Another wheel day (and so on).
Continuing from yesterday.
I'm rebuilding the rear wheel of a ZIPP 303 Firecrest.
Before and after rebuilding, the hub freebody is SRAM XDR,
with a 12-speed sprocket ranging from 10T to 33T attached.
Mystery sealant chunks
were stuck to the spokes in scattered positions, just like the front wheel.
↑This is the tire folded back,
and you can see chunks dotted along it.
I flipped the tire inside out and peeled it back.
Unlike Stans, even when I try to pick it off with my fingers
it doesn't come off easily. It's pretty stubborn stuff.
Unlike the front wheel, the entire rear rim was whitened by sand.
I knew it came attached to gravel bikes,
but since the rim grime isn't concentrated on one side,
it doesn't seem like chain oil spray is the main cause.
↑Sand has accumulated on top of what looks like thread-locking compound in the spoke pockets.
The drag friction is significant, and the front wheel didn't shed sand like this,
so it appears the front and rear wheels have different usage histories.
It's hard to imagine the rear wheel alone got more use,
so there's a chance the front wheel was recently replaced under warranty.
These are the six Nippone spokes on the freewheel side,
but the CX-RAY on the high-tension side
also showed wear marks at the final crossing point.
Built it up.
ONYX Vespa Disc Road Hub, 24H
Black half-comp 46 JIS lacing.
I'll do the tying later.
With this hub, I've ordered custom colors:
the hub body in Anti-Freeze Green PC,
and both ends in Green Anodized.
ONYX has a huge selection of colors available for custom orders,
and just among greens there are four options, but
the other two are Fluorescent Green PC (a neon color—fluorescent means fluorescent light,
though it's misspelled as "flourescentu" on Japanese distributor sites)
and a color that looks just like Kawasaki motorcycle green,
called Kawasaki Green PC.
PC stands for powder coating
and anodized refers to anodizing,
but the hub body can be either PC or anodized color,
while the ends are only available in anodized colors.
The original was a ZIPP ZR1 hub
and after rebuilding it's an ONYX Vespa,
but the Vespa has wider flanges—
looking at just the right flange width, there's not much difference,
meaning the dish is larger,
so in terms of the left-right asymmetry of spoke deformation it should be disadvantaged,
but the rebuilt wheel
is so nice that even without truing the non-freewheel side spokes don't look loose,
and I'd want to show every owner of an out-of-the-box 303 Firecrest what this looks like.
Going back in the timeline,
this is a shot of the rim by itself, viewed from the right side of the original wheel.
From the valve hole position, and looking at where the enlarged top half of the ZIPP logo sticker is placed,
it's immediately counterclockwise, but
if I flip the rim around while keeping the valve hole position near the top
the bottom half of the ZIPP logo sticker ends up
immediately clockwise from the valve hole position.
Both front and rear wheels originally had this relationship matched,
so I rebuilt them distinguishing left and right on the rim, keeping the original orientation,
but if the front and rear had been reversed,
I would have rebuilt them to match.
↑This is the front and rear wheels viewed from the right side,
and if I were to flip the front wheel keeping the valve hole position
at the top,
↑it would look like this.
Looking at ZIPP's maker website,
it says "immediately counterclockwise from the valve hole position,
the top half of the ZIPP logo should be on the right side," but
occasionally out-of-the-box units are assembled the opposite way,
and you can get front and rear wheels with different logo positions.
I previously rebuilt the rear wheel of a 303S for this reason
(→ here),
but back then I prioritized keeping the rim tape intact,
so I couldn't measure the rim's unit weight.
Both the 303S and 303 Firecrest
have hookless tubeless rim specs.
The 303S has an internal width of 23mm, the 303 Firecrest 25mm,
but the 303 Firecrest's minimum tire width is 28C,
while some tire makers allow 25C on the 303S,
and ZIPP's site has detailed info on this.
Either way, the max air pressure is 5 bar,
and most people's actual use is probably around 3.6 bar,
so 25C seems difficult regardless.
As for current ZIPP wheels,
since there's no single-rim sales and the warranty is generous,
there are few opportunities for hub swaps and rebuilds,
so opportunities to know actual rim weights are pretty rare.
The maker's specs only list wheel units and front/rear pairs—
fairly useless info anyway—and since ZIPP changes hubs between models
even within the same series
(plus the 303S uses all CX Sprint spokes and brass nipples)
it's harder to infer rim weight even from that.
Of course this time I had the opportunity and did measure it,
but there's no way I'm just handing out such precious data.
↑Wow, what a jerk.
Thank you for waiting! Please see the image below!
This is the front rim!
This is the rear rim!
↑Stop it!
Continuing from yesterday.
I'm rebuilding the rear wheel of a ZIPP 303 Firecrest.
Before and after rebuilding, the hub freebody is SRAM XDR,
with a 12-speed sprocket ranging from 10T to 33T attached.
Mystery sealant chunks
were stuck to the spokes in scattered positions, just like the front wheel.
↑This is the tire folded back,
and you can see chunks dotted along it.
I flipped the tire inside out and peeled it back.
Unlike Stans, even when I try to pick it off with my fingers
it doesn't come off easily. It's pretty stubborn stuff.
Unlike the front wheel, the entire rear rim was whitened by sand.
I knew it came attached to gravel bikes,
but since the rim grime isn't concentrated on one side,
it doesn't seem like chain oil spray is the main cause.
↑Sand has accumulated on top of what looks like thread-locking compound in the spoke pockets.
The drag friction is significant, and the front wheel didn't shed sand like this,
so it appears the front and rear wheels have different usage histories.
It's hard to imagine the rear wheel alone got more use,
so there's a chance the front wheel was recently replaced under warranty.
These are the six Nippone spokes on the freewheel side,
but the CX-RAY on the high-tension side
also showed wear marks at the final crossing point.
Built it up.
ONYX Vespa Disc Road Hub, 24H
Black half-comp 46 JIS lacing.
I'll do the tying later.
With this hub, I've ordered custom colors:
the hub body in Anti-Freeze Green PC,
and both ends in Green Anodized.
ONYX has a huge selection of colors available for custom orders,
and just among greens there are four options, but
the other two are Fluorescent Green PC (a neon color—fluorescent means fluorescent light,
though it's misspelled as "flourescentu" on Japanese distributor sites)
and a color that looks just like Kawasaki motorcycle green,
called Kawasaki Green PC.
PC stands for powder coating
and anodized refers to anodizing,
but the hub body can be either PC or anodized color,
while the ends are only available in anodized colors.
The original was a ZIPP ZR1 hub
and after rebuilding it's an ONYX Vespa,
but the Vespa has wider flanges—
looking at just the right flange width, there's not much difference,
meaning the dish is larger,
so in terms of the left-right asymmetry of spoke deformation it should be disadvantaged,
but the rebuilt wheel
is so nice that even without truing the non-freewheel side spokes don't look loose,
and I'd want to show every owner of an out-of-the-box 303 Firecrest what this looks like.
Going back in the timeline,
this is a shot of the rim by itself, viewed from the right side of the original wheel.
From the valve hole position, and looking at where the enlarged top half of the ZIPP logo sticker is placed,
it's immediately counterclockwise, but
if I flip the rim around while keeping the valve hole position near the top
the bottom half of the ZIPP logo sticker ends up
immediately clockwise from the valve hole position.
Both front and rear wheels originally had this relationship matched,
so I rebuilt them distinguishing left and right on the rim, keeping the original orientation,
but if the front and rear had been reversed,
I would have rebuilt them to match.
↑This is the front and rear wheels viewed from the right side,
and if I were to flip the front wheel keeping the valve hole position
at the top,
↑it would look like this.
Looking at ZIPP's maker website,
it says "immediately counterclockwise from the valve hole position,
the top half of the ZIPP logo should be on the right side," but
occasionally out-of-the-box units are assembled the opposite way,
and you can get front and rear wheels with different logo positions.
I previously rebuilt the rear wheel of a 303S for this reason
(→ here),
but back then I prioritized keeping the rim tape intact,
so I couldn't measure the rim's unit weight.
Both the 303S and 303 Firecrest
have hookless tubeless rim specs.
The 303S has an internal width of 23mm, the 303 Firecrest 25mm,
but the 303 Firecrest's minimum tire width is 28C,
while some tire makers allow 25C on the 303S,
and ZIPP's site has detailed info on this.
Either way, the max air pressure is 5 bar,
and most people's actual use is probably around 3.6 bar,
so 25C seems difficult regardless.
As for current ZIPP wheels,
since there's no single-rim sales and the warranty is generous,
there are few opportunities for hub swaps and rebuilds,
so opportunities to know actual rim weights are pretty rare.
The maker's specs only list wheel units and front/rear pairs—
fairly useless info anyway—and since ZIPP changes hubs between models
even within the same series
(plus the 303S uses all CX Sprint spokes and brass nipples)
it's harder to infer rim weight even from that.
Of course this time I had the opportunity and did measure it,
but there's no way I'm just handing out such precious data.
↑Wow, what a jerk.
Thank you for waiting! Please see the image below!
This is the front rim!
This is the rear rim!
↑Stop it!