Wheels again today (and so on).
Continuing from yesterday.
Rebuilding a rear wheel that was built with a ZTR Alpha 340 rim.
Evo hub 28H black Campagnolo / Revo 44 Italian lacing
Both sides have the final crosses laced.
The spokes were even shorter than on the front wheel.
The image above is the non-drive side, but
both sides look like this.
The rim was shifted to the right side,
but some of this has occurred over time,
so it can't be called a defect.
Generally, truing a rear wheel with dish (offset) is done
with a tightening tendency on the non-drive side,
and interestingly, the center shift to the right from aging
and the rim movement to the left from tightening the non-drive side
tend to balance out.
I always confirm whether they're truly balanced
by using a centering gauge,
and realistically, I'm adjusting things so they do balance out.
More than that, with this rear wheel,
the problem is that it doesn't have much spoke tension in the first place,
to the point where doing a different-diameter lacing makes no sense.
Even accounting for sag over time, it's way too loose.
Sometimes there's a misunderstanding, but I'm not saying
that spoke tension should just be tightened as much as possible.
Unlike the front wheel, with Campagnolo/Revo,
the non-drive side reaches the threshold where spoke windup occurs,
which isn't impossible but quite difficult,
so you can build it less nervously than the front.
Also, there's the problem that low-tension wheel builds result in
greater variation in spoke tension.
Among the spokes on the non-drive side, one or two will have areas
so loose that the tension meter needle barely moves.
Oh, the shop owner of Gasoline Alley said
spoke tension meters were unnecessary for him,
that you could tell by feel alone—so he was
a higher-level builder than someone like me who still needs a tension meter.
My apologies for the lecture.
Built.
28H semi-Campagnolo 46 lacing
with lacing only on the non-drive side.
↑Drive side
↑Non-drive side
The spoke length on both sides
is about flush with the nipple end face.
In both images above, the bottom is the drive side of the wheel,
but there's also some runout at the outer holes of the rim.
Regarding this rebuild,
if I judged that hub bearing replacement was necessary,
the customer asked me to replace them,
but both front and rear hubs were perfectly fine.
The freebody has spline bite marks from the sprocket,
but if I'm thinking about what I would do if it were my own wheel,
my answer would be "don't replace it,"
but I replaced it at the customer's request.
The original freebody has no abnormalities or damage,
so I'll return it to the customer.
This Alpha 340 rim has the late-model style with large label text,
but the early-model version lived up to its name—
actual measured weight under 340g was something I've only seen
once or twice, while measured weights typically ranged
from around 347g to 352g.
The late model weighs around 390g, but
separately from this, there's a rim called Alpha 400,
and if a 340 rim weighs 390g,
there's no way a 400 rim weighs 400g.
When I checked Stan's archives,
the published weight for the Alpha 340
had clearly been revised for the late model
to 385g.
In that case, when changing the rim specs,
they should have renamed the model like "the Alpha 340 is discontinued,
the successor model is the Alpha 370".
According to the archives, the published weight for the Alpha 400
is 425g.
Whether this has ever been revised is unclear,
but when the Alpha 340 was still the early model,
there was a factory-built complete wheelset called
the Alpha 400 Pro wheelset using Alpha 400,
and that wheel's rim is also published at 425g,
so the Alpha 400 rim probably
has consistently been published at 425g.
When rebuilding the front wheel yesterday,
I measured the actual rim weight,
but today with the rear wheel I forgot to do that,
and by the time I realized it, I had already progressed
quite far into building the wheel,
so I gave up on measuring the rim weight.
I would have probably disassembled it if I were at the stage
of just test-threading all rim holes with spoke and nipple threads.
What? Just tell me the front rim weight?
No way I'm telling you that.
↑Geez, what a jerk.
Sorry for the wait!
Please take a look at this image!
↑Stop it—!
Also, the rim orientation in the photo is positioned not near the model name label
but at a sticker that appears to be stuck on later,
is that because you judge that version has more value as article content?
Continuing from yesterday.
Rebuilding a rear wheel that was built with a ZTR Alpha 340 rim.
Evo hub 28H black Campagnolo / Revo 44 Italian lacing
Both sides have the final crosses laced.
The spokes were even shorter than on the front wheel.
The image above is the non-drive side, but
both sides look like this.
The rim was shifted to the right side,
but some of this has occurred over time,
so it can't be called a defect.
Generally, truing a rear wheel with dish (offset) is done
with a tightening tendency on the non-drive side,
and interestingly, the center shift to the right from aging
and the rim movement to the left from tightening the non-drive side
tend to balance out.
I always confirm whether they're truly balanced
by using a centering gauge,
and realistically, I'm adjusting things so they do balance out.
More than that, with this rear wheel,
the problem is that it doesn't have much spoke tension in the first place,
to the point where doing a different-diameter lacing makes no sense.
Even accounting for sag over time, it's way too loose.
Sometimes there's a misunderstanding, but I'm not saying
that spoke tension should just be tightened as much as possible.
Unlike the front wheel, with Campagnolo/Revo,
the non-drive side reaches the threshold where spoke windup occurs,
which isn't impossible but quite difficult,
so you can build it less nervously than the front.
Also, there's the problem that low-tension wheel builds result in
greater variation in spoke tension.
Among the spokes on the non-drive side, one or two will have areas
so loose that the tension meter needle barely moves.
Oh, the shop owner of Gasoline Alley said
spoke tension meters were unnecessary for him,
that you could tell by feel alone—so he was
a higher-level builder than someone like me who still needs a tension meter.
My apologies for the lecture.
Built.
28H semi-Campagnolo 46 lacing
with lacing only on the non-drive side.
↑Drive side
↑Non-drive side
The spoke length on both sides
is about flush with the nipple end face.
In both images above, the bottom is the drive side of the wheel,
but there's also some runout at the outer holes of the rim.
Regarding this rebuild,
if I judged that hub bearing replacement was necessary,
the customer asked me to replace them,
but both front and rear hubs were perfectly fine.
The freebody has spline bite marks from the sprocket,
but if I'm thinking about what I would do if it were my own wheel,
my answer would be "don't replace it,"
but I replaced it at the customer's request.
The original freebody has no abnormalities or damage,
so I'll return it to the customer.
This Alpha 340 rim has the late-model style with large label text,
but the early-model version lived up to its name—
actual measured weight under 340g was something I've only seen
once or twice, while measured weights typically ranged
from around 347g to 352g.
The late model weighs around 390g, but
separately from this, there's a rim called Alpha 400,
and if a 340 rim weighs 390g,
there's no way a 400 rim weighs 400g.
When I checked Stan's archives,
the published weight for the Alpha 340
had clearly been revised for the late model
to 385g.
In that case, when changing the rim specs,
they should have renamed the model like "the Alpha 340 is discontinued,
the successor model is the Alpha 370".
According to the archives, the published weight for the Alpha 400
is 425g.
Whether this has ever been revised is unclear,
but when the Alpha 340 was still the early model,
there was a factory-built complete wheelset called
the Alpha 400 Pro wheelset using Alpha 400,
and that wheel's rim is also published at 425g,
so the Alpha 400 rim probably
has consistently been published at 425g.
When rebuilding the front wheel yesterday,
I measured the actual rim weight,
but today with the rear wheel I forgot to do that,
and by the time I realized it, I had already progressed
quite far into building the wheel,
so I gave up on measuring the rim weight.
I would have probably disassembled it if I were at the stage
of just test-threading all rim holes with spoke and nipple threads.
What? Just tell me the front rim weight?
No way I'm telling you that.
↑Geez, what a jerk.
Sorry for the wait!
Please take a look at this image!
↑Stop it—!
but at a sticker that appears to be stuck on later,
is that because you judge that version has more value as article content?