Another day with wheels (etc.).
A customer brought in a front wheel with a Chinese carbon tubeless rim that has no holes on the outer edge except for the valve hole.
The hub is a DT 240 straight in the current model
with 20 holes and forced radial lacing, but
unlike major brands where "if you're using a DT hub,
you wouldn't not use DT spokes, right?"
there's no such constraint,
so the spokes are Sapim black CX-RAY.
Even if Sapim made hubs,
I doubt anyone would build a wheel with
Sapim hub + DT spokes.
There was a time when Reynolds adopted
DT hubs on their own wheels,
but while the spokes for those hubs were DT-made,
in the eras before and after the DT era,
both adopted Sapim spokes.
If there's no constraint, you wouldn't use them unnecessarily—
it seems like whether clearly or vaguely,
they've realized that Sapim is better,
or that CX-RAY is superior to Aerolight
in some respects.
Though this is inside-shop gossip.
I think DT's 12mm aluminum nipples are the best,
but Sapim's 14mm aluminum nipples were used.
That can't be helped. The silver or black CX-RAY comes
with this aluminum nipple in silver or black.
I rarely see anyone choosing not to use them anyway.
The reason I took in this front wheel was that
the rim had cracks from the inside from tire pressure pushing against it,
so the manufacturer sent the same rim
and they want me to do the replacement work.
As I mentioned at the beginning,
this rim has no holes on the outer edge except for the valve hole, but
↑the crack is between the hump and bead hook in this area.
Even when viewed from the outside of that area, there's evidence
of spreading when air pressure was applied.
Also, there's a brake zone treatment like Campagnolo's AC3,
but the orientation seems reversed by my interpretation.
The rear wheel is also being inspected at their request, and
when viewed from the left side (non-freewheel side)
↑it has this kind of pattern
Using the "240" marking on the hub shell as reference for left and right,
the same way as the rear wheel, if I look from the left side
↑it looks like this.
However, I can't definitively say this is wrong.
With current 240 disc brake front hubs,
when the "240" marking on the hub shell reads correctly,
the rotor mount is on the right for both 6-bolt and center-lock.
In reality, the rotor goes on the wheel's left side, so
when building a front wheel with a 240 disc hub,
the hub shell marking ends up reversed.
With rear hubs, it's normal orientation
just like with the rim brake hub this time.
For Chris King's R45 rim brake hub,
if I interpret it as "the bearing adjustment mechanism on the left like the rear hub,"
the hub marking ends up reversed, and
with the R45D disc brake hub,
just like DT hubs, it's always reversed.
However, both DT and Chris King
show the hub marking in correct orientation in their official images
of rim brake front hubs, and
even completed wheels built with DT rim brake hubs
rarely interpret the front hub marking as being reverse and correct.
So when replacing the rim,
I decided to flip the hub and rim left-right from the original orientation.
Moving the rim to its new home...
Rather than the usual method of moving half a circumference
starting from the valve hole,
I took a photo with one full side of the rim moved because
by arranging the rims like this and shifting them
I wanted to get this kind of shot.
All built.
Something I rarely do, but
this time I built the wheel with Sapim's 14mm black aluminum nipples.
I guide each nipple with a magnet into the hole on the inside,
but retrieving the nipples from the old rim is extremely tedious
(even at the point of the photo, all 20 original nipples are still in the old rim),
so I used new ones of the same type.
↑This is the rim used for reassembly, weighed before replacement.
The original rim still has the nipples in it,
and it's too tedious to remove them and weigh it separately, so I didn't.
A customer brought in a front wheel with a Chinese carbon tubeless rim that has no holes on the outer edge except for the valve hole.
The hub is a DT 240 straight in the current model
with 20 holes and forced radial lacing, but
unlike major brands where "if you're using a DT hub,
you wouldn't not use DT spokes, right?"
there's no such constraint,
so the spokes are Sapim black CX-RAY.
Even if Sapim made hubs,
I doubt anyone would build a wheel with
Sapim hub + DT spokes.
There was a time when Reynolds adopted
DT hubs on their own wheels,
but while the spokes for those hubs were DT-made,
in the eras before and after the DT era,
both adopted Sapim spokes.
If there's no constraint, you wouldn't use them unnecessarily—
it seems like whether clearly or vaguely,
they've realized that Sapim is better,
or that CX-RAY is superior to Aerolight
in some respects.
Though this is inside-shop gossip.
I think DT's 12mm aluminum nipples are the best,
but Sapim's 14mm aluminum nipples were used.
That can't be helped. The silver or black CX-RAY comes
with this aluminum nipple in silver or black.
I rarely see anyone choosing not to use them anyway.
The reason I took in this front wheel was that
the rim had cracks from the inside from tire pressure pushing against it,
so the manufacturer sent the same rim
and they want me to do the replacement work.
As I mentioned at the beginning,
this rim has no holes on the outer edge except for the valve hole, but
↑the crack is between the hump and bead hook in this area.
Even when viewed from the outside of that area, there's evidence
of spreading when air pressure was applied.
Also, there's a brake zone treatment like Campagnolo's AC3,
but the orientation seems reversed by my interpretation.
The rear wheel is also being inspected at their request, and
when viewed from the left side (non-freewheel side)
↑it has this kind of pattern
Using the "240" marking on the hub shell as reference for left and right,
the same way as the rear wheel, if I look from the left side
↑it looks like this.
However, I can't definitively say this is wrong.
With current 240 disc brake front hubs,
when the "240" marking on the hub shell reads correctly,
the rotor mount is on the right for both 6-bolt and center-lock.
In reality, the rotor goes on the wheel's left side, so
when building a front wheel with a 240 disc hub,
the hub shell marking ends up reversed.
With rear hubs, it's normal orientation
just like with the rim brake hub this time.
For Chris King's R45 rim brake hub,
if I interpret it as "the bearing adjustment mechanism on the left like the rear hub,"
the hub marking ends up reversed, and
with the R45D disc brake hub,
just like DT hubs, it's always reversed.
However, both DT and Chris King
show the hub marking in correct orientation in their official images
of rim brake front hubs, and
even completed wheels built with DT rim brake hubs
rarely interpret the front hub marking as being reverse and correct.
So when replacing the rim,
I decided to flip the hub and rim left-right from the original orientation.
Moving the rim to its new home...
Rather than the usual method of moving half a circumference
starting from the valve hole,
I took a photo with one full side of the rim moved because
by arranging the rims like this and shifting them
I wanted to get this kind of shot.
All built.
Something I rarely do, but
this time I built the wheel with Sapim's 14mm black aluminum nipples.
I guide each nipple with a magnet into the hole on the inside,
but retrieving the nipples from the old rim is extremely tedious
(even at the point of the photo, all 20 original nipples are still in the old rim),
so I used new ones of the same type.
↑This is the rim used for reassembly, weighed before replacement.
The original rim still has the nipples in it,
and it's too tedious to remove them and weigh it separately, so I didn't.