If we call the rim holes where the spokes were removed "O,"
the pattern is: left, right, left, O, left, right, left, O, left, right, left, O, left, right, left, O, left, right, left, O, left, right, left, O
and the remaining left-right-left sequences serve as guides to keep the wheel centered.
So after replacing those six inpokes, all I have to do is
tension them evenly until the center is dialed in,
and the wheel is basically complete—just minor truing at the end.
The centering came right in. I also trued out any minor lateral runout that appeared during the work.
All fixed.
↑The replaced spokes... and the one that got binned.
↑The six replacement spokes.
Found a defective spoke and rejected it.
The neck wasn't perpendicular to the flattened section—it was twisted about 80 degrees off.
What a mess.