Another wheel day today (and so on).
A customer brought in an Elite wheel rear wheel—completely unrelated to Elite bottle cages—for inspection.
This is a steel spoke model, and though I didn't get photos for an article recently, it's the same format as the carbon spoke wheel that Elite makes—same as the HUNT-style wheels—or rather, the same wheel offered under a different brand, where you can choose whether to have the rim logo or not, so they chose no logo. I inspected the wheel. In other words, it's an OEM-equivalent product from a different brand that shares the same manufacturer as Elite's carbon spoke wheel.
However, that wheel was several tens of thousands of yen cheaper than the Elite wheel, so I thought Elite must be a brand that can add a brand premium—a name premium, you could say.
There's a huge Elite marking, and
since it's a 50mm deep rim, there's an E50 marking. For the E38, please check here.
The hub also has their own brand logo on it. It's a 2:1 laced 21-hole hub, but like Roval, it uses XI lacing.
The spokes are Pillar aero spokes, but they're not the typical square aero profile—they have an elliptical aero shape. Compared to CX-RAY or Aero Lite, the edges in the left-right direction are quite sharp, and the front-rear ends come to a point. Rather than an ellipse, the cross-section is closer to a diamond shape, which made it difficult to find a spoke wrench that fit properly.
The braking zone looks like a knockoff of Campagnolo's AC3 treatment. It kind of looks like a salmon fillet, so
／￣￣￣＼
/／￣￣￣＼＼
/′ / / / / ＼ ヽ
( / ･_･ / / / )ﾉ
＼＿＿＿／￣
(| |)
∪∪
I'll paste in some ASCII art of Sanrio's KIRIMI-chan. It might display misaligned depending on your environment.
Anyway, about this braking zone treatment—
↑Freewheel side
↑Non-freewheel side
The wheel was built with the orientation reversed. When the customer inquired through the retailer's official store (which was the manufacturer's own store), they got back a response saying: "Our engineers looked into it and there's no problem with left and right reversed—just use it as is." After the customer said they'd demand an exchange or return, the company offered a partial refund. The refund was enough to cover our wheel rebuild service fee, so they brought it in to have the rim sides corrected. When the rim orientation is reversed, normally brake dust gets expelled upward and downward (toward the outer and inner edges) of the braking zone, but in this case it's likely to accumulate in the center of the braking zone. Long-term, I don't think there'd be "no difference."
But what bothers me is: if the rim's inner hole pattern is designed for 2:1 lacing with a left-right-right×7 repetition hole offset, then currently there would be rim holes with incorrect hole offset patterns.
Before disassembly, the rim was slightly offset toward the non-freewheel side.
Also, there were tool marks on about half a section of the rim holes, but
↑Even with this Park Tool nipple wrench, or with my own wrench-type nipple wrench, there was a gap that would make it virtually impossible to intentionally grind the rim, no matter how hard I tried. Unless some of the nipple was inside the rim during the initial wheel building—but that's unlikely.
I place tape on the rim holes to note which flange the spokes came from on each side. By the way, this is next to the valve hole.
Once I'd disassembled it enough to relieve the spoke tension...
These nipples here...
...could be completely loosened by hand. During the rebuild, I didn't do anything presumptuous like switching the 14mm aluminum nipples to DT's 12mm ones or increasing the spoke proportion on the non-freewheel side. But I did apply threadlocker to the spoke threads.
The tape weighs less than 1 gram. Compared to the 38mm rim linked earlier, despite being taller and wider, it's actually lighter. Considering the height-to-weight ratio, it's pretty good weight for the specs.
The outer holes of the rim have no offset, but
the inner holes don't have offset either. This rim has a history of being built into a wheel, so the rims hole edges were ground by nipples, stretching the hole contours. There were places that appeared to have a slight offset, but there was no definitive offset pattern. When disassembling carefully, I didn't sense any unusual resistance at any spot where the nipples turned. If someone had assembled this with incorrect hole offset and either didn't notice the difference or noticed it but forced the wheel build anyway—that doesn't make sense.
Built.
↑This is viewed from the non-freewheel side, but
the center rim hole has spokes from the right flange both before and after the rebuild, while the adjacent rim holes on both sides have spokes coming from the opposite direction compared to before the rebuild.
A customer brought in an Elite wheel rear wheel—completely unrelated to Elite bottle cages—for inspection.
This is a steel spoke model, and though I didn't get photos for an article recently, it's the same format as the carbon spoke wheel that Elite makes—same as the HUNT-style wheels—or rather, the same wheel offered under a different brand, where you can choose whether to have the rim logo or not, so they chose no logo. I inspected the wheel. In other words, it's an OEM-equivalent product from a different brand that shares the same manufacturer as Elite's carbon spoke wheel.
However, that wheel was several tens of thousands of yen cheaper than the Elite wheel, so I thought Elite must be a brand that can add a brand premium—a name premium, you could say.
There's a huge Elite marking, and
since it's a 50mm deep rim, there's an E50 marking. For the E38, please check here.
The hub also has their own brand logo on it. It's a 2:1 laced 21-hole hub, but like Roval, it uses XI lacing.
The spokes are Pillar aero spokes, but they're not the typical square aero profile—they have an elliptical aero shape. Compared to CX-RAY or Aero Lite, the edges in the left-right direction are quite sharp, and the front-rear ends come to a point. Rather than an ellipse, the cross-section is closer to a diamond shape, which made it difficult to find a spoke wrench that fit properly.
The braking zone looks like a knockoff of Campagnolo's AC3 treatment. It kind of looks like a salmon fillet, so
／￣￣￣＼
/／￣￣￣＼＼
/′ / / / / ＼ ヽ
( / ･_･ / / / )ﾉ
＼＿＿＿／￣
(| |)
∪∪
I'll paste in some ASCII art of Sanrio's KIRIMI-chan. It might display misaligned depending on your environment.
Anyway, about this braking zone treatment—
↑Freewheel side
↑Non-freewheel side
The wheel was built with the orientation reversed. When the customer inquired through the retailer's official store (which was the manufacturer's own store), they got back a response saying: "Our engineers looked into it and there's no problem with left and right reversed—just use it as is." After the customer said they'd demand an exchange or return, the company offered a partial refund. The refund was enough to cover our wheel rebuild service fee, so they brought it in to have the rim sides corrected. When the rim orientation is reversed, normally brake dust gets expelled upward and downward (toward the outer and inner edges) of the braking zone, but in this case it's likely to accumulate in the center of the braking zone. Long-term, I don't think there'd be "no difference."
But what bothers me is: if the rim's inner hole pattern is designed for 2:1 lacing with a left-right-right×7 repetition hole offset, then currently there would be rim holes with incorrect hole offset patterns.
Before disassembly, the rim was slightly offset toward the non-freewheel side.
Also, there were tool marks on about half a section of the rim holes, but
↑Even with this Park Tool nipple wrench, or with my own wrench-type nipple wrench, there was a gap that would make it virtually impossible to intentionally grind the rim, no matter how hard I tried. Unless some of the nipple was inside the rim during the initial wheel building—but that's unlikely.
I place tape on the rim holes to note which flange the spokes came from on each side. By the way, this is next to the valve hole.
Once I'd disassembled it enough to relieve the spoke tension...
These nipples here...
...could be completely loosened by hand. During the rebuild, I didn't do anything presumptuous like switching the 14mm aluminum nipples to DT's 12mm ones or increasing the spoke proportion on the non-freewheel side. But I did apply threadlocker to the spoke threads.
The tape weighs less than 1 gram. Compared to the 38mm rim linked earlier, despite being taller and wider, it's actually lighter. Considering the height-to-weight ratio, it's pretty good weight for the specs.
The outer holes of the rim have no offset, but
the inner holes don't have offset either. This rim has a history of being built into a wheel, so the rims hole edges were ground by nipples, stretching the hole contours. There were places that appeared to have a slight offset, but there was no definitive offset pattern. When disassembling carefully, I didn't sense any unusual resistance at any spot where the nipples turned. If someone had assembled this with incorrect hole offset and either didn't notice the difference or noticed it but forced the wheel build anyway—that doesn't make sense.
Built.
↑This is viewed from the non-freewheel side, but
the center rim hole has spokes from the right flange both before and after the rebuild, while the adjacent rim holes on both sides have spokes coming from the opposite direction compared to before the rebuild.