Another day of wheel work (and so on).
A customer brought me the rear wheel of a wheel called ACR22
made by Velarete (a frame builder?).
My colleague is shirking his duties here,
but the customer said it's fine not to withhold the name...
There's some branding going on, but
the rim is either Tni's AL22 or Kinlin's XR200,
and the hub is Novatech 482SL,
which is the original that Tni's Evolite hub is based on.
Apparently it was originally built 24H all-black in a 4-cross lacing pattern,
but the spokes on the non-freewheel side broke repeatedly
in a short period of time from new,
so they tried swapping those spokes to Pillar aero spokes.
But runout appeared quickly with that too,
so the customer contacted Velarete about it,
but they just said they "didn't know" about either the spoke breakage or runout.
Through a mutual contact, the wheel ended up at my shop.
First, regarding the frequent spoke breakage—
if they say they don't know, I'll teach them (speaking from on high).
If something's happening at an abnormally frequent rate,
there's something abnormal causing it.
By abandoning the chance to solve it,
they're inviting justified criticism, you knucklehead.
The freewheel side uses Sapim black race spokes in a 4-cross pattern.
The freewheel side isn't properly tensioned.
This is the cause of the spoke breakage.
Spoke breakage can't be completely avoided as a problem,
but when spoke tension is low, the play between the hub flange hole
and the spoke head increases, raising the risk of spoke nipple breakage.
Also, the lower the tension,
the greater the variation in spoke tension on the same hub flange side.
Spoke tension is something where tighter isn't always better,
but this is too low.
All the spokes that actually broke were on the non-freewheel side,
but if the freewheel side has this kind of tension and it's same-diameter same-count lacing left and right,
the non-freewheel side spoke tension must have been even more scattered,
especially on the lower end.
People who build keirin wheels all day tend to build loose wheels
even with other rims, like they do with Araya's 16B Gold
(currently the only keirin rim in production),
but I don't know if this low tension incorporates
some kind of Velarete philosophy.
I also don't know if they build keirin wheels that often.
On the non-freewheel side,
Pillar aero spokes with the key slot are used,
The spoke deformation is much larger than
the fore-aft width of the butted section would suggest.
Many of you have probably already noticed this,
but this spoke combination is opposite-diameter lacing, left-right reversed.
What kind of stupid do you have to be to pull off something like this?
Well, if you were just stupid and the wheel building itself was otherwise competent,
it would've been okay, but...
By the way, when the customer brought this rear wheel in,
I had them feel the spokes on our freshly built
Nomu-Lab Wheel No. 5 rear wheel,
24H half-comp 4-cross lacing without truing
Weird, they said—the non-freewheel side spokes are much thinner than on the wheel you brought,
but the deformation is actually much less.
I explained why that is using a whiteboard—
filling one side, erasing, then filling it again—
over about 30 minutes for the customer.
Same rim and spoke count, similar hub
(the 660 hub is actually more disadvantaged than the 482SL in terms of spoke deformation difference)
yet my rear wheel had less spoke deformation and less left-right difference (excluding truing)
The point I made was that this wasn't occultism—there were concrete reasons for it.
I wrote earlier "if the wheel building itself was okay, it would've been better,"
and I want to address that.
I found the phase with the most lateral runout on the non-freewheel side.
It's the only phase in one wheel revolution where the gauge touches the rim.
I marked it with tape.
With the gauge in the same position, I found the phase where the freewheel side
was most deviated and the distance between rim and gauge was greatest.
↑From the front, it looks like this.
This is the sum of the maximum lateral runout from both sides.
I marked this spot with tape too.
The tape position relationship looks like this,
but I deliberately avoided that phase when applying the center gauge.
I avoided "deliberately finding the spot with the largest center offset,
or producing the same result"
but the rim was still pretty far off toward the freewheel side.
Even when I applied the center gauge directly below each tape mark,
the rim was still shifted toward the freewheel side.
While low-tension rear wheels may shift toward the freewheel side from regular use faster than high-tension ones,
it's hard to imagine this wheel, which is already so wildly runout it's about to touch the brake pad,
being ridden for many thousands of kilometers,
and a perfectly centered wheel rarely gets this far off in the short term,
so this center-offset tendency must have existed from the moment the wheel was built.
I don't know if this wheel was built by the builder himself or an apprentice
(or whether there even is an apprentice),
but they have a serious "lack of eye."
By "lack of eye," I don't mean just visual acuity—
I mean a low standard of acceptable deviation, misalignment, and distortion.
This wheel should be built as straight as possible to the builder's eye
and, being professional, made something they wouldn't be ashamed to charge money for,
so this level of work means either a serious lack of eye
or cutting corners.
My view—without having seen the actual frame—
is that this Velarete's frames probably have the same level of "lack of eye,"
the same low precision standard.
If that's wrong, then they're just cutting corners on wheels.
Maybe they can make frames just fine but just aren't good at wheel building?
You might say that, but if their eye were good,
they'd recognize their own wheels don't match the spoke tension
and build precision of other quality wheels out there,
and they'd never be comfortable charging money for them.
The fact that they're slapping stickers on these and selling them with branding
tells me this isn't a corner-cutting situation—it's a "lack of eye" situation.
And by the way, making it reverse-diameter lacing during rebuilding is just "stupid."
That's not speculation—it's pure fact.
You might say "you can't even make frames, so don't be so high and mighty!"
But just like someone who can't build wheels can still tell if a wheel is runout,
I too can judge frame alignment even if it doesn't match
a truly skilled builder's eye.
And while I can't make frames, fortunately I know a trustworthy frame builder
and have frames made by them.
Well, I haven't examined a Velarete frame closely, so I really don't know
if it's well-made or not (the output of eye quality),
but looking at this wheel quality, it doesn't seem like much of a builder.
That's just my opinion.
I'm not sure why,
but the nipples were 14mm semi-long brass.
Up to this point, I've done no actual building work.
I just put the wheel on the truing stand, marked it with tape,
and applied the center gauge—I haven't turned a single nipple.
The first work I did was peel back the rim tape,
and the spoke length was too short on the freewheel side (unacceptable),
and acceptable but a bit long on the non-freewheel side.
↑Non-freewheel side
↑Freewheel side
↑Non-freewheel side
↑Freewheel side
Wheelsmith spoke prep was applied.
We use it at our shop too, but I was shocked it was applied
and the wheel was still this runout.
This spoke prep comes in two colors, orange (flesh tone) and blue (light blue)—
there's no difference in performance, it's just convenient to use different colors
on left and right so you don't mix up the spokes.
But there is a clear performance difference between orange and blue (←proprietary knowledge)
so I only use blue.
For rim brake front wheels and fixed-gear two-piece rear wheels, there's no offset,
so spoke length is the same left-right, and for fixed-gear single-piece rear wheels,
it's only about 0.5mm difference in calculation, so I often use same-length spokes.
For freewheel rear wheels and disc brake front wheels with more offset,
I almost always do reverse-diameter lacing,
so there's no way spokes could get mixed up—
which is why I don't need to color-code my spoke prep left and right.
After rebuilding where the spokes are clearly different left-right,
mix-up is impossible, so if the builder noticed the performance difference,
they'd use blue on both sides—so they didn't notice.
I don't know if the whole wheel was disassembled or just the non-freewheel side,
but the Pillar aero spokes on the non-freewheel side were the later replacement
yet had orange applied.
Also, if they noticed the performance difference,
they should make the low-tension side (non-freewheel side) blue.
I know a fellow builder who color-codes spoke prep left-right on offset wheels,
but even that person always uses blue on both sides for rim brake front wheels,
and says blue wears faster.
I disassembled the wheel and collected the spokes.
↑Pillar aero
↑Sapim race
Comparing lengths.
For freewheel hubs with non-offset rims and same-count left-right lacing,
the left-right length difference is roughly 2mm.
For the 482SL high-low flange hub, this difference is
about 2.5mm regardless of rim inner diameter,
but if you don't have a spoke cutter and can only choose 2mm or 3mm difference,
2mm is fine.
They were 6mm different in length, left to right.
Both spokes have a 2mm outer diameter at the thread start roundup,
so using that as reference, you can see the 6mm difference clearly.
With this much difference, if either spoke length was correct,
at minimum the other would be too long or too short.
In reality both are wrong—
the freewheel side race is too short
and the non-freewheel side Pillar aero is slightly long, as mentioned.
The Pillar side could be fixed by cutting a bit,
but they probably don't have a spoke cutter.
If they don't have one, they should have sourced the right length spokes from the start.
This is also cutting corners.
Or do they have such a "lack of eye" that they think this is correct?
Ugh, this guy probably does the same thing with mismatched parts
when making frames. ←repetitive
It's built.
Before I saw the original wheel's spoke lengths,
I was planning to use the freewheel side with recycled race spokes
and the non-freewheel side with CX-RAY for a semi-comp equivalent,
but I ended up using the freewheel side with cut-to-length Pillar aero,
and the non-freewheel side with CX-RAY.
I'll do the truing later,
but it might be better to show the customer the untrued state first.
Since we can't source Pillar aero at our shop,
if the freewheel-side spokes happen to break and you can't go back to Velarete (wink),
I'll replace everything with competition spokes.
For spoke weight ratio, I use 85% as an approximation for 2.0-1.8-2.0mm
butted round spokes, but DT Competition has longer 2.0mm ends,
so actual measurement is about 86.5%.
With Sapim race this is actually about 85%,
but calculating with 85% before weighing, I got 74.4g.
The actual weight of the spokes I measured was 74.0g,
so this race's spoke weight ratio is 84.48%.
Sapim CX, like Pillar aero, is a slotted-hole spoke.
From its published weight, the spoke weight ratio calculates to 98.9%,
but from actual weight measurement it's 100.3%.
This Pillar spoke has a thinner flatted section than CX,
so I thought it would be about 95%,
but actual calculation gives 98.28%.
It's close enough to 100% (same as 14-gauge plain)
to not be a problem in isolation.
But this reverse-diameter lacing is problematic.
Using round spokes on a rear wheel, it's like deliberately building
the freewheel side with competition and the non-freewheel side with champion.
My rebuilt wheel, viewed from the right side,
starting at the valve hole going clockwise
↑Non-freewheel side
↑Freewheel side
↑Non-freewheel side
↑Freewheel side
The freewheel-side Pillar spokes have a silver end face
because they were cut,
but the non-freewheel CX-RAY spokes are uncut at the correct length,
so their end faces are black.
To Velarete:
You might come across this article someday,
so I'll write this.
Feel free to complain at me if you like,
but first, please provide a rational explanation for why
the rebuilt spokes ended up in reverse-diameter lacing left-right
and why the spoke length ended up 6mm different.
If you can't explain that, stay quiet forever.
Just serve the customers who won't complain about your work
and scratch out a living.
A customer brought me the rear wheel of a wheel called ACR22
made by Velarete (a frame builder?).
My colleague is shirking his duties here,
but the customer said it's fine not to withhold the name...
There's some branding going on, but
the rim is either Tni's AL22 or Kinlin's XR200,
and the hub is Novatech 482SL,
which is the original that Tni's Evolite hub is based on.
Apparently it was originally built 24H all-black in a 4-cross lacing pattern,
but the spokes on the non-freewheel side broke repeatedly
in a short period of time from new,
so they tried swapping those spokes to Pillar aero spokes.
But runout appeared quickly with that too,
so the customer contacted Velarete about it,
but they just said they "didn't know" about either the spoke breakage or runout.
Through a mutual contact, the wheel ended up at my shop.
First, regarding the frequent spoke breakage—
if they say they don't know, I'll teach them (speaking from on high).
If something's happening at an abnormally frequent rate,
there's something abnormal causing it.
By abandoning the chance to solve it,
they're inviting justified criticism, you knucklehead.
The freewheel side uses Sapim black race spokes in a 4-cross pattern.
The freewheel side isn't properly tensioned.
This is the cause of the spoke breakage.
Spoke breakage can't be completely avoided as a problem,
but when spoke tension is low, the play between the hub flange hole
and the spoke head increases, raising the risk of spoke nipple breakage.
Also, the lower the tension,
the greater the variation in spoke tension on the same hub flange side.
Spoke tension is something where tighter isn't always better,
but this is too low.
All the spokes that actually broke were on the non-freewheel side,
but if the freewheel side has this kind of tension and it's same-diameter same-count lacing left and right,
the non-freewheel side spoke tension must have been even more scattered,
especially on the lower end.
People who build keirin wheels all day tend to build loose wheels
even with other rims, like they do with Araya's 16B Gold
(currently the only keirin rim in production),
but I don't know if this low tension incorporates
some kind of Velarete philosophy.
I also don't know if they build keirin wheels that often.
On the non-freewheel side,
Pillar aero spokes with the key slot are used,
The spoke deformation is much larger than
the fore-aft width of the butted section would suggest.
Many of you have probably already noticed this,
but this spoke combination is opposite-diameter lacing, left-right reversed.
What kind of stupid do you have to be to pull off something like this?
Well, if you were just stupid and the wheel building itself was otherwise competent,
it would've been okay, but...
By the way, when the customer brought this rear wheel in,
I had them feel the spokes on our freshly built
Nomu-Lab Wheel No. 5 rear wheel,
24H half-comp 4-cross lacing without truing
Weird, they said—the non-freewheel side spokes are much thinner than on the wheel you brought,
but the deformation is actually much less.
I explained why that is using a whiteboard—
filling one side, erasing, then filling it again—
over about 30 minutes for the customer.
Same rim and spoke count, similar hub
(the 660 hub is actually more disadvantaged than the 482SL in terms of spoke deformation difference)
yet my rear wheel had less spoke deformation and less left-right difference (excluding truing)
The point I made was that this wasn't occultism—there were concrete reasons for it.
I wrote earlier "if the wheel building itself was okay, it would've been better,"
and I want to address that.
I found the phase with the most lateral runout on the non-freewheel side.
It's the only phase in one wheel revolution where the gauge touches the rim.
I marked it with tape.
With the gauge in the same position, I found the phase where the freewheel side
was most deviated and the distance between rim and gauge was greatest.
↑From the front, it looks like this.
This is the sum of the maximum lateral runout from both sides.
I marked this spot with tape too.
The tape position relationship looks like this,
but I deliberately avoided that phase when applying the center gauge.
I avoided "deliberately finding the spot with the largest center offset,
or producing the same result"
but the rim was still pretty far off toward the freewheel side.
Even when I applied the center gauge directly below each tape mark,
the rim was still shifted toward the freewheel side.
While low-tension rear wheels may shift toward the freewheel side from regular use faster than high-tension ones,
it's hard to imagine this wheel, which is already so wildly runout it's about to touch the brake pad,
being ridden for many thousands of kilometers,
and a perfectly centered wheel rarely gets this far off in the short term,
so this center-offset tendency must have existed from the moment the wheel was built.
I don't know if this wheel was built by the builder himself or an apprentice
(or whether there even is an apprentice),
but they have a serious "lack of eye."
By "lack of eye," I don't mean just visual acuity—
I mean a low standard of acceptable deviation, misalignment, and distortion.
This wheel should be built as straight as possible to the builder's eye
and, being professional, made something they wouldn't be ashamed to charge money for,
so this level of work means either a serious lack of eye
or cutting corners.
My view—without having seen the actual frame—
is that this Velarete's frames probably have the same level of "lack of eye,"
the same low precision standard.
If that's wrong, then they're just cutting corners on wheels.
Maybe they can make frames just fine but just aren't good at wheel building?
You might say that, but if their eye were good,
they'd recognize their own wheels don't match the spoke tension
and build precision of other quality wheels out there,
and they'd never be comfortable charging money for them.
The fact that they're slapping stickers on these and selling them with branding
tells me this isn't a corner-cutting situation—it's a "lack of eye" situation.
And by the way, making it reverse-diameter lacing during rebuilding is just "stupid."
That's not speculation—it's pure fact.
You might say "you can't even make frames, so don't be so high and mighty!"
But just like someone who can't build wheels can still tell if a wheel is runout,
I too can judge frame alignment even if it doesn't match
a truly skilled builder's eye.
and have frames made by them.
Well, I haven't examined a Velarete frame closely, so I really don't know
if it's well-made or not (the output of eye quality),
but looking at this wheel quality, it doesn't seem like much of a builder.
That's just my opinion.
I'm not sure why,
but the nipples were 14mm semi-long brass.
Up to this point, I've done no actual building work.
I just put the wheel on the truing stand, marked it with tape,
and applied the center gauge—I haven't turned a single nipple.
The first work I did was peel back the rim tape,
and the spoke length was too short on the freewheel side (unacceptable),
and acceptable but a bit long on the non-freewheel side.
↑Non-freewheel side
↑Freewheel side
↑Non-freewheel side
↑Freewheel side
Wheelsmith spoke prep was applied.
We use it at our shop too, but I was shocked it was applied
and the wheel was still this runout.
This spoke prep comes in two colors, orange (flesh tone) and blue (light blue)—
there's no difference in performance, it's just convenient to use different colors
on left and right so you don't mix up the spokes.
But there is a clear performance difference between orange and blue (←proprietary knowledge)
so I only use blue.
For rim brake front wheels and fixed-gear two-piece rear wheels, there's no offset,
so spoke length is the same left-right, and for fixed-gear single-piece rear wheels,
it's only about 0.5mm difference in calculation, so I often use same-length spokes.
For freewheel rear wheels and disc brake front wheels with more offset,
I almost always do reverse-diameter lacing,
so there's no way spokes could get mixed up—
which is why I don't need to color-code my spoke prep left and right.
After rebuilding where the spokes are clearly different left-right,
mix-up is impossible, so if the builder noticed the performance difference,
they'd use blue on both sides—so they didn't notice.
I don't know if the whole wheel was disassembled or just the non-freewheel side,
but the Pillar aero spokes on the non-freewheel side were the later replacement
yet had orange applied.
Also, if they noticed the performance difference,
they should make the low-tension side (non-freewheel side) blue.
I know a fellow builder who color-codes spoke prep left-right on offset wheels,
but even that person always uses blue on both sides for rim brake front wheels,
and says blue wears faster.
I disassembled the wheel and collected the spokes.
↑Pillar aero
↑Sapim race
Comparing lengths.
For freewheel hubs with non-offset rims and same-count left-right lacing,
the left-right length difference is roughly 2mm.
For the 482SL high-low flange hub, this difference is
about 2.5mm regardless of rim inner diameter,
but if you don't have a spoke cutter and can only choose 2mm or 3mm difference,
2mm is fine.
They were 6mm different in length, left to right.
Both spokes have a 2mm outer diameter at the thread start roundup,
so using that as reference, you can see the 6mm difference clearly.
With this much difference, if either spoke length was correct,
at minimum the other would be too long or too short.
In reality both are wrong—
the freewheel side race is too short
and the non-freewheel side Pillar aero is slightly long, as mentioned.
The Pillar side could be fixed by cutting a bit,
but they probably don't have a spoke cutter.
If they don't have one, they should have sourced the right length spokes from the start.
This is also cutting corners.
Or do they have such a "lack of eye" that they think this is correct?
Ugh, this guy probably does the same thing with mismatched parts
when making frames. ←repetitive
It's built.
Before I saw the original wheel's spoke lengths,
I was planning to use the freewheel side with recycled race spokes
and the non-freewheel side with CX-RAY for a semi-comp equivalent,
but I ended up using the freewheel side with cut-to-length Pillar aero,
and the non-freewheel side with CX-RAY.
I'll do the truing later,
but it might be better to show the customer the untrued state first.
Since we can't source Pillar aero at our shop,
if the freewheel-side spokes happen to break and you can't go back to Velarete (wink),
I'll replace everything with competition spokes.
For spoke weight ratio, I use 85% as an approximation for 2.0-1.8-2.0mm
butted round spokes, but DT Competition has longer 2.0mm ends,
so actual measurement is about 86.5%.
With Sapim race this is actually about 85%,
but calculating with 85% before weighing, I got 74.4g.
The actual weight of the spokes I measured was 74.0g,
so this race's spoke weight ratio is 84.48%.
Sapim CX, like Pillar aero, is a slotted-hole spoke.
From its published weight, the spoke weight ratio calculates to 98.9%,
but from actual weight measurement it's 100.3%.
This Pillar spoke has a thinner flatted section than CX,
so I thought it would be about 95%,
but actual calculation gives 98.28%.
It's close enough to 100% (same as 14-gauge plain)
to not be a problem in isolation.
But this reverse-diameter lacing is problematic.
Using round spokes on a rear wheel, it's like deliberately building
the freewheel side with competition and the non-freewheel side with champion.
My rebuilt wheel, viewed from the right side,
starting at the valve hole going clockwise
↑Non-freewheel side
↑Freewheel side
↑Non-freewheel side
↑Freewheel side
The freewheel-side Pillar spokes have a silver end face
because they were cut,
but the non-freewheel CX-RAY spokes are uncut at the correct length,
so their end faces are black.
To Velarete:
You might come across this article someday,
so I'll write this.
Feel free to complain at me if you like,
but first, please provide a rational explanation for why
the rebuilt spokes ended up in reverse-diameter lacing left-right
and why the spoke length ended up 6mm different.
If you can't explain that, stay quiet forever.
Just serve the customers who won't complain about your work
and scratch out a living.