Another wheel day (and so on).
I received a front wheel from a ZIPP 353NSW from a customer.
It's a Cognition front hub 24H all-black CX-RAY with 4-cross lacing.
Like the rear wheel, I'll be rebuilding this with a Chris King hub too.
As-built wheel center check, and...
the centering was good enough that it would pass inspection for other manufacturers besides ZIPP.
Since the centering is just about as good as the rear wheel, it appears that the rear wheel's off-center wasn't part of the manufacturer's philosophy.
Before that even, the direction of the offset was opposite to what you'd expect if it were deliberately offset for a tubeless tire.
The vertical runout in the as-built state was pretty bad too.
The image above shows the one spot around the entire circumference where the rim contacts the gauge on the truing stand, but...
at other positions there's this much gap or more between the gauge and rim.
It's hard to see, but this is quite significant vertical runout.
However, unless you subject it to very special conditions like running it on a 3-roller trainer with tire pressure around 9-10 bar, the tire deformation at the contact patch is larger than the runout, so you won't feel the vertical runout while riding.
Besides, the rim's maximum pressure rating is only 5 bar anyway.
With ZIPP's rim design, once spoke tension reaches a certain level, the phase directly under the spoke holes bends inward, and the rest phase below becomes relatively prominent on the outer edge.
In the diagram above, the red dashed line represents equal distance from the hub center (a true circle line).
This is unrelated to the sawtooth profile on the inner circumference. It's the same principle as with Shimano's C24 16H front wheel, where the number of spokes is small relative to how easily the rim deforms under spoke tension, resulting in high tension per spoke and causing the rim to alternately runout at the phases under the spoke holes and rest positions.
So if this rim were just a few tens of grams heavier, I suspect this phenomenon wouldn't occur.
Truing the vertical runout on this rim means aligning 24 positions each at the vertical position below the rest phase (the tip of the blue triangle in the diagram above) and the vertical position below the spoke holes (the tip of the green triangle).
When you spin the wheel with the rest phase just barely touching the gauge, it makes a regular clicking sound: click-click-click-click...
After truing both vertical and lateral runout...
it's built.
R45D hub, 24H, all-black CX-RAY with 6-cross reverse Italian lacing and turquoise nipples.
For reasons I have, I deliberately didn't go with semi-CX sprint.
I'll do the spoke wrapping later.
With both wheels this time, when the valve hole is at the top and viewed from the right side, both the front and rear wheels have the upper half of the ZIPP logo drawn in the 9 to 12 o'clock phase, and...
the lower half of the ZIPP logo in the 3 to 6 o'clock phase—that's the cosmetic design.
If you flip the wheel left and right while keeping the valve at the top (12 o'clock)...
there's an orange user registration sticker on the opposite phase of the valve, and the upper half of ZIPP is in the 6 to 9 o'clock phase, with the lower half in the 12 to 3 o'clock phase.
This logo positioning usually matches the catalog description and mostly works out this way in practice, but occasionally you see one built with complete disregard for it.
I've even rebuilt a wheel just to correct the logo position (→here).
ZIPP's sawtooth rim changes shape when flipped left and right, so if there were a rim where the logo was wrong but the orientation matched (↑which probably doesn't exist), you'd have to rebuild it as-is with the incorrect logo.
I'm fairly confident that a rim with the rim itself having left/right attributes wouldn't exist with the logo relationship reversed.
For rims with sawtooth profiles like this one, or...
↑this is a separate case—a 303 Firecrest rim brake front wheel—
right side
left side
with a brake zone like this—when the rim clearly has left/right attributes, the builder pays attention. But with normal disc brake rims where the inner circumference profile is also circular, there's a possibility it gets assembled carelessly.
This NSW 353 rim had a large amount of vertical distortion due to spoke tension relative to its rim height, but rims like that are generally light.
When you hold the rim by itself, there's an almost surprising lightness that creates a sense of discord with the visual information (the apparent rim height).
Back when ZIPP was selling rims individually, there was a period when the numbers in the rim model name expressed the weight (QUICK-V 250, MID-V 280 (later 285), DDEP-V 360, etc.). I was surprised that this NSW 353, while having a model name number unrelated to weight, ended up with numbers that roughly matched the rim weight anyway.
Hookless rims appear to have an advantage in weight, but even accounting for that, it's definitely a rim that excels in height/weight ratio.
What? You want me to tell you the specific weight?
Opportunities to disassemble current ZIPP wheels are extremely rare, so there's no way I'm giving away such valuable information for free.
↑ugh, what a bad attitude
We kept you waiting! Please take a look at these images!
Rear rim!
Front rim!
↑Stop it already!
I received a front wheel from a ZIPP 353NSW from a customer.
It's a Cognition front hub 24H all-black CX-RAY with 4-cross lacing.
Like the rear wheel, I'll be rebuilding this with a Chris King hub too.
As-built wheel center check, and...
the centering was good enough that it would pass inspection for other manufacturers besides ZIPP.
Since the centering is just about as good as the rear wheel, it appears that the rear wheel's off-center wasn't part of the manufacturer's philosophy.
Before that even, the direction of the offset was opposite to what you'd expect if it were deliberately offset for a tubeless tire.
The vertical runout in the as-built state was pretty bad too.
The image above shows the one spot around the entire circumference where the rim contacts the gauge on the truing stand, but...
at other positions there's this much gap or more between the gauge and rim.
It's hard to see, but this is quite significant vertical runout.
However, unless you subject it to very special conditions like running it on a 3-roller trainer with tire pressure around 9-10 bar, the tire deformation at the contact patch is larger than the runout, so you won't feel the vertical runout while riding.
Besides, the rim's maximum pressure rating is only 5 bar anyway.
With ZIPP's rim design, once spoke tension reaches a certain level, the phase directly under the spoke holes bends inward, and the rest phase below becomes relatively prominent on the outer edge.
In the diagram above, the red dashed line represents equal distance from the hub center (a true circle line).
This is unrelated to the sawtooth profile on the inner circumference. It's the same principle as with Shimano's C24 16H front wheel, where the number of spokes is small relative to how easily the rim deforms under spoke tension, resulting in high tension per spoke and causing the rim to alternately runout at the phases under the spoke holes and rest positions.
So if this rim were just a few tens of grams heavier, I suspect this phenomenon wouldn't occur.
Truing the vertical runout on this rim means aligning 24 positions each at the vertical position below the rest phase (the tip of the blue triangle in the diagram above) and the vertical position below the spoke holes (the tip of the green triangle).
When you spin the wheel with the rest phase just barely touching the gauge, it makes a regular clicking sound: click-click-click-click...
After truing both vertical and lateral runout...
it's built.
R45D hub, 24H, all-black CX-RAY with 6-cross reverse Italian lacing and turquoise nipples.
For reasons I have, I deliberately didn't go with semi-CX sprint.
I'll do the spoke wrapping later.
With both wheels this time, when the valve hole is at the top and viewed from the right side, both the front and rear wheels have the upper half of the ZIPP logo drawn in the 9 to 12 o'clock phase, and...
the lower half of the ZIPP logo in the 3 to 6 o'clock phase—that's the cosmetic design.
If you flip the wheel left and right while keeping the valve at the top (12 o'clock)...
there's an orange user registration sticker on the opposite phase of the valve, and the upper half of ZIPP is in the 6 to 9 o'clock phase, with the lower half in the 12 to 3 o'clock phase.
This logo positioning usually matches the catalog description and mostly works out this way in practice, but occasionally you see one built with complete disregard for it.
I've even rebuilt a wheel just to correct the logo position (→here).
ZIPP's sawtooth rim changes shape when flipped left and right, so if there were a rim where the logo was wrong but the orientation matched (↑which probably doesn't exist), you'd have to rebuild it as-is with the incorrect logo.
I'm fairly confident that a rim with the rim itself having left/right attributes wouldn't exist with the logo relationship reversed.
For rims with sawtooth profiles like this one, or...
↑this is a separate case—a 303 Firecrest rim brake front wheel—
right side
left side
with a brake zone like this—when the rim clearly has left/right attributes, the builder pays attention. But with normal disc brake rims where the inner circumference profile is also circular, there's a possibility it gets assembled carelessly.
This NSW 353 rim had a large amount of vertical distortion due to spoke tension relative to its rim height, but rims like that are generally light.
When you hold the rim by itself, there's an almost surprising lightness that creates a sense of discord with the visual information (the apparent rim height).
Back when ZIPP was selling rims individually, there was a period when the numbers in the rim model name expressed the weight (QUICK-V 250, MID-V 280 (later 285), DDEP-V 360, etc.). I was surprised that this NSW 353, while having a model name number unrelated to weight, ended up with numbers that roughly matched the rim weight anyway.
Hookless rims appear to have an advantage in weight, but even accounting for that, it's definitely a rim that excels in height/weight ratio.
What? You want me to tell you the specific weight?
Opportunities to disassemble current ZIPP wheels are extremely rare, so there's no way I'm giving away such valuable information for free.
↑ugh, what a bad attitude
We kept you waiting! Please take a look at these images!
Rear rim!
Front rim!
↑Stop it already!