Another day on the wheels (and so on).
I received the rear wheel from a Rovalé CLX50 from a customer.
This is the white version with markings on the rim sidewall
The edges tend to peel easily—
it's just a white sticker layered over black printing.
The reason they wanted it rebuilt was
"poor acceleration response."
Feedback articulated by individual riders like this
is really valuable to hear.
Unlike the CL, it has aluminum nipples, so
theoretically I could rebuild without removing the rim tape,
but the condition doesn't warrant that level of caution,
so I'll remove it normally.
Since I'm only changing the spoke weight ratio on the non-drive side,
I could leave the drive side as-is and just rebuild that side,
but partial disassembly and full disassembly produce different results in terms of the final outcome,
so I'm doing a complete teardown.
When I apply the measurements I took from the non-drive side to the drive side,
it looks centered at first glance,
but when I apply the gauge to a different phase on the drive side,
center runout appears.
This is due to rim trueness issues.
The first image had the centering gauge applied at phases without the sticker,
and the image above is at the phase with the sticker,
but I'm not just picking up the sticker thickness.
Though that's part of it, of course.
The wheel shows general wear from use, but
the 16 spokes on the drive side that I'm reusing
showed quite pronounced wear marks at the final crossing point.
The spokes with no wear marks in the image above
are just flipped over.
These are the 8 non-drive side spokes I'm replacing.
I arranged them more carefully this time, so
all the wear marks are facing up,
but I found one spoke that was bent.
The spoke at the very top of the image.
It's definitely not unrelated to the runout issue,
but since there were a couple of other spots with significant runout,
it's clear this bent spoke isn't the main cause.
After noticing this, I checked all the drive-side spokes,
but none of them were bent.
It's built.
I've put black CX Sprint nipples on the non-drive side.
I reused the drive-side spokes without worrying about their original orientation,
but of the 8 final crossing points visible from the right side,
the original wear marks are facing this direction on 2 of them.
The image shows one of them.
The reversed asymmetric build has shifted the final crossing contact point
through the increased tension bonus.
There were marks on the edge of the freewheel body splines
from "incorrectly installing the top cog positioning
before tightening the lockring."
This CLX50 rim turned out to be quite light.
It's probably in the top 10% or so.
I suppose it's pretty remarkable that I can even say "top 10%"—
that speaks to how many samples I've handled.
Also, I sometimes see other shops claiming
the CLX/CL50 rim weighs 435g,
but I'm curious about the source of that information.
They clearly haven't actually disassembled one themselves.
So to prevent that kind of information from spreading,
I'm not sharing rim weights.
↑ Ugh, what a bad attitude
Sorry for the wait!
Up until the main body, I've drawn with my left hand
this humble crustacean (※) and...
※To the folks at home
The reading is "humble crustacean" (sekkai),
a self-referential term a crab uses to humble itself!
It's not proper Japanese yet, but if talking crabs
ever become commonplace,
crabs like this might just refer to themselves this way!
Please take a look at this image!
↑ Okay, stop it!
I received the rear wheel from a Rovalé CLX50 from a customer.
This is the white version with markings on the rim sidewall
The edges tend to peel easily—
it's just a white sticker layered over black printing.
The reason they wanted it rebuilt was
"poor acceleration response."
Feedback articulated by individual riders like this
is really valuable to hear.
Unlike the CL, it has aluminum nipples, so
theoretically I could rebuild without removing the rim tape,
but the condition doesn't warrant that level of caution,
so I'll remove it normally.
Since I'm only changing the spoke weight ratio on the non-drive side,
I could leave the drive side as-is and just rebuild that side,
but partial disassembly and full disassembly produce different results in terms of the final outcome,
so I'm doing a complete teardown.
When I apply the measurements I took from the non-drive side to the drive side,
it looks centered at first glance,
but when I apply the gauge to a different phase on the drive side,
center runout appears.
This is due to rim trueness issues.
The first image had the centering gauge applied at phases without the sticker,
and the image above is at the phase with the sticker,
but I'm not just picking up the sticker thickness.
Though that's part of it, of course.
The wheel shows general wear from use, but
the 16 spokes on the drive side that I'm reusing
showed quite pronounced wear marks at the final crossing point.
The spokes with no wear marks in the image above
are just flipped over.
These are the 8 non-drive side spokes I'm replacing.
I arranged them more carefully this time, so
all the wear marks are facing up,
but I found one spoke that was bent.
The spoke at the very top of the image.
It's definitely not unrelated to the runout issue,
but since there were a couple of other spots with significant runout,
it's clear this bent spoke isn't the main cause.
After noticing this, I checked all the drive-side spokes,
but none of them were bent.
It's built.
I've put black CX Sprint nipples on the non-drive side.
I reused the drive-side spokes without worrying about their original orientation,
but of the 8 final crossing points visible from the right side,
the original wear marks are facing this direction on 2 of them.
The image shows one of them.
The reversed asymmetric build has shifted the final crossing contact point
through the increased tension bonus.
There were marks on the edge of the freewheel body splines
from "incorrectly installing the top cog positioning
before tightening the lockring."
This CLX50 rim turned out to be quite light.
It's probably in the top 10% or so.
I suppose it's pretty remarkable that I can even say "top 10%"—
that speaks to how many samples I've handled.
Also, I sometimes see other shops claiming
the CLX/CL50 rim weighs 435g,
but I'm curious about the source of that information.
They clearly haven't actually disassembled one themselves.
So to prevent that kind of information from spreading,
I'm not sharing rim weights.
↑ Ugh, what a bad attitude
Sorry for the wait!
Up until the main body, I've drawn with my left hand
this humble crustacean (※) and...
※To the folks at home
The reading is "humble crustacean" (sekkai),
a self-referential term a crab uses to humble itself!
It's not proper Japanese yet, but if talking crabs
ever become commonplace,
crabs like this might just refer to themselves this way!
Please take a look at this image!
↑ Okay, stop it!