The drill is whining! And today, more wheel wh... (you know the rest).
A customer brought in a Spinergy Zerolight wheel's
rear wheel for service.
When not under tension, it's a wheel built with Zailon—a string-like fiber spoke—and
with X and AERO they're stretching it a bit to call it "Zero."
I had it in for inspection, but
it had already been fiddled with considerably,
and while it had significant radial runout,
it looks like the rim was actually bent.
Adjustment couldn't fix it.
The areas that need tightening were already cranked to the max,
and the areas that need loosening were already virtually tension-free,
with no more room to go either direction.
When I asked the customer,
they said they couldn't source a replacement rim, so
we decided to rebuild it using the Zerolight with a different rim.
The inner-diameter hole is 6mm, and
there's more rim hole excess on the side opposite to the spoke's extension direction.
Due to the left-right runout from the OCO (offset) between the freewheel and non-freewheel sides
and the front-back runout from the tangent lacing,
there are four different types of rim hole excess patterns.
↑This is partly because someone was trying to correct
a bent rim somehow,
but the aluminum portion of the spoke projects different amounts depending on phase.
Not to this extreme, but Zerolight wheels
have large individual variations in this area.
There's significant variability in the length of the Zailon portion of the spokes,
and the spoke length itself is fairly rough to begin with.
I loosened the internal nipples completely and removed the spokes from the rim,
then reinstalled them by hand.
Like the HUNT carbon spokes from before,
the metal grip portion on the spoke
is an anti-rotation stop that prevents twist generated by turning the internal nipple
from being transmitted to the spoke—you shouldn't turn it just because it looks like a nipple.
This spoke has a long threaded section,
so it's very redundant and works with a wide range of rim heights.
So even if the new rim's height differs somewhat from the original,
you can reuse the hub and spokes.
↑This wheel is a 2-cross pattern, but
looking at the contact point of the second crossing (final crossing) of the spokes
when they hang loose after coming out of the rim,
you can see flattening marks from the compression.
The first crossing too, close to the hub flange,
doesn't have a round cross-section where it's woven.
From this, I decided to replace the rim not by completely disassembling and rebuilding,
but by doing a "move" that preserves the spoke pattern (the woven crossings)
while shifting the rim over.
↑The spoke end face visible from the nipple end face differs depending on the rim hole,
which as mentioned before
is also because someone attempted spoke tension adjustment
on that bent rim.
Aside from that, when I released tension on about one-third of the wheel's spokes,
maybe because they're fiber spokes, the contact pressure
between the remaining nipples and rim became extremely loose,
and with spoke-side restraint being just finger-pinched rather than tool-held,
a light turn of the outer diameter let it come apart easily.
Rim moving in progress...
All assembled.
The rim is a Tni AL22W.
I didn't remove the stickers because
it looks more interesting that way.
I'll leave it up to the customer, but it'll probably be removed.
The original wheel had large left-right differences in tension
or deformation amount, so
I used an offset rim.
By the way, since I was able to measure first-spoke tension with a tension meter,
I built it based on the maximum value within the variation
of the 12 freewheel-side spokes on the original wheel.
The outer diameter needs clearance for tools, so
I drilled 10mm holes like the original rim.
Also, the relationship between the nipple end face and spoke end face
is roughly aligned now.
The original rim's inner-diameter holes were 6mm, but
the lack of hole runout was a source of uneven gaps between rim and spokes, so
I enlarged the AL22W rim's existing hole runout to align as much as possible
with the spoke's directionality.
The silver color around the hole in the image above
is burr from drilling from the outside.
I clean that up nicely afterward, just to be sure.
Since I didn't want to drill a large hole on the inner diameter,
I made 5.5mm holes with directionality in mind.
Compared to the original wheel, this is much better.
A customer brought in a Spinergy Zerolight wheel's
rear wheel for service.
When not under tension, it's a wheel built with Zailon—a string-like fiber spoke—and
with X and AERO they're stretching it a bit to call it "Zero."
I had it in for inspection, but
it had already been fiddled with considerably,
and while it had significant radial runout,
it looks like the rim was actually bent.
Adjustment couldn't fix it.
The areas that need tightening were already cranked to the max,
and the areas that need loosening were already virtually tension-free,
with no more room to go either direction.
When I asked the customer,
they said they couldn't source a replacement rim, so
we decided to rebuild it using the Zerolight with a different rim.
The inner-diameter hole is 6mm, and
there's more rim hole excess on the side opposite to the spoke's extension direction.
Due to the left-right runout from the OCO (offset) between the freewheel and non-freewheel sides
and the front-back runout from the tangent lacing,
there are four different types of rim hole excess patterns.
↑This is partly because someone was trying to correct
a bent rim somehow,
but the aluminum portion of the spoke projects different amounts depending on phase.
Not to this extreme, but Zerolight wheels
have large individual variations in this area.
There's significant variability in the length of the Zailon portion of the spokes,
and the spoke length itself is fairly rough to begin with.
I loosened the internal nipples completely and removed the spokes from the rim,
then reinstalled them by hand.
Like the HUNT carbon spokes from before,
the metal grip portion on the spoke
is an anti-rotation stop that prevents twist generated by turning the internal nipple
from being transmitted to the spoke—you shouldn't turn it just because it looks like a nipple.
This spoke has a long threaded section,
so it's very redundant and works with a wide range of rim heights.
So even if the new rim's height differs somewhat from the original,
you can reuse the hub and spokes.
↑This wheel is a 2-cross pattern, but
looking at the contact point of the second crossing (final crossing) of the spokes
when they hang loose after coming out of the rim,
you can see flattening marks from the compression.
The first crossing too, close to the hub flange,
doesn't have a round cross-section where it's woven.
From this, I decided to replace the rim not by completely disassembling and rebuilding,
but by doing a "move" that preserves the spoke pattern (the woven crossings)
while shifting the rim over.
↑The spoke end face visible from the nipple end face differs depending on the rim hole,
which as mentioned before
is also because someone attempted spoke tension adjustment
on that bent rim.
Aside from that, when I released tension on about one-third of the wheel's spokes,
maybe because they're fiber spokes, the contact pressure
between the remaining nipples and rim became extremely loose,
and with spoke-side restraint being just finger-pinched rather than tool-held,
a light turn of the outer diameter let it come apart easily.
Rim moving in progress...
All assembled.
The rim is a Tni AL22W.
I didn't remove the stickers because
it looks more interesting that way.
I'll leave it up to the customer, but it'll probably be removed.
The original wheel had large left-right differences in tension
or deformation amount, so
I used an offset rim.
By the way, since I was able to measure first-spoke tension with a tension meter,
I built it based on the maximum value within the variation
of the 12 freewheel-side spokes on the original wheel.
The outer diameter needs clearance for tools, so
I drilled 10mm holes like the original rim.
Also, the relationship between the nipple end face and spoke end face
is roughly aligned now.
The original rim's inner-diameter holes were 6mm, but
the lack of hole runout was a source of uneven gaps between rim and spokes, so
I enlarged the AL22W rim's existing hole runout to align as much as possible
with the spoke's directionality.
The silver color around the hole in the image above
is burr from drilling from the outside.
I clean that up nicely afterward, just to be sure.
Since I didn't want to drill a large hole on the inner diameter,
I made 5.5mm holes with directionality in mind.
Compared to the original wheel, this is much better.