Another day, another wheel (and so on).
From a customer
A Roval
C38 front and rear wheels were entrusted to me.
The image shows only the front wheel I'm working on today.
Since it was sluggish and didn't roll well,
it had been shelved as a wheel.
It was shipped in the same box as a Nomu Lab wheel I'd sent out separately.
The hub is a DT 370
(As I mentioned a bit ago, the lettering on the hub shell
is upside down only on the front hub
in the range visible to the rider when seated),
24H, all-black Competence Race zero-four lacing.
This is intentional downtuning, or rather, this wheel was assembled in a mediocre way
so it wouldn't perform better than the more expensive CLX model,
but the CLX itself is such a pathetic wheel
(and my basis for this is that I've never once had someone say it got worse
after I rebuilt it) that
the swing range in performance from a rebuild is actually greater with this one.
After all, it's a fork-blade spoke hub,
so the spoke weight ratio and lacing freedom are high,
and it's not forced into a 2:1 CX lacing pattern,
and it's not a 21H with inverted element proportions,
but rather a 24H that allows equal spoke count left and right.
In that sense, I think the best wheel as a rebuilding candidate
within Roval is actually the cheaper Alpinist model.
These nipples can be turned from the outer edge too.
DT's black brass nipples have that distinctive pale, dull color,
but these nipples are unusually shiny,
so I thought they might be aluminum, but
they turned out to be brass after all.
Whether to use aluminum or brass nipples
only amounts to a price difference of a few thousand yen,
which is basically rounding error compared to the wheel's overall price.
The assembly effort is nearly the same for brass as aluminum too,
so I think they should just use aluminum for everything,
but this is probably where they have to intentionally detune the C and CL series
so that the CLX series doesn't look bad by comparison.
Built.
370 hub, 24H, half-CX sprint 64-count reverse Italian lacing.
I'll do the spoke windings later,
but even in this non-wound state, compared to a CLX 50 front wheel,
I'm confident this one will roll better for most people in most situations.
Especially noticeable on downhill corners, I'd say.
Per the customer's request, the basic plan was silver spokes,
with black spokes only next to the valve hole,
so on the wheel's left side CX sprint
I used black spokes with black nipples.
From a customer
A Roval
C38 front and rear wheels were entrusted to me.
The image shows only the front wheel I'm working on today.
Since it was sluggish and didn't roll well,
it had been shelved as a wheel.
It was shipped in the same box as a Nomu Lab wheel I'd sent out separately.
The hub is a DT 370
(As I mentioned a bit ago, the lettering on the hub shell
is upside down only on the front hub
in the range visible to the rider when seated),
24H, all-black Competence Race zero-four lacing.
This is intentional downtuning, or rather, this wheel was assembled in a mediocre way
so it wouldn't perform better than the more expensive CLX model,
but the CLX itself is such a pathetic wheel
(and my basis for this is that I've never once had someone say it got worse
after I rebuilt it) that
the swing range in performance from a rebuild is actually greater with this one.
After all, it's a fork-blade spoke hub,
so the spoke weight ratio and lacing freedom are high,
and it's not forced into a 2:1 CX lacing pattern,
and it's not a 21H with inverted element proportions,
but rather a 24H that allows equal spoke count left and right.
In that sense, I think the best wheel as a rebuilding candidate
within Roval is actually the cheaper Alpinist model.
These nipples can be turned from the outer edge too.
DT's black brass nipples have that distinctive pale, dull color,
but these nipples are unusually shiny,
so I thought they might be aluminum, but
they turned out to be brass after all.
Whether to use aluminum or brass nipples
only amounts to a price difference of a few thousand yen,
which is basically rounding error compared to the wheel's overall price.
The assembly effort is nearly the same for brass as aluminum too,
so I think they should just use aluminum for everything,
but this is probably where they have to intentionally detune the C and CL series
so that the CLX series doesn't look bad by comparison.
Built.
370 hub, 24H, half-CX sprint 64-count reverse Italian lacing.
I'll do the spoke windings later,
but even in this non-wound state, compared to a CLX 50 front wheel,
I'm confident this one will roll better for most people in most situations.
Especially noticeable on downhill corners, I'd say.
Per the customer's request, the basic plan was silver spokes,
with black spokes only next to the valve hole,
so on the wheel's left side CX sprint
I used black spokes with black nipples.