Another wheel day (and so on...).
A customer brought in a budget-grade rear wheel
that came stock with an MTB complete bike.
The hub and rim both say "STOUT" on them.
This is unrelated, but there's a pattern where manufacturers
get overly cautious when designing new things and set strength specs too high,
only to discover later that it wasn't actually necessary—or conversely,
where technology advances and enables what was previously impossible.
When Campagnolo's top-tier front derailleur outer cage first went carbon,
it had a plastic plate where the cage contacted the chain during inner shifts.
But the current Super Record front derailleur
pushes the chain directly with a carbon plate.
With Campagnolo's disc brake rear wheels, the G3-spoked radial spoke pattern on the non-freewheel side
showed obvious caution in the early Zonda DB—the flange shape
wrapped heavily around each spoke because they were nervous about stress during braking.
But wheels like the Bora WTO DB now have flange shapes
indistinguishable from rim brake radial patterns.
A current example of Campagnolo still being cautious is chain linking.
The specifications from early 10-speed Permalinks through 11S and 12S,
where the rivet head is peened so "the joined point becomes the strongest link in the entire chain,"
shows considerable anxiety about chain breakage.
Old Sunrays MTB hubs had something called a "suspension hub,"
which looked like a standard 100mm QR hub, but the difference was
thicker axles and hub bodies—designed so that MTBs with suspension forks
could handle hard landings even with suspension-dependent riding without breaking.
This too is an example of initial nervousness, since suspension forks were "this new technology" at the time.
Shimano's hydraulic disc brakes debuted with the 750-series XT rather than XTR,
and only the first model used stainless mesh hose.
They were nervous about hydraulic pressure expanding or worst-case rupturing the hose.
When mesh hose contacted the frame, it would abnormally gouge it,
so it was quickly discontinued.
Hydraulic pressure expanding the hose's inner diameter is actually factual—
when I reuse a rear brake hose by cutting it shorter for the front brake
and press in an insert, it slides in much easier than on new hose.
So, the rim and hub in this case have "STOUT" marked on them.
This is an old model name from when Specialized
used it on their stout (robust, solid) strength-focused front hubs.
I didn't notice at first because the logo had changed.
Initially it was only used on front hubs and came in an impressive wooden box.
You can find it by searching "specialized stout hub wooden case."
Later it became the model name for a somewhat budget disc brake front hub
assembled into complete bikes like the Stumpjumper
(still exclusively a front hub model name at that point),
but nowadays it seems to be a name applied to pretty much any wheel-related part
as long as it's wheel-adjacent.
The reason this wheel came in was
it has a cassette sprocket from Sunrace, a manufacturer that makes budget freewheel sprockets,
which itself isn't bad,
but internal parts of the freebody were cracked
and the entire sprocket became loose and rattled.
↑When you shake the sprocket by hand, it looks like this
The hub is probably Formula-made (doesn't look like Joytech),
but when I checked the freebody, it turned out to be incompatible with
Shimano's genuine HG freebody installation, so we either need to replace
the rear hub itself or get a cheaper rear wheel entirely.
I suggested the latter, but since they wanted a decent wheel even at added cost,
we decided to rebuild the wheel reusing the rim.
Oh! This is the characteristic cheap rim tape that comes on complete bike wheels—
it's questionable whether you can even buy the same thing as spare parts.
In the worst cases, some rim tape has the texture of packing PP strapping.
At least this one's inner width matches the rim,
which is better than the lefty from my previous post.
The "R" stamped on the spoke heads is from Richman's, a spoke maker—
at least they put their name on it rather than leaving it unmarked,
though interestingly their company is located in the same place as Pillar's.
For similar cases to this one, see (→here)
This rear wheel is 32H, and of the 16 spokes on the freewheel side,
all 8 J-spokes had damage and deformation from chain drops.
If all had been undamaged, I would've reused the spokes,
but when I checked the lengths, since this hub is reverse hi-lo flange,
the non-freewheel side spokes were too short to reuse.
Even if I used the original freewheel-side spokes on the rebuilt freewheel side,
there was about a 3mm difference making it impossible.
Though my calculated value was to the end of the nipple,
and the original spoke length only reached the spoke slot or so,
so depending on how you interpret nipple length compatibility,
it's more like a 2mm difference.
Either way, the same lacing pattern wouldn't allow reuse,
and while it wouldn't be impossible to use the 16 non-freewheel spokes
when doing 4-spoke freewheel-side with a 4-6 lacing pattern,
doing that with anything other than DT or Sapim spokes
would likely mean I'd be fixing spoke breakage soon,
so I skipped it.
Despite the wheel's price point, this bike was used with competitive intent as a "mountain bike,"
and sand was packed in the nipple's spoke slots.
It's built.
The hub is an M4000-series Altivo quick release disc hub—FH-M4050,
32H, black champion/competition 4-6 lace, no wire pattern.
The original was 14G plain, 6-6 lace on both sides,
same diameter, same spoke count on both sides,
but I changed it to different diameters and different spoke counts per side.
Since this is an offset rim,
even without a wire pattern, the difference in spoke deflection
between left and right is quite small.
And rather than evaluating this configuration alone,
when comparing to the original wheel,
the fact that it's no longer reverse hi-lo flange is quite significant.
The original hub had a 6-bolt rotor mount,
and the new hub is centerlock, but
that can be managed with adapters and such.
As for the freebody internal damage that caused the rebuild in the first place,
it's extremely rare with Shimano hubs,
and even if it does happen, spare parts are available,
so the long-term reliability is completely different.
A customer brought in a budget-grade rear wheel
that came stock with an MTB complete bike.
The hub and rim both say "STOUT" on them.
This is unrelated, but there's a pattern where manufacturers
get overly cautious when designing new things and set strength specs too high,
only to discover later that it wasn't actually necessary—or conversely,
where technology advances and enables what was previously impossible.
When Campagnolo's top-tier front derailleur outer cage first went carbon,
it had a plastic plate where the cage contacted the chain during inner shifts.
But the current Super Record front derailleur
pushes the chain directly with a carbon plate.
With Campagnolo's disc brake rear wheels, the G3-spoked radial spoke pattern on the non-freewheel side
showed obvious caution in the early Zonda DB—the flange shape
wrapped heavily around each spoke because they were nervous about stress during braking.
But wheels like the Bora WTO DB now have flange shapes
indistinguishable from rim brake radial patterns.
A current example of Campagnolo still being cautious is chain linking.
The specifications from early 10-speed Permalinks through 11S and 12S,
where the rivet head is peened so "the joined point becomes the strongest link in the entire chain,"
shows considerable anxiety about chain breakage.
Old Sunrays MTB hubs had something called a "suspension hub,"
which looked like a standard 100mm QR hub, but the difference was
thicker axles and hub bodies—designed so that MTBs with suspension forks
could handle hard landings even with suspension-dependent riding without breaking.
This too is an example of initial nervousness, since suspension forks were "this new technology" at the time.
Shimano's hydraulic disc brakes debuted with the 750-series XT rather than XTR,
and only the first model used stainless mesh hose.
They were nervous about hydraulic pressure expanding or worst-case rupturing the hose.
When mesh hose contacted the frame, it would abnormally gouge it,
so it was quickly discontinued.
Hydraulic pressure expanding the hose's inner diameter is actually factual—
when I reuse a rear brake hose by cutting it shorter for the front brake
and press in an insert, it slides in much easier than on new hose.
So, the rim and hub in this case have "STOUT" marked on them.
This is an old model name from when Specialized
used it on their stout (robust, solid) strength-focused front hubs.
I didn't notice at first because the logo had changed.
Initially it was only used on front hubs and came in an impressive wooden box.
You can find it by searching "specialized stout hub wooden case."
Later it became the model name for a somewhat budget disc brake front hub
assembled into complete bikes like the Stumpjumper
(still exclusively a front hub model name at that point),
but nowadays it seems to be a name applied to pretty much any wheel-related part
as long as it's wheel-adjacent.
The reason this wheel came in was
it has a cassette sprocket from Sunrace, a manufacturer that makes budget freewheel sprockets,
which itself isn't bad,
but internal parts of the freebody were cracked
and the entire sprocket became loose and rattled.
↑When you shake the sprocket by hand, it looks like this
The hub is probably Formula-made (doesn't look like Joytech),
but when I checked the freebody, it turned out to be incompatible with
Shimano's genuine HG freebody installation, so we either need to replace
the rear hub itself or get a cheaper rear wheel entirely.
I suggested the latter, but since they wanted a decent wheel even at added cost,
we decided to rebuild the wheel reusing the rim.
Oh! This is the characteristic cheap rim tape that comes on complete bike wheels—
it's questionable whether you can even buy the same thing as spare parts.
In the worst cases, some rim tape has the texture of packing PP strapping.
At least this one's inner width matches the rim,
which is better than the lefty from my previous post.
The "R" stamped on the spoke heads is from Richman's, a spoke maker—
at least they put their name on it rather than leaving it unmarked,
though interestingly their company is located in the same place as Pillar's.
For similar cases to this one, see (→here)
This rear wheel is 32H, and of the 16 spokes on the freewheel side,
all 8 J-spokes had damage and deformation from chain drops.
If all had been undamaged, I would've reused the spokes,
but when I checked the lengths, since this hub is reverse hi-lo flange,
the non-freewheel side spokes were too short to reuse.
Even if I used the original freewheel-side spokes on the rebuilt freewheel side,
there was about a 3mm difference making it impossible.
Though my calculated value was to the end of the nipple,
and the original spoke length only reached the spoke slot or so,
so depending on how you interpret nipple length compatibility,
it's more like a 2mm difference.
Either way, the same lacing pattern wouldn't allow reuse,
and while it wouldn't be impossible to use the 16 non-freewheel spokes
when doing 4-spoke freewheel-side with a 4-6 lacing pattern,
doing that with anything other than DT or Sapim spokes
would likely mean I'd be fixing spoke breakage soon,
so I skipped it.
Despite the wheel's price point, this bike was used with competitive intent as a "mountain bike,"
and sand was packed in the nipple's spoke slots.
It's built.
The hub is an M4000-series Altivo quick release disc hub—FH-M4050,
32H, black champion/competition 4-6 lace, no wire pattern.
The original was 14G plain, 6-6 lace on both sides,
same diameter, same spoke count on both sides,
but I changed it to different diameters and different spoke counts per side.
Since this is an offset rim,
even without a wire pattern, the difference in spoke deflection
between left and right is quite small.
And rather than evaluating this configuration alone,
when comparing to the original wheel,
the fact that it's no longer reverse hi-lo flange is quite significant.
The original hub had a 6-bolt rotor mount,
and the new hub is centerlock, but
that can be managed with adapters and such.
As for the freebody internal damage that caused the rebuild in the first place,
it's extremely rare with Shimano hubs,
and even if it does happen, spare parts are available,
so the long-term reliability is completely different.