Another day, another wheel (and so on).
Continuing from yesterday.
I rebuilt the rear wheel on the Alpinist CLX.
When I held the wheel in my hand and shook it, I could hear a sound like a small pebble or other hard object inside the rim.
When I took it out, sure enough, it was a sharp bit of the can-opener-like flap that had been cut from the rim tape at the valve hole—it had broken off and fallen inside the rim.
At the valve hole section, the rim tape is double-layered, so there are two of them.
This is yesterday's front wheel, and I'm reusing the rim tape that I peeled off as carefully as possible.
Since the rim doesn't have a pronounced hump, the rim tape doesn't retain any front-to-back directional creases and peels off relatively cleanly.
However, even when I reapply it with as much tension as possible, the two valve hole sections at the top end up slipping out of alignment.
I enlarged the upper valve hole in the rim tape using the heat from a soldering iron.
This Alpinist is the older CLX model and doesn't support tubeless, so I don't need to achieve perfectly airtight sealing when reusing the tape.
Both front and rear wheels centered perfectly at a provisional level, and the rear wheel had no lateral runout, but for some reason it had noticeable radial runout.
The image above shows the phase where the rim deflects most toward the outer edge—at any other point, the rim doesn't even touch the gauge on my truing stand.
But that doesn't mean it's evenly true everywhere else; there are also several phases where the rim has inward deflection.
There's no evidence of rim tape removal work before this job, and no evidence of turning the nipples on the inner side (though it's possible to do this without leaving traces if you're skillful enough).
So I suspect the radial runout was there from the start.
↑This is a spoke on the freewheel side that I'm reusing, and although there's a thin pink-colored threadlocker applied to it (possibly transferred from what was pre-filled in the new nipples), once I release some spoke tension the nipple spins easily by hand, so it's hardly doing its job.
So when I rebuild, I'll apply threadlocker to the threads on this spoke side too.
↑This is the wear mark at the final crossing.
Built.
Before
After
I've switched the few spokes on one side from Aero Lite to CX Sprint.
Beyond that, I'm doing all sorts of things like cleaning the parts and bringing everything to a level of precision and stiffness beyond the original state, since I've done a complete teardown.
The fact that I did a complete teardown means I had the chance to weigh the rim—and this time it was a valuable opportunity to compare with the Alpinist CL from the other day.
Between the Alpinist CL and CLX, the rear wheel differs in hole drilling pattern, and the front wheel differs in both hole drilling pattern and spoke count.
As I've written many times before, I'd rather do a normal even-sided lacing pattern than attempt a 2:1 lacing like an XI lacing, and it's on that basis that I argue the CL has better logic in its stock configuration than the CLX.
But to say outright that "the CL has superior performance," I need grounds that the CLX and CL, despite their different hole drilling patterns and spoke counts, use rims of the same weight.
Compare Shimano's Dura-Ace/Ultegra C36TL rims to the C32TL rims from 105 with lower rim height—if the C32TL were the same height-to-weight ratio and lighter, then 105 would be superior as a source of rebuild materials.
But in reality, the C32TL rims were actually slightly heavier, so Shimano was doing fine-tuned, careful downtuning to avoid damaging the reputation of the higher-grade equipment.
So what's the situation with the CLX and CL?
Well, there's no way I'm telling you that.
↑Wow, that's harsh.
Sorry for the wait! Please take a look at this image!
I've shot all the following images to include the "alpinist" text, but I think it's basically invisible!
This is the CL's rear rim!
This is the CL's front rim!
This is the CLX's front rim!
This is the CLX's rear rim!
↑Stop iiiiit!
Continuing from yesterday.
I rebuilt the rear wheel on the Alpinist CLX.
When I held the wheel in my hand and shook it, I could hear a sound like a small pebble or other hard object inside the rim.
When I took it out, sure enough, it was a sharp bit of the can-opener-like flap that had been cut from the rim tape at the valve hole—it had broken off and fallen inside the rim.
At the valve hole section, the rim tape is double-layered, so there are two of them.
This is yesterday's front wheel, and I'm reusing the rim tape that I peeled off as carefully as possible.
Since the rim doesn't have a pronounced hump, the rim tape doesn't retain any front-to-back directional creases and peels off relatively cleanly.
However, even when I reapply it with as much tension as possible, the two valve hole sections at the top end up slipping out of alignment.
I enlarged the upper valve hole in the rim tape using the heat from a soldering iron.
This Alpinist is the older CLX model and doesn't support tubeless, so I don't need to achieve perfectly airtight sealing when reusing the tape.
Both front and rear wheels centered perfectly at a provisional level, and the rear wheel had no lateral runout, but for some reason it had noticeable radial runout.
The image above shows the phase where the rim deflects most toward the outer edge—at any other point, the rim doesn't even touch the gauge on my truing stand.
But that doesn't mean it's evenly true everywhere else; there are also several phases where the rim has inward deflection.
There's no evidence of rim tape removal work before this job, and no evidence of turning the nipples on the inner side (though it's possible to do this without leaving traces if you're skillful enough).
So I suspect the radial runout was there from the start.
↑This is a spoke on the freewheel side that I'm reusing, and although there's a thin pink-colored threadlocker applied to it (possibly transferred from what was pre-filled in the new nipples), once I release some spoke tension the nipple spins easily by hand, so it's hardly doing its job.
So when I rebuild, I'll apply threadlocker to the threads on this spoke side too.
↑This is the wear mark at the final crossing.
Built.
Before
After
I've switched the few spokes on one side from Aero Lite to CX Sprint.
Beyond that, I'm doing all sorts of things like cleaning the parts and bringing everything to a level of precision and stiffness beyond the original state, since I've done a complete teardown.
The fact that I did a complete teardown means I had the chance to weigh the rim—and this time it was a valuable opportunity to compare with the Alpinist CL from the other day.
Between the Alpinist CL and CLX, the rear wheel differs in hole drilling pattern, and the front wheel differs in both hole drilling pattern and spoke count.
As I've written many times before, I'd rather do a normal even-sided lacing pattern than attempt a 2:1 lacing like an XI lacing, and it's on that basis that I argue the CL has better logic in its stock configuration than the CLX.
But to say outright that "the CL has superior performance," I need grounds that the CLX and CL, despite their different hole drilling patterns and spoke counts, use rims of the same weight.
Compare Shimano's Dura-Ace/Ultegra C36TL rims to the C32TL rims from 105 with lower rim height—if the C32TL were the same height-to-weight ratio and lighter, then 105 would be superior as a source of rebuild materials.
But in reality, the C32TL rims were actually slightly heavier, so Shimano was doing fine-tuned, careful downtuning to avoid damaging the reputation of the higher-grade equipment.
So what's the situation with the CLX and CL?
Well, there's no way I'm telling you that.
↑Wow, that's harsh.
Sorry for the wait! Please take a look at this image!
I've shot all the following images to include the "alpinist" text, but I think it's basically invisible!
This is the CL's rear rim!
This is the CL's front rim!
This is the CLX's front rim!
This is the CLX's rear rim!
↑Stop iiiiit!