Wheels again today (and so on).
A customer dropped off a Mavic Ellipse front wheel with me.
It's a classic training wheel for track cycling.
Other manufacturers don't really make complete wheelsets for this purpose.
Campagnolo has a Pista aluminum rim wheel,
but that only came in tubular rim configuration,
so depending on the tire, it could also be used in races.
The Ellipse comes in clincher (WO) rim only.
The hub axle uses a quick-release skewer, but
in recent competition track bikes, front forks with
through-axle specifications have become standard,
so quick-release front wheels can't be used.
On a separate note, I once heard a story about someone
taking a Rovel CLX50 with the disc rotor removed
and using it as a front wheel on a track bike at a velodrome,
and apparently the wheel didn't roll well at all—it was hilarious.
It's already pretty weird to have a disc brake on the front wheel for no reason,
but since it only turns left, they suggested swapping the left and right sides
and experimenting with the differences when cornering hard
on the high-spoke-count side versus the low-spoke-count side.
That actually sounds interesting.
Anyway, the customer wanted this front wheel rebuilt
using a through-axle front hub from Araya.
Or rather, I get the feeling this might be more like
a personal project by Tetsuume-san, similar to the disc wheel
(←that's a disc wheel, not a disc brake wheel, mind you).
The Ellipse is built with aero spokes that have a fairly high aspect ratio.
The Araya hub has flange holes with slits (hard to see in the photo above),
so it can accommodate flat spokes 2.3mm wide or wider.
Ideally the customer wanted me to use spokes like that,
but when it comes to genuinely reliable spokes that wide
that I can definitely source right now, silver spokes were the only option,
so I asked whether they'd rather prioritize "flat spokes" or "black spokes."
They chose black spokes, so I decided to build it with black CX Sprint spokes
tensioned to the maximum.
Jumping ahead in the timeline—20 spokes from the disassembled Ellipse.
Both the head area and the threaded section were 14-gauge based.
Some of the older Cosmic Carbon spokes had 13-gauge round sections on both ends,
and the current disc brake hub Cosmic has spokes that are
13-gauge for just a bit from the head, then 14-gauge based after that.
Since those have the spoke-head seating area machined for 13-gauge,
if a spoke breaks, you can't even do a temporary repair with
14-gauge spokes of similar specific weight as a stopgap measure
until the original spokes arrive.
And yet Japanese wholesalers often don't stock them,
so they may not be in stock for months (we don't carry them at my shop,
so I don't know the details and don't really care anyway).
The weight came to 136.4g on a scale with 0.1g graduation.
The length was 279mm, so the spoke specific weight is
136.4 ÷ 20 ÷ 279 ÷ 0.0257 = 0.9511456... or about 95%.
CX Sprint has a specific weight of 78%, so
if the spoke tension is the same,
the off-the-shelf Ellipse would be a stiffer wheel.
That said, if tensioning CX Sprint to the max achieves
"a state where the wheel barely deforms from rider input,"
you probably won't notice the difference in practice.
Oh, this time I'm not chanting the usual entrance music,
so the heinous crustacean doesn't make an appearance.
It's built.
I measured the right-side dimension with a center gauge,
and when I check the left side...
...there's a gap like this.
But the wheel center is still true.
I noticed something odd when I touched the rim,
On the right side of the rim (when the hub's bearing adjustment mechanism is on the left),
there's almost no step between the rim's sidewall and the brake zone,
but on the left side there's a step comparable to
a Campagnolo rim brake wheel.
Not all Ellipse wheels I know of have this.
Mavic's aluminum rims and aluminum rim wheels—like the
aluminum-spoke Ksyrium and R-SYS models, plus the traditional narrow-rim Open Pro that's a long seller—
are made in France except for most others, which are mostly
Chinese-made rims assembled in Romania.
This Ellipse's rim manufacturing country is unclear,
but it was assembled in Romania.
To describe it dramatically, it's like this.
When I measured precisely with calipers, the hole on the inner circumference of the rim
wasn't centered on the rim's outer width—it was positioned
at the peak of the rim's profile.
The difference in bead hook thickness wasn't as glaring as
in this case (→here),
so I went ahead with building the wheel.
Araya through-axle hub, 20H, black CX Sprint,
counter-radial lacing with black brass nipples.
The marking on the hub shell—
—appears three times, each separated by 120°.
If the hub hole count were a multiple of 3 in a practical range—
18H, 24H, 36H, or even 12H—
the phase relationship between the flange holes and the hub marking would remain unchanged,
but with 20H it shifts slightly, so
I oriented it so that when you peek through the valve hole, you can just see the hub marking at the most suitable of the three phases.
A customer dropped off a Mavic Ellipse front wheel with me.
It's a classic training wheel for track cycling.
Other manufacturers don't really make complete wheelsets for this purpose.
Campagnolo has a Pista aluminum rim wheel,
but that only came in tubular rim configuration,
so depending on the tire, it could also be used in races.
The Ellipse comes in clincher (WO) rim only.
The hub axle uses a quick-release skewer, but
in recent competition track bikes, front forks with
through-axle specifications have become standard,
so quick-release front wheels can't be used.
On a separate note, I once heard a story about someone
taking a Rovel CLX50 with the disc rotor removed
and using it as a front wheel on a track bike at a velodrome,
and apparently the wheel didn't roll well at all—it was hilarious.
It's already pretty weird to have a disc brake on the front wheel for no reason,
but since it only turns left, they suggested swapping the left and right sides
and experimenting with the differences when cornering hard
on the high-spoke-count side versus the low-spoke-count side.
That actually sounds interesting.
Anyway, the customer wanted this front wheel rebuilt
using a through-axle front hub from Araya.
Or rather, I get the feeling this might be more like
a personal project by Tetsuume-san, similar to the disc wheel
(←that's a disc wheel, not a disc brake wheel, mind you).
The Ellipse is built with aero spokes that have a fairly high aspect ratio.
The Araya hub has flange holes with slits (hard to see in the photo above),
so it can accommodate flat spokes 2.3mm wide or wider.
Ideally the customer wanted me to use spokes like that,
but when it comes to genuinely reliable spokes that wide
that I can definitely source right now, silver spokes were the only option,
so I asked whether they'd rather prioritize "flat spokes" or "black spokes."
They chose black spokes, so I decided to build it with black CX Sprint spokes
tensioned to the maximum.
Jumping ahead in the timeline—20 spokes from the disassembled Ellipse.
Both the head area and the threaded section were 14-gauge based.
Some of the older Cosmic Carbon spokes had 13-gauge round sections on both ends,
and the current disc brake hub Cosmic has spokes that are
13-gauge for just a bit from the head, then 14-gauge based after that.
Since those have the spoke-head seating area machined for 13-gauge,
if a spoke breaks, you can't even do a temporary repair with
14-gauge spokes of similar specific weight as a stopgap measure
until the original spokes arrive.
And yet Japanese wholesalers often don't stock them,
so they may not be in stock for months (we don't carry them at my shop,
so I don't know the details and don't really care anyway).
The weight came to 136.4g on a scale with 0.1g graduation.
The length was 279mm, so the spoke specific weight is
136.4 ÷ 20 ÷ 279 ÷ 0.0257 = 0.9511456... or about 95%.
CX Sprint has a specific weight of 78%, so
if the spoke tension is the same,
the off-the-shelf Ellipse would be a stiffer wheel.
That said, if tensioning CX Sprint to the max achieves
"a state where the wheel barely deforms from rider input,"
you probably won't notice the difference in practice.
Oh, this time I'm not chanting the usual entrance music,
so the heinous crustacean doesn't make an appearance.
It's built.
I measured the right-side dimension with a center gauge,
and when I check the left side...
...there's a gap like this.
But the wheel center is still true.
I noticed something odd when I touched the rim,
On the right side of the rim (when the hub's bearing adjustment mechanism is on the left),
there's almost no step between the rim's sidewall and the brake zone,
but on the left side there's a step comparable to
a Campagnolo rim brake wheel.
Not all Ellipse wheels I know of have this.
Mavic's aluminum rims and aluminum rim wheels—like the
aluminum-spoke Ksyrium and R-SYS models, plus the traditional narrow-rim Open Pro that's a long seller—
are made in France except for most others, which are mostly
Chinese-made rims assembled in Romania.
This Ellipse's rim manufacturing country is unclear,
but it was assembled in Romania.
To describe it dramatically, it's like this.
When I measured precisely with calipers, the hole on the inner circumference of the rim
wasn't centered on the rim's outer width—it was positioned
at the peak of the rim's profile.
The difference in bead hook thickness wasn't as glaring as
in this case (→here),
so I went ahead with building the wheel.
Araya through-axle hub, 20H, black CX Sprint,
counter-radial lacing with black brass nipples.
The marking on the hub shell—
—appears three times, each separated by 120°.
If the hub hole count were a multiple of 3 in a practical range—
18H, 24H, 36H, or even 12H—
the phase relationship between the flange holes and the hub marking would remain unchanged,
but with 20H it shifts slightly, so
I oriented it so that when you peek through the valve hole, you can just see the hub marking at the most suitable of the three phases.