Another wheel day (and so on).
I took in a rear wheel with an XTR tubular rim from a customer.
Not a typo for "tubeless"
It's actually a tubular rim.
MTB tubular tires back in the 26-inch era
came from TUFO (a Czech tire maker).
Since no wheel manufacturers were making them,
wheels also came from TUFO.
The model is XC LP 26 (noted as XC-LP by Japanese distributors),
assembled with DT quick-release hubs,
and its successor came in 27.5-inch XC LP 27.5,
with some versions having DT hubs with quick-releases front and rear
while others had 100×15mm thru-axle specification on the front hub only—
so you can roughly date these by their specs.
Around that time, Shimano even tried making tubular MTB wheels,
so there was a period when people thought
this might become trendy.
TUFO doesn't seem to sell wheels anymore,
but they continue selling four models of tubular tires: XC2, XC4, XC5, and XC6.
XC2: 2.0-inch width in 26/27.5/29-inch diameters
XC4: 2.2-inch width in 26/29-inch diameters
XC5: 2.0-inch width in 27.5/29-inch diameters
XC6: 2.2-inch width in 27.5/29-inch diameters
The tread pattern varies by model,
but all have low knobs and are purely for XC racing.
It's admirable that they keep supplying the softer versions
against their de facto proprietary standard from the past.
Do Mavic's proprietary pedal cleats (Race SL, Race, Avenir)
and Exalith brake shoes, which are used by even more people,
have stable supply these days?
The rear wheel the customer brought in came with
a Challenge cyclocross tire,
and this wheel is used for cyclocross.
One characteristic of tubulars is that rim width barely affects tire width.
With modern wide rims, hooked rims with internal width of 21mm
for road use also exist,
and if you mount an IRC Sirac CX 32C from that range
and inflate to about 1.6 bar, it exceeds 33C,
which becomes a regulation violation in some race categories.
In other words, currently there's the strange situation where
cyclocross rims are narrower than road rims.
The hub has the model name WH-M980,
and the "LK" below it means November 2013.
The customer wants to rebuild this 135mm-width quick-release hub
as a front wheel with a 100×12mm thru-axle front hub.
Since the rim is an offset rim, its left-right orientation reverses.
The rim marking is under clear coat and can't be peeled off like a sticker.
If it were a sticker, someone unfamiliar might question
whether this is genuinely a Shimano OEM complete wheel.
The nipples are generic square-grip style
with a 4mm (3.95mm) opposing grip width,
but they have the distinctive gray anodized color
characteristic of Shimano component parts.
This rim can also be built with Campagnolo Bullet or Bora 4mm aluminum nipples,
but if they're reusable, I reuse them.
The hub is HB-RS770,
but I thought shooting the VD part rather than the HB-RS770 marking
would have higher value for the post.
I can't help myself, I'll stick it on again! (→here)
This area was particularly bad, with tubular tire base tape
remaining and stuck to the rim side.
The wheel can't be built without the hole in the rim's outer circumference,
so I drilled the hole.
The hole position is offset because it's an offset rim.
↑Dom
The threadlocker was incredibly strong,
and sand had packed into the gaps,
making the nipple feel extremely stiff to turn,
so I abandoned the idea of a careful disassembly
and instead loosened the tension on a fair number of spokes before cutting them to take it apart.
Even so, disassembly took more time than rebuilding,
and if I'd done it carefully, it would've taken
more than three times as long as the wheel building.
↑The rim-end cut of a spoke whose nipple
wasn't loosened at all
The spokes are round section,
but they had a flat-spot for the anti-rotation tool.
The Park Tool blue nipple wrench
can turn a 4mm grip width.
When assembled on the wheel, you can't angle it like this,
but this is the most efficient way to loosen this nipple.
↑Sand packed in the gaps
Though to be honest, quite a lot of it fell out
while loosening the nipples, so this is just what remained.
Built.
HB-RS770, 28H, black semi-CX sprint 64-reverse Italian lacing
with all nipples reused.
I'll do the spoke tying later.
Jumping back chronologically, here's the rim alone.
I drilled open the blocked outer rim hole
and scraped off the rim cement from the rim's outer edge
as it was getting in the way of straightening.
The reason the crab-eye didn't show up in the recent
Chinese carbon rim weight post is that
the value of an unknown rim's weight is weak as article material.
Since there are contaminants on the rim's outer circumference
that are practically impossible to completely remove,
while this becomes a reference record,
the question "So XTR carbon tubular rims weigh less than XX grams at least"
has stronger article value than
"Some unknown maker's tubeless rim was somehow light! The lighter one was 306g!"
So I won't tell you.
↑wow this guy has bad vibes
Thank you for waiting! Please view the image below!
Please note that it is in a state with several grams
of contaminants attached!
↑Stop it!
I took in a rear wheel with an XTR tubular rim from a customer.
Not a typo for "tubeless"
It's actually a tubular rim.
MTB tubular tires back in the 26-inch era
came from TUFO (a Czech tire maker).
Since no wheel manufacturers were making them,
wheels also came from TUFO.
The model is XC LP 26 (noted as XC-LP by Japanese distributors),
assembled with DT quick-release hubs,
and its successor came in 27.5-inch XC LP 27.5,
with some versions having DT hubs with quick-releases front and rear
while others had 100×15mm thru-axle specification on the front hub only—
so you can roughly date these by their specs.
Around that time, Shimano even tried making tubular MTB wheels,
so there was a period when people thought
this might become trendy.
TUFO doesn't seem to sell wheels anymore,
but they continue selling four models of tubular tires: XC2, XC4, XC5, and XC6.
XC2: 2.0-inch width in 26/27.5/29-inch diameters
XC4: 2.2-inch width in 26/29-inch diameters
XC5: 2.0-inch width in 27.5/29-inch diameters
XC6: 2.2-inch width in 27.5/29-inch diameters
The tread pattern varies by model,
but all have low knobs and are purely for XC racing.
It's admirable that they keep supplying the softer versions
against their de facto proprietary standard from the past.
and Exalith brake shoes, which are used by even more people,
have stable supply these days?
The rear wheel the customer brought in came with
a Challenge cyclocross tire,
and this wheel is used for cyclocross.
One characteristic of tubulars is that rim width barely affects tire width.
With modern wide rims, hooked rims with internal width of 21mm
for road use also exist,
and if you mount an IRC Sirac CX 32C from that range
and inflate to about 1.6 bar, it exceeds 33C,
which becomes a regulation violation in some race categories.
In other words, currently there's the strange situation where
cyclocross rims are narrower than road rims.
The hub has the model name WH-M980,
and the "LK" below it means November 2013.
The customer wants to rebuild this 135mm-width quick-release hub
as a front wheel with a 100×12mm thru-axle front hub.
Since the rim is an offset rim, its left-right orientation reverses.
The rim marking is under clear coat and can't be peeled off like a sticker.
If it were a sticker, someone unfamiliar might question
whether this is genuinely a Shimano OEM complete wheel.
The nipples are generic square-grip style
with a 4mm (3.95mm) opposing grip width,
but they have the distinctive gray anodized color
characteristic of Shimano component parts.
This rim can also be built with Campagnolo Bullet or Bora 4mm aluminum nipples,
but if they're reusable, I reuse them.
The hub is HB-RS770,
but I thought shooting the VD part rather than the HB-RS770 marking
would have higher value for the post.
I can't help myself, I'll stick it on again! (→here)
This area was particularly bad, with tubular tire base tape
remaining and stuck to the rim side.
The wheel can't be built without the hole in the rim's outer circumference,
so I drilled the hole.
The hole position is offset because it's an offset rim.
↑Dom
The threadlocker was incredibly strong,
and sand had packed into the gaps,
making the nipple feel extremely stiff to turn,
so I abandoned the idea of a careful disassembly
and instead loosened the tension on a fair number of spokes before cutting them to take it apart.
Even so, disassembly took more time than rebuilding,
and if I'd done it carefully, it would've taken
more than three times as long as the wheel building.
↑The rim-end cut of a spoke whose nipple
wasn't loosened at all
The spokes are round section,
but they had a flat-spot for the anti-rotation tool.
The Park Tool blue nipple wrench
can turn a 4mm grip width.
When assembled on the wheel, you can't angle it like this,
but this is the most efficient way to loosen this nipple.
↑Sand packed in the gaps
Though to be honest, quite a lot of it fell out
while loosening the nipples, so this is just what remained.
Built.
HB-RS770, 28H, black semi-CX sprint 64-reverse Italian lacing
with all nipples reused.
I'll do the spoke tying later.
Jumping back chronologically, here's the rim alone.
I drilled open the blocked outer rim hole
and scraped off the rim cement from the rim's outer edge
as it was getting in the way of straightening.
The reason the crab-eye didn't show up in the recent
Chinese carbon rim weight post is that
the value of an unknown rim's weight is weak as article material.
Since there are contaminants on the rim's outer circumference
that are practically impossible to completely remove,
while this becomes a reference record,
the question "So XTR carbon tubular rims weigh less than XX grams at least"
has stronger article value than
"Some unknown maker's tubeless rim was somehow light! The lighter one was 306g!"
So I won't tell you.
↑wow this guy has bad vibes
Thank you for waiting! Please view the image below!
Please note that it is in a state with several grams
of contaminants attached!
↑Stop it!