Another day, another wheel (and so on).
A customer dropped off the front wheel from a Rovel CL50.
All-black Competence Race straight spokes, 2:1 lacing pattern, 21 holes.
Didn't take a photo, but there's no centering issue.
The spoke tension is appropriately tight for these spokes,
and there's barely any room for further tightening—
even if I did tighten it more, the wheel wouldn't change much from here.
The customer left both front and rear wheels with me
and wants both rebuilt, but
I generally ask Rovel owners this question:
"Of the front and rear wheels, which one is more serious and intolerable?
If I could only rebuild one of them,
which would you prefer?"
The answer was definitely the front wheel.
As expected.
Rebuilt.
Semi-CX Sprint reverse mixed-diameter lacing.
I'll do the lacing later.
Just to be clear—the side with fewer spokes is CX Sprint.
The silver spokes are per the customer's request,
and honestly, I like this kind of setup where it's obviously modified
at first glance. The mod is completely obvious.
Obviously, it's perfectly centered.
I stepped back a bit for the shot—just to show off those silver spokes.
This wheel is a CL50, but if it were a CLX50 instead,
the spoke weight ratio on the multi-spoke side would be
almost identical whether using Aero Lite or CX-RAY,
so just increasing the spoke weight ratio on the few-spoke side
would keep the centering perfect both before and after the rebuild.
But when you squeeze the tangent-laced multi-spoke side
(of course, before lacing), the deformation is visibly smaller—
it feels distinctly stiffer—something you can feel when you handle it.
However, since this time I'm changing spokes on both sides
from all Competence Race, I can't make a direct comparison.
I can confirm that the left-right difference in spoke deformation
is less than the original state.
If this work were done in front of the customer,
I'd want them to squeeze the wheel before lacing to feel the difference,
but since they're from far away, that's not possible
（though they have visited the shop before...they're from Kyushu, actually）.
At this point, you could probably make something almost identical
on a Rovel by using DT's Aero Comp on the few-spoke side,
but they don't do it—whether it's because the specs don't appeal
to people who only look at total wheel weight,
or because wind tunnel numbers are slightly worse,
or simply because they don't think deeply about wheels,
I honestly have no idea.
A customer dropped off the front wheel from a Rovel CL50.
All-black Competence Race straight spokes, 2:1 lacing pattern, 21 holes.
Didn't take a photo, but there's no centering issue.
The spoke tension is appropriately tight for these spokes,
and there's barely any room for further tightening—
even if I did tighten it more, the wheel wouldn't change much from here.
The customer left both front and rear wheels with me
and wants both rebuilt, but
I generally ask Rovel owners this question:
"Of the front and rear wheels, which one is more serious and intolerable?
If I could only rebuild one of them,
which would you prefer?"
The answer was definitely the front wheel.
As expected.
Rebuilt.
Semi-CX Sprint reverse mixed-diameter lacing.
I'll do the lacing later.
Just to be clear—the side with fewer spokes is CX Sprint.
The silver spokes are per the customer's request,
and honestly, I like this kind of setup where it's obviously modified
at first glance. The mod is completely obvious.
Obviously, it's perfectly centered.
I stepped back a bit for the shot—just to show off those silver spokes.
This wheel is a CL50, but if it were a CLX50 instead,
the spoke weight ratio on the multi-spoke side would be
almost identical whether using Aero Lite or CX-RAY,
so just increasing the spoke weight ratio on the few-spoke side
would keep the centering perfect both before and after the rebuild.
But when you squeeze the tangent-laced multi-spoke side
(of course, before lacing), the deformation is visibly smaller—
it feels distinctly stiffer—something you can feel when you handle it.
However, since this time I'm changing spokes on both sides
from all Competence Race, I can't make a direct comparison.
I can confirm that the left-right difference in spoke deformation
is less than the original state.
If this work were done in front of the customer,
I'd want them to squeeze the wheel before lacing to feel the difference,
but since they're from far away, that's not possible
（though they have visited the shop before...
At this point, you could probably make something almost identical
on a Rovel by using DT's Aero Comp on the few-spoke side,
but they don't do it—whether it's because the specs don't appeal
to people who only look at total wheel weight,
or because wind tunnel numbers are slightly worse,
or simply because they don't think deeply about wheels,
I honestly have no idea.