Today, another wheel rebuild (and so on)
This is work I did back on April 11th this year,
but I hadn't written it up as an article.
A customer brought me the front and rear wheels of a WH-RS710 C36 to work on.
I only took a photo of the front wheel,
but they're pre-built wheels assembled with bent-end spokes.
The front wheel was misaligned to about this degree.
Since I did the work in front of the customer,
I didn't necessarily need to keep a record,
but the wheel caught my interest so I took photos.
The model number contains "RS" (Road Series),
but it's officially classified as a 105-grade wheel,
and it appears on Shimano's official 105 page.
I don't know why they didn't call it WH-R7170.
There's a similar model number WH-RS700,
which is an aluminum-rim rim-brake wheel,
and the 700 series is the highest grade-outside-grade level.
From there, they made a WH-RS770 with the suffix changed to 70 to indicate disc brakes,
but that's a disc brake wheel with a carbon-laminate rim
which frankly seems like a scam these days
equivalent to the previous R8000-series Ultegra.
When RS770 came out and then RS710 came later,
RS710 sounds like the lower-end model,
but the groupset generation is different by one level—they're separate beasts.
This is the WH-R9270 we rebuilt recently.
The "C36" marking is printed, and if you touch it with your finger
it has a slight thickness to it.
For Dura-Ace wheels, only the rim height marking gets this finish,
and for Ultegra wheels, the "ULTEGRA" marking also gets this same finish.
The "DURA-ACE" marking on Dura-Ace wheels
isn't quite embossed, but it clearly has substantial depth.
On the WH-RS710, meanwhile,
the cosmetics are simplistic like Mavic,
with just one elongated sticker running across the left and right of the rim
(plus a WARNING sticker on the left side).
It's almost like they're saying "go ahead and make it an unmarked rim,"
and in fact, the front and rear wheels in the opening photo
had their stickers already peeled off before the customer brought them to us.
So, the WH-RS710
comes in two rim heights: C32 and C46.
These are each 4mm lower than the Dura-Ace and Ultegra versions (C36 and C50),
and they use different rims.
In Shimano's past wheel lineups,
the WH-9100-C40 had a situation where
the WO (Clincher) rim version used the same rim as its predecessor WH-9000-C35,
so even though it said C40, it was only 35mm tall,
while the tubular version had rim changes but was still only 37mm tall—
the model name didn't necessarily reflect rim height.
So I checked this carefully just to be sure.
Since Dura-Ace has a tubular (TU) version,
and Ultegra and 105 wheels only come in tubeless (TL) versions,
those models conventionally have "-TL" at the end.
Looking at the claimed weight for the front wheel in the lower rim height model:
WH-R9270-C36-TL-F: 620g
WH-R8170-C36-TL-F: 657g
WH-RS710-C32-TL-F: 665g
That's interesting—maybe there's something here.
The R9270 and R8170 C36 tubeless rims are supposedly different according to Shimano,
but since they have the same weight and tension limit,
as far as I'm concerned about wheel components,
they're "the same thing" except for the rim marking.
The R9270's front hub shell has abnormally thin central sections,
so light for a cup-and-cone hub it's almost unbelievable,
and the R9270 spokes have lower specific gravity than CX-RAY,
so they make up 37g difference in the front wheel from non-rim parts.
But between R8170 and RS710, the front wheel's claimed weight
differs by just 8g.
If the RS710's 32mm tubeless rim turns out to be
lighter than the R9270/R8170's 36mm tubeless rim,
it might be the most excellent wheel material for rebuild purposes.
This has been bugging me for a while, so
Today, another wheel rebuild (and so on).
I sourced a WH-RS710.
Starting with the front wheel.
↑The cosmetic sticker on the rim
is just this one.
A seal on a baseball cap bill probably gets ten thousand times more care.
Tubeless tape is applied.
How unnecessary...
The spoke head stamp was the capital S marking
commonly seen on Shimano's budget models.
Actual measured weight of the front wheel.
The claimed 665g isn't some official propaganda, as it turns out—
excluding the tubeless valve and
tubeless-ready tape,
it was within acceptable range.
The usual: from next to the valve hole, just the final crossing pair on the left and right—4 spokes total—left with the nipples completely untightened.
For WH-RS710-C32-TL, the spare spoke 24-piece kit has the same part number for front and rear,
with 12 pieces at 281.5mm and 12 pieces at 283mm.
The shorter 281.5mm are for front-left and rear-right,
the longer 283mm are for front-right and rear-left.
From that state above, pushing the nipples out of the rim
to check the thread length in the hanging position...
↑Left side (rotor mounting side) 281.5mm
↑Right side 283mm
↑Left side 281.5mm
↑Right side 283mm
Long, but better than the WH-R9270 from the other day.
Actual measured weight of the rim.
Since the R8170-C36 rim was around 390g,
the RS710-C32 rim isn't superior to the higher-end model's rim by height/weight ratio.
Rather, it's a point in its favor that as a budget model it's not heavier than expected.
And if the rim difference is this small, the hub and spokes must be lighter than I imagined.
↑On the opposite side from the blue SHIMANO logo
is this marking.
The WH-RS710 front hub for bent-end spokes—
looks nearly identical to the
RS470, which is an RS400-grade disc hub.
But the RS470 doesn't come in 24H.
They should make one already.
Both are classified as RS Series grade-outside-grades,
so they're marked "Shimano" rather than "105" or "Tiagra."
Oh, the hub axle material is different...
↑RS710 front hub
↑HB-RS470
The RS710 hub looks closer to the RS470 hub aesthetically,
but spec-wise it seems to be the color variant of the RS770 (front hub claimed weight 125g)
and a 24H hub that the RS770 doesn't have.
It was lighter than Tni's Revo disc hub
(the centerlock mounting cup cover is removed in the image above).
This hub's claimed weight is 132g, by the way.
↑281.5mm, 12 pieces
↑283mm, 12 pieces
Oddly, the shorter bundle was heavier.
Suspecting mix-up or contamination, I separated the spokes into 12-piece groups without thinking about it,
measuring each one with a spoke gauge, and they turned out to be clearly different lengths.
↑In both images, the right side shows the shorter spokes,
but the shorter ones had longer plain sections on the #14.
The spoke specific gravity for the 281.5mm is
63.2÷281.5÷12÷0.0257=0.727988...,
and for the 283mm is
62.7÷283÷12÷0.0257=0.718400..., so
approximately 72% seems about right.
This is nearly the same specific gravity as the R8170's straight spokes.
I can't say for sure if they're from the same manufacturer,
but excluding considerations about bent-end failure risk or rust-susceptibility,
you could think of them as the bent-end version of the R8170 spokes.
The drawback is they fall between CX-RAY and CX Sprint in specific gravity,
and without resorting to hacky solutions, you can't repair with either spoke type.
For this wheel rebuild, though, I'm using readily-available repair spokes.
Next, the rear wheel.
Unlike the WH-R9270/R8170,
the rear wheel isn't a 2:1 build.
So if you're buying a WH-RS710 as wheel-rebuild material and planning to use
a Revo disc hub, I'd recommend getting two front wheels,
or if you want to reuse the hubs front and rear, get both wheels.
The front wheel had nipples with grip areas completely stripped—
either some real hack put it together
or (because I wanted to know the specific gravity) it was tedious to carefully disassemble,
but the rear wasn't as bad.
Since I'd learned what I wanted to know, I just released the tension and cut the spokes.
↑WH-RS710 rear hub
↑Revo disc hub
With a steel freebody hub,
it was inevitable that it couldn't match an aluminum freebody hub.
Actual measured weight of the rear wheel rim.
It was hovering between 407g and 408g,
but since it's heavier than the front's 406g, I'm treating the rims as identical
(no front/rear design variations)
and swapping the front and rear rims during the rebuild.
Rebuilt.
Front wheel: Revo disc hub, 24H,
black semi CX Sprint 64-spoke reverse-Italian lacing with spoke leads.
Flip it over and...
The blue Shimano marking is at the phase across from the valve hole,
and if the Tni logo that you see through the valve hole from the hub shell
should be roughly aligned in a straight line between them,
the upper image shows they're clearly offset.
The hub shell phase visible from the valve hole
can't be adjusted infinitely, but I built it at the closest position.
The sticker, by contrast, should be placeable infinitely,
but it's clearly applied offset from the center between rim holes.
This is currently the front wheel, but as you can read back in the article,
the sticker was originally misplaced on the rear wheel.
As I mentioned earlier, I swapped the front and rear rims.
Rear wheel: Revo disc hub, 24H,
black semi Compe 46-spoke JIS lacing with spoke leads.
The hub shell logo and rim sticker phase
appear visually well-aligned, and
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This is work I did back on April 11th this year,
but I hadn't written it up as an article.
A customer brought me the front and rear wheels of a WH-RS710 C36 to work on.
I only took a photo of the front wheel,
but they're pre-built wheels assembled with bent-end spokes.
The front wheel was misaligned to about this degree.
Since I did the work in front of the customer,
I didn't necessarily need to keep a record,
but the wheel caught my interest so I took photos.
The model number contains "RS" (Road Series),
but it's officially classified as a 105-grade wheel,
and it appears on Shimano's official 105 page.
I don't know why they didn't call it WH-R7170.
There's a similar model number WH-RS700,
which is an aluminum-rim rim-brake wheel,
and the 700 series is the highest grade-outside-grade level.
From there, they made a WH-RS770 with the suffix changed to 70 to indicate disc brakes,
but that's a disc brake wheel with a carbon-laminate rim
equivalent to the previous R8000-series Ultegra.
When RS770 came out and then RS710 came later,
RS710 sounds like the lower-end model,
but the groupset generation is different by one level—they're separate beasts.
This is the WH-R9270 we rebuilt recently.
The "C36" marking is printed, and if you touch it with your finger
it has a slight thickness to it.
For Dura-Ace wheels, only the rim height marking gets this finish,
and for Ultegra wheels, the "ULTEGRA" marking also gets this same finish.
The "DURA-ACE" marking on Dura-Ace wheels
isn't quite embossed, but it clearly has substantial depth.
On the WH-RS710, meanwhile,
the cosmetics are simplistic like Mavic,
with just one elongated sticker running across the left and right of the rim
(plus a WARNING sticker on the left side).
It's almost like they're saying "go ahead and make it an unmarked rim,"
and in fact, the front and rear wheels in the opening photo
had their stickers already peeled off before the customer brought them to us.
So, the WH-RS710
comes in two rim heights: C32 and C46.
These are each 4mm lower than the Dura-Ace and Ultegra versions (C36 and C50),
and they use different rims.
In Shimano's past wheel lineups,
the WH-9100-C40 had a situation where
the WO (Clincher) rim version used the same rim as its predecessor WH-9000-C35,
so even though it said C40, it was only 35mm tall,
while the tubular version had rim changes but was still only 37mm tall—
the model name didn't necessarily reflect rim height.
So I checked this carefully just to be sure.
Since Dura-Ace has a tubular (TU) version,
and Ultegra and 105 wheels only come in tubeless (TL) versions,
those models conventionally have "-TL" at the end.
Looking at the claimed weight for the front wheel in the lower rim height model:
WH-R9270-C36-TL-F: 620g
WH-R8170-C36-TL-F: 657g
WH-RS710-C32-TL-F: 665g
That's interesting—maybe there's something here.
The R9270 and R8170 C36 tubeless rims are supposedly different according to Shimano,
but since they have the same weight and tension limit,
as far as I'm concerned about wheel components,
they're "the same thing" except for the rim marking.
The R9270's front hub shell has abnormally thin central sections,
so light for a cup-and-cone hub it's almost unbelievable,
and the R9270 spokes have lower specific gravity than CX-RAY,
so they make up 37g difference in the front wheel from non-rim parts.
But between R8170 and RS710, the front wheel's claimed weight
differs by just 8g.
If the RS710's 32mm tubeless rim turns out to be
lighter than the R9270/R8170's 36mm tubeless rim,
it might be the most excellent wheel material for rebuild purposes.
This has been bugging me for a while, so
Today, another wheel rebuild (and so on).
I sourced a WH-RS710.
Starting with the front wheel.
↑The cosmetic sticker on the rim
is just this one.
A seal on a baseball cap bill probably gets ten thousand times more care.
Tubeless tape is applied.
How unnecessary...
The spoke head stamp was the capital S marking
commonly seen on Shimano's budget models.
Actual measured weight of the front wheel.
The claimed 665g isn't some official propaganda, as it turns out—
excluding the tubeless valve and
tubeless-ready tape,
it was within acceptable range.
The usual: from next to the valve hole, just the final crossing pair on the left and right—4 spokes total—left with the nipples completely untightened.
For WH-RS710-C32-TL, the spare spoke 24-piece kit has the same part number for front and rear,
with 12 pieces at 281.5mm and 12 pieces at 283mm.
The shorter 281.5mm are for front-left and rear-right,
the longer 283mm are for front-right and rear-left.
From that state above, pushing the nipples out of the rim
to check the thread length in the hanging position...
↑Left side (rotor mounting side) 281.5mm
↑Right side 283mm
↑Left side 281.5mm
↑Right side 283mm
Long, but better than the WH-R9270 from the other day.
Actual measured weight of the rim.
Since the R8170-C36 rim was around 390g,
the RS710-C32 rim isn't superior to the higher-end model's rim by height/weight ratio.
Rather, it's a point in its favor that as a budget model it's not heavier than expected.
And if the rim difference is this small, the hub and spokes must be lighter than I imagined.
↑On the opposite side from the blue SHIMANO logo
is this marking.
The WH-RS710 front hub for bent-end spokes—
looks nearly identical to the
RS470, which is an RS400-grade disc hub.
But the RS470 doesn't come in 24H.
Both are classified as RS Series grade-outside-grades,
so they're marked "Shimano" rather than "105" or "Tiagra."
Oh, the hub axle material is different...
↑RS710 front hub
↑HB-RS470
The RS710 hub looks closer to the RS470 hub aesthetically,
but spec-wise it seems to be the color variant of the RS770 (front hub claimed weight 125g)
and a 24H hub that the RS770 doesn't have.
It was lighter than Tni's Revo disc hub
(the centerlock mounting cup cover is removed in the image above).
This hub's claimed weight is 132g, by the way.
↑281.5mm, 12 pieces
↑283mm, 12 pieces
Oddly, the shorter bundle was heavier.
Suspecting mix-up or contamination, I separated the spokes into 12-piece groups without thinking about it,
measuring each one with a spoke gauge, and they turned out to be clearly different lengths.
↑In both images, the right side shows the shorter spokes,
but the shorter ones had longer plain sections on the #14.
The spoke specific gravity for the 281.5mm is
63.2÷281.5÷12÷0.0257=0.727988...,
and for the 283mm is
62.7÷283÷12÷0.0257=0.718400..., so
approximately 72% seems about right.
This is nearly the same specific gravity as the R8170's straight spokes.
I can't say for sure if they're from the same manufacturer,
but excluding considerations about bent-end failure risk or rust-susceptibility,
you could think of them as the bent-end version of the R8170 spokes.
The drawback is they fall between CX-RAY and CX Sprint in specific gravity,
and without resorting to hacky solutions, you can't repair with either spoke type.
For this wheel rebuild, though, I'm using readily-available repair spokes.
Next, the rear wheel.
Unlike the WH-R9270/R8170,
the rear wheel isn't a 2:1 build.
So if you're buying a WH-RS710 as wheel-rebuild material and planning to use
a Revo disc hub, I'd recommend getting two front wheels,
or if you want to reuse the hubs front and rear, get both wheels.
The front wheel had nipples with grip areas completely stripped—
either some real hack put it together
or (because I wanted to know the specific gravity) it was tedious to carefully disassemble,
but the rear wasn't as bad.
Since I'd learned what I wanted to know, I just released the tension and cut the spokes.
↑WH-RS710 rear hub
↑Revo disc hub
With a steel freebody hub,
it was inevitable that it couldn't match an aluminum freebody hub.
Actual measured weight of the rear wheel rim.
It was hovering between 407g and 408g,
but since it's heavier than the front's 406g, I'm treating the rims as identical
(no front/rear design variations)
and swapping the front and rear rims during the rebuild.
Rebuilt.
Front wheel: Revo disc hub, 24H,
black semi CX Sprint 64-spoke reverse-Italian lacing with spoke leads.
Flip it over and...
The blue Shimano marking is at the phase across from the valve hole,
and if the Tni logo that you see through the valve hole from the hub shell
should be roughly aligned in a straight line between them,
the upper image shows they're clearly offset.
The hub shell phase visible from the valve hole
can't be adjusted infinitely, but I built it at the closest position.
The sticker, by contrast, should be placeable infinitely,
but it's clearly applied offset from the center between rim holes.
This is currently the front wheel, but as you can read back in the article,
the sticker was originally misplaced on the rear wheel.
As I mentioned earlier, I swapped the front and rear rims.
Rear wheel: Revo disc hub, 24H,
black semi Compe 46-spoke JIS lacing with spoke leads.
The hub shell logo and rim sticker phase
appear visually well-aligned, and
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