A customer dropped off the front and rear wheels of a fixed-gear bike built with Araya 16B Gold rims.
They wanted both wheels' tubular tires replaced with rim cement,
but since the customer is capable of mounting tubular tires with rim cement themselves,
the fact that they're asking our shop to handle it
suggests they're sensing some pitfall lurking in this particular job
beyond just a straightforward tire swap.
I can sense it too, for what it's worth.
Dura-Ace small-flange hub, 36H,
laced Italian-style with 8-crossing.
This isn't a request from a track cyclist,
but I initially thought only JIS lacing would work for track racing—
turns out as long as everything is NJS-certified and it's 8-crossing lacing,
it passes inspection.
I've actually seen Italian-laced track wheels that have passed inspection,
complete with the track-specific valve stems already mounted.
In the image above, when the Dura-Ace text on the hub shell
is oriented the same way,
the left-right properties of the Italian lacing also line up.
So with the wheels positioned that way,
when viewed from the right side
the rear wheel's label was facing backward—but
never mind that.
The tires are a Vittoria Rally with red sidewall and
a Lion tire GT30, but
both wheels had their tread patterns mounted in reverse orientation.
Though there's a reason for that—
Both tires have single-sided labels, and if you follow the convention that
"when single-sided, the label goes on the right,"
you'd end up with the tires mounted backward.
The tires themselves don't have any reverse-mounting specification printed on them.
TUFO has tires like this too, but
I prioritize tread pattern over label placement.
The MOST tubular tire lever is easy to use!(not sponsored)
The rear wheel especially was stuck on there really hard,
and I had to struggle to get the lever inserted at first.
The rim cement was on the slow-drying side.
As I've mentioned before, Panaracer rim cement comes labeled
"fast-drying" on the can or tube, but
from a historical perspective of rim cements,
that's actually ultra-fast drying.
(Ideally worth avoiding though)
You can ride in a few hours, and
after a day you're definitely good to go.
True slow-drying rim cement
needs about a week to set.
You might think, "Why not just use fast-drying cement for everything?"
but slow-drying cement has the advantage that between tire and rim
it doesn't fully harden into a brittle state—
instead, the cement stays nicely tacky for longer,
so even if you really torque the wheel,
the tire won't pop off the rim.
That's the theory anyway, but
since rim cement itself has been improving for a long time,
fast-drying cement doesn't lose its grip strength
so quickly that you need to remount the tire
within the lifespan of normal use.
Even with a cyclocross tire that luckily didn't flat
and sat unused all offseason,
two years (two seasons) is no problem.
Sure, if you've got a tire on there for three, five years straight,
you should probably remount it.
When fast-drying cement fully cures,
it hardens into a brittle powder that flakes off
and the tire comes off the rim easily—
(even in this near-final state, I've never heard of a tire coming off on a road bike),
but when slow-drying cement fully cures,
it forms a pretty strong bond, making
the tire tough to peel off, and
the tubular tire's base tape often stays stuck to the rim.
The customer wasn't consciously
choosing slow-drying rim cement—
they used a large economy can of
the generic stuff sitting in the corner of the workshop to mount the tire.
Some of those are labeled "fast-drying," but
if you compare it to Panaracer fast-drying,
it's definitely on the slow-drying side.
This wheel had rim cement smeared on the hub shell and rim sides too,
but that kind of mistake is less likely to happen
with the small brush-cap cans or tube-style
toothpaste-like rim cement containers.
↑When the valve hole was at the top,
cement probably dripped down toward the hub shell.
This hub is only NJS-certified in 36H configuration, but
since it's actually 36H, it has the NJS marking.
Separate from the current spoke orientation,
there are inpoke marks on the hub, so this wheel
has been built at least twice.
The rear hub has both sides threaded.
Theoretically with Italian lacing,
you shouldn't flip it and use the opposite side,
but there were mounting marks from a cog.
Though it's clear that the theoretically "correct" right side
got used more—
↑the left flange versus
the right flange is dirtier,
and one of the inpokes in the image had deformation.
There was some runout related to this phasewise,
which I corrected, but this spoke is
based on a #15 round-butted spoke, and
we don't have that gauge in our regular stock,
so I didn't replace the spoke.
The spokes on both wheels, left and right sides, are
Star "Stainless."
When I say Stainless here, it's not a common noun—
it's the model name of that particular spoke.
The head stamp is a star mark, as you can see in the image,
whereas Starbright would be stamped with a capital H.
As I've written many times before,
Star stainless spokes barely react to a magnet.
By contrast, Starbright spokes attract a magnet
almost like they're iron—
they stick hard with a snap.
There was a period when Star's quality control on these two models was sloppy,
and when I inquired with Star, they gave me
a bogus answer: "That doesn't happen, we do it right."
So I have massive distrust in Star spokes.
A few years ago, I did get confirmation that
what I was saying wasn't wrong, but
that didn't make me think, "Okay, I'll use Star spokes again!"
So when building track wheels, I use NJS-certified spokes,
and except for the vintage Aero Starbright
(which Star seems to have lost the manufacturing process for),
I don't use current Star spokes.
The NJS-uncertified Aero Starbright currently sold under that name
is definitely 100% Starbright in composition.
But with this wheel,
the front wheel's star-stamped spokes barely reacted to the magnet,
while the rear wheel's star-stamped spokes attracted the magnet
almost as strongly as Starbright.
What I call "fake Starbright" or "crappy Starbright"
is the H-stamped spoke that shows a slight magnetic response—
more than stainless but clearly not true Starbright magnetism.
If we say stainless is 1 and Starbright is 10
in terms of magnetic response, I'd say these feel like 2 or 3—
spokes that are "not stainless but almost stainless,"
in that gray zone between categories.
By contrast, these fake stainless spokes
had about the same magnetic pull as true Starbright.
Using those numbers, I'd say 9 or 10.
There are plenty of cases where you order Starbright and get counterfeits,
but since we don't order stainless in the first place,
fake stainless is something I only encounter
in situations like this.
With a Dura-Ace fixed-gear hub and an Araya 16B Gold rim,
you can build an 8-crossing at 305mm whether the hub
is small-flange or large-flange, so
if you manage inventory by keeping 305mm spokes in one drawer
and restocking as they run out,
one wheel could end up with mixed stainless and fake stainless,
but in this case, the front and rear wheels
had different spoke lots or were built at different times—
I can't say which—
The front wheel was entirely true stainless,
while the rear was all fake stainless except for one spoke.
Theoretically, the rear wheel spokes are less prone to breaking at the head,
but the rear wheel does have a history of one spoke breaking,
and an Asahi spoke of the same gauge was used for the repair
(there's a slim chance it was added because a new build was one spoke short,
but that's probably not it).
The stamp is a capital A.
This spoke has a composition equivalent to Star's stainless,
so on the rear wheel, this one Asahi spoke
barely reacted to the magnet at all.
Star's round-butted spokes
have a pronounced step where the diameter changes,
while Asahi's step is less distinct.
DT has a long taper where the diameter changes, making
the transition even less obvious, and
Sapim has machining marks like the facets on a cut crystal glass.
The front wheel's Lion tire
had a spot where the carcass tore
where the open side had apparently been crushed flat from long-term storage on the ground.
Twist it a bit and you can see the inner tube peeking through.
This is a budget tire,
one that used to be called a "thousand-yen tire."
Those were the days.
By the way, there's a model called Formula Uno (F1)
with the same tread pattern as the Rally,
but going back further, Formula Uno originally
had a slick center tread and
was solid orange across the tread.
Both Rally and Formula Uno from that era were thousand-yen tires,
and twenty-five years ago, I was regularly riding
orange Formula Uno.
Back then, even if tubular tires
had inferior radial runout and tread centering
compared to high-end clinchers,
a thousand-yen tubular outperformed
a high-end WO tire performance-wise,
but over the last twenty years,
WO tire development has been remarkable—
WO tires are no longer something you
"tolerate" for performance and comfort.
With Continental, for instance, Grand Prix 5000 WO tires
roll lighter and have higher cornering limits
than their Giro tubular,
so while using premium tubulars on your race wheels makes sense,
there's no need to go tubular on your everyday wheels anymore.
I've come to feel that way about it.
That said, comparing the ultimate tubular against
the ultimate WO (including tubeless), I still think
tubulars have superior overall performance.
Now let me get back to the main topic.
The tubular tire's base tape was
stuck to the rim at quite a few points
from the strong, fully-cured slow-drying cement.
My hunch is the customer anticipated this.
Oops—
at the end of last year I had to partially disassemble an STI lever
in detail before I'd written it up,
so I modified a scraper tool tip to press out a small snap ring.
Oh well.
↑Still in progress here, but
scraping off the base tape was a ton of work.
The new tires installed are
Panaracer Practice 270—
the name says it all, a practice tire model.
270 is the stated weight, the weight
of the narrower 22.5C size in the lineup.
The other size is 25C,
with a stated weight of 320g.
By the way, this tire has markings on its base tape and
one "MADE IN THAILAND" mark on the tread,
which conclusively proves
it's an OEM product from Lion Tire.
The Rally on the original rear wheel,
and the Continental Giro mentioned earlier
are also Lion Tire products (see here).
I inspected for runout or centering issues
and planned to true them before mounting the tires,
but both wheels only had minor lateral runout—
no centering issues.
They wanted both wheels' tubular tires replaced with rim cement,
but since the customer is capable of mounting tubular tires with rim cement themselves,
the fact that they're asking our shop to handle it
suggests they're sensing some pitfall lurking in this particular job
beyond just a straightforward tire swap.
I can sense it too, for what it's worth.
Dura-Ace small-flange hub, 36H,
laced Italian-style with 8-crossing.
This isn't a request from a track cyclist,
but I initially thought only JIS lacing would work for track racing—
turns out as long as everything is NJS-certified and it's 8-crossing lacing,
it passes inspection.
I've actually seen Italian-laced track wheels that have passed inspection,
complete with the track-specific valve stems already mounted.
In the image above, when the Dura-Ace text on the hub shell
is oriented the same way,
the left-right properties of the Italian lacing also line up.
So with the wheels positioned that way,
when viewed from the right side
the rear wheel's label was facing backward—
never mind that
The tires are a Vittoria Rally with red sidewall and
a Lion tire GT30, but
both wheels had their tread patterns mounted in reverse orientation.
Though there's a reason for that—
Both tires have single-sided labels, and if you follow the convention that
"when single-sided, the label goes on the right,"
you'd end up with the tires mounted backward.
The tires themselves don't have any reverse-mounting specification printed on them.
TUFO has tires like this too, but
I prioritize tread pattern over label placement.
The MOST tubular tire lever is easy to use!
The rear wheel especially was stuck on there really hard,
and I had to struggle to get the lever inserted at first.
The rim cement was on the slow-drying side.
As I've mentioned before, Panaracer rim cement comes labeled
"fast-drying" on the can or tube, but
from a historical perspective of rim cements,
that's actually ultra-fast drying.
(Ideally worth avoiding though)
You can ride in a few hours, and
after a day you're definitely good to go.
True slow-drying rim cement
needs about a week to set.
You might think, "Why not just use fast-drying cement for everything?"
but slow-drying cement has the advantage that between tire and rim
it doesn't fully harden into a brittle state—
instead, the cement stays nicely tacky for longer,
so even if you really torque the wheel,
the tire won't pop off the rim.
That's the theory anyway, but
since rim cement itself has been improving for a long time,
fast-drying cement doesn't lose its grip strength
so quickly that you need to remount the tire
within the lifespan of normal use.
Even with a cyclocross tire that luckily didn't flat
and sat unused all offseason,
two years (two seasons) is no problem.
Sure, if you've got a tire on there for three, five years straight,
you should probably remount it.
When fast-drying cement fully cures,
it hardens into a brittle powder that flakes off
and the tire comes off the rim easily—
(even in this near-final state, I've never heard of a tire coming off on a road bike),
but when slow-drying cement fully cures,
it forms a pretty strong bond, making
the tire tough to peel off, and
the tubular tire's base tape often stays stuck to the rim.
The customer wasn't consciously
choosing slow-drying rim cement—
they used a large economy can of
the generic stuff sitting in the corner of the workshop to mount the tire.
Some of those are labeled "fast-drying," but
if you compare it to Panaracer fast-drying,
it's definitely on the slow-drying side.
This wheel had rim cement smeared on the hub shell and rim sides too,
but that kind of mistake is less likely to happen
with the small brush-cap cans or tube-style
toothpaste-like rim cement containers.
↑When the valve hole was at the top,
cement probably dripped down toward the hub shell.
This hub is only NJS-certified in 36H configuration, but
since it's actually 36H, it has the NJS marking.
Separate from the current spoke orientation,
there are inpoke marks on the hub, so this wheel
has been built at least twice.
The rear hub has both sides threaded.
Theoretically with Italian lacing,
you shouldn't flip it and use the opposite side,
but there were mounting marks from a cog.
Though it's clear that the theoretically "correct" right side
got used more—
↑the left flange versus
the right flange is dirtier,
and one of the inpokes in the image had deformation.
There was some runout related to this phasewise,
which I corrected, but this spoke is
based on a #15 round-butted spoke, and
we don't have that gauge in our regular stock,
so I didn't replace the spoke.
The spokes on both wheels, left and right sides, are
Star "Stainless."
When I say Stainless here, it's not a common noun—
it's the model name of that particular spoke.
The head stamp is a star mark, as you can see in the image,
whereas Starbright would be stamped with a capital H.
As I've written many times before,
Star stainless spokes barely react to a magnet.
By contrast, Starbright spokes attract a magnet
almost like they're iron—
they stick hard with a snap.
There was a period when Star's quality control on these two models was sloppy,
and when I inquired with Star, they gave me
a bogus answer: "That doesn't happen, we do it right."
So I have massive distrust in Star spokes.
A few years ago, I did get confirmation that
what I was saying wasn't wrong, but
that didn't make me think, "Okay, I'll use Star spokes again!"
So when building track wheels, I use NJS-certified spokes,
and except for the vintage Aero Starbright
(which Star seems to have lost the manufacturing process for),
I don't use current Star spokes.
The NJS-uncertified Aero Starbright currently sold under that name
is definitely 100% Starbright in composition.
But with this wheel,
the front wheel's star-stamped spokes barely reacted to the magnet,
while the rear wheel's star-stamped spokes attracted the magnet
almost as strongly as Starbright.
What I call "fake Starbright" or "crappy Starbright"
is the H-stamped spoke that shows a slight magnetic response—
more than stainless but clearly not true Starbright magnetism.
If we say stainless is 1 and Starbright is 10
in terms of magnetic response, I'd say these feel like 2 or 3—
spokes that are "not stainless but almost stainless,"
in that gray zone between categories.
By contrast, these fake stainless spokes
had about the same magnetic pull as true Starbright.
Using those numbers, I'd say 9 or 10.
There are plenty of cases where you order Starbright and get counterfeits,
but since we don't order stainless in the first place,
fake stainless is something I only encounter
in situations like this.
With a Dura-Ace fixed-gear hub and an Araya 16B Gold rim,
you can build an 8-crossing at 305mm whether the hub
is small-flange or large-flange, so
if you manage inventory by keeping 305mm spokes in one drawer
and restocking as they run out,
one wheel could end up with mixed stainless and fake stainless,
but in this case, the front and rear wheels
had different spoke lots or were built at different times—
I can't say which—
The front wheel was entirely true stainless,
while the rear was all fake stainless except for one spoke.
Theoretically, the rear wheel spokes are less prone to breaking at the head,
but the rear wheel does have a history of one spoke breaking,
and an Asahi spoke of the same gauge was used for the repair
(there's a slim chance it was added because a new build was one spoke short,
but that's probably not it).
The stamp is a capital A.
This spoke has a composition equivalent to Star's stainless,
so on the rear wheel, this one Asahi spoke
barely reacted to the magnet at all.
Star's round-butted spokes
have a pronounced step where the diameter changes,
while Asahi's step is less distinct.
DT has a long taper where the diameter changes, making
the transition even less obvious, and
Sapim has machining marks like the facets on a cut crystal glass.
The front wheel's Lion tire
had a spot where the carcass tore
where the open side had apparently been crushed flat from long-term storage on the ground.
Twist it a bit and you can see the inner tube peeking through.
This is a budget tire,
one that used to be called a "thousand-yen tire."
By the way, there's a model called Formula Uno (F1)
with the same tread pattern as the Rally,
but going back further, Formula Uno originally
had a slick center tread and
was solid orange across the tread.
Both Rally and Formula Uno from that era were thousand-yen tires,
and twenty-five years ago, I was regularly riding
orange Formula Uno.
Back then, even if tubular tires
had inferior radial runout and tread centering
compared to high-end clinchers,
a thousand-yen tubular outperformed
a high-end WO tire performance-wise,
but over the last twenty years,
WO tire development has been remarkable—
WO tires are no longer something you
"tolerate" for performance and comfort.
With Continental, for instance, Grand Prix 5000 WO tires
roll lighter and have higher cornering limits
than their Giro tubular,
so while using premium tubulars on your race wheels makes sense,
there's no need to go tubular on your everyday wheels anymore.
I've come to feel that way about it.
That said, comparing the ultimate tubular against
the ultimate WO (including tubeless), I still think
tubulars have superior overall performance.
Now let me get back to the main topic.
The tubular tire's base tape was
stuck to the rim at quite a few points
from the strong, fully-cured slow-drying cement.
My hunch is the customer anticipated this.
Oops—
at the end of last year I had to partially disassemble an STI lever
in detail before I'd written it up,
so I modified a scraper tool tip to press out a small snap ring.
Oh well.
↑Still in progress here, but
scraping off the base tape was a ton of work.
The new tires installed are
Panaracer Practice 270—
the name says it all, a practice tire model.
270 is the stated weight, the weight
of the narrower 22.5C size in the lineup.
The other size is 25C,
with a stated weight of 320g.
By the way, this tire has markings on its base tape and
one "MADE IN THAILAND" mark on the tread,
which conclusively proves
it's an OEM product from Lion Tire.
The Rally on the original rear wheel,
and the Continental Giro mentioned earlier
are also Lion Tire products (see here).
I inspected for runout or centering issues
and planned to true them before mounting the tires,
but both wheels only had minor lateral runout—
no centering issues.