A customer dropped off wheels from GIANT's CADEX brand with
carbon spokes.
They wanted truing work done.
The image above is the rear wheel, but I received both front and rear wheels.
Like LUN and HUNT carbon spoke wheels,
what looks like a universal nipple
is actually an anti-rotation grip that's integrated with the spoke.
While gripping that part (by the way, it's 3.4mm across flats),
you turn a hex-shaped nipple nut from the outer edge—
that's the structure. So every time I do truing work, I need to peel off the rim tape.
Since it's a hookless rim, it's not compatible with tubed operation, which means
a stretch-band-type rim tape is out of the question—
tape-type rim tape must be replaced each time,
and sealant has to be removed too.
Apparently this wheel was left at the shop where it was purchased for repair,
but instead of fixing it themselves, that shop sent it to GIANT
and had them handle it. When I asked the customer if maybe some spokes broke,
they said no—they just left it for simple truing,
and only found out afterwards it got sent to the manufacturer.
MTB suspension overhauls get sent to distributors pretty often.
For example, if you pull out the lower leg of a front suspension
over an oil pan, suspension oil spills all over,
and then you can see which O-rings are bad or
which bushings are damaged—but if the shop doesn't have the parts in stock,
you can't just leave it sitting there for days on end.
There's trust in the manufacturer service because they have the necessary parts on hand
and the knowledge, experience, and skill to do the repair properly.
But honestly, just sending in a wheel for truing work?
That's pretty lame. It doesn't require that specialized of tools.
I didn't ask which shop it was,
but if someone from that shop or GIANT reads this,
they probably know who I'm talking about.
As for the manufacturer's work:
the front wheel had just barely any runout—
it was centered perfectly enough to use as-is.
The rear wheel had more runout than the front,
but they went after it hard enough that you wouldn't be embarrassed
saying "we did truing work here!"—the rim was off by about a paper's thickness to the right,
but the precision was way better than the average shipping standard for complete wheels.
Both wheels had many spots where the flat sections of the carbon spokes
showed slight twist, and the most time-consuming work was
making fine adjustments by slightly rotating those nipple-shaped grip points.
The rear wheel is built 2:1 with both sides in tangential lacing.
When you do 2:1 tangential lacing on a rear wheel with the non-drive side tangential,
the drive side ends up with lower tension—
the spokes deform more.
This wheel has that situation, but since the spoke material isn't steel,
when you load the pedals and torque the hub in the rotation direction,
the deformation of the drive-side spokes feels mushy or has poor engagement—
well, the threshold for feeling that (it varies by person) is definitely exceeded,
so with carbon spokes like these, there's no problem.
In other words, if you built a wheel with this hub and rim size using steel spokes,
it wouldn't be anything special. Maybe just a bit better than a Rroval.
Even with steel spokes, if you used 32H or 36H,
you might be able to build a wheel with similar stiffness,
but it would definitely be heavier than this one.
If you swapped all the carbon spokes for CX-RAY or Aero Lite
and played with spoke tension,
you still couldn't build a stiffer wheel than this.
Actually, if you could do that,
there'd be no reason to use carbon spokes in the first place.
And these carbon spokes have a specific gravity under 65%,
so they're a complete upgrade over CX-RAY and Aero Lite in performance terms.
The downsides would be if they're too stiff and harsh on your body,
or if a spoke breaks, you can't repair it with generic materials.
Oh, and if you buy from a shop that can't do anything but turn wheels from right to left,
you get stuck waiting for simple truing to go through the manufacturer—
I'll add that caveat with a line through it.
Also, this wheel has no marking anywhere on the rim, but
it uses single-side flange high-low flanges—what we call DBL.
DBL stands for Dynamic Balanced Lacing,
and "Lacing" comes from the same root as "lace" in the weaving sense.
The two images above show the non-drive side flange, and
even though the metal parts of the spoke heads are the same length,
the spokes heading toward the porcupine direction in the top image
end around where the hub flange outline is, while
the spokes heading the opposite direction in the bottom image
stick out beyond the hub outline.
With this "DBL at the hub flange," the final crossing pair of spokes
will have a slight tension difference (much less than spoke DBL, which I'll get to),
and with steel spokes, that low-tension side tends to loosen up,
so I don't like DBL—I think the downsides outweigh the benefits.
With carbon spokes, it probably won't cause problems, but...
Much worse is "spoke DBL."
This changes the specific gravity of the two final-crossing spokes—
specifically, it increases the specific gravity of the spoke heading toward the porcupine direction—
and this produces spoke looseness at a level you can observe in the short term
(meaning runout appears at that phase).
Even coating the spoke threads with high-strength threadlocker was useless.
Wheels like SLR that have seen some use are probably all in a state where
the looseness has stabilized, and people use them without realizing it.
GIANT must have thought spoke DBL was a bad idea too, because
they stopped using it on steel-spoke wheels after a certain point.
Compared to that, hub flange DBL is cute—just "looking smart about it" appeal—
and you can't actually feel it.
The front wheel is also 2:1 lacing, but
the non-rotor-mount side is radial laced,
and since 2:1 bundles can be odd-numbered,
three bundles of seven pairs each makes 21 spokes total.
On the rotor-mount side with tangential lacing,
if you look at the metal parts of the spoke heads,
you can see the hub flange has DBL.
It's unclear why they'd do this when it's not the drive wheel.
This is an intermediate size between large and small flanges on one side, non-DBL,
and if you built the front wheel the same way
(with the radial side spoke tension centered perfectly),
with the same tire, same air pressure, same disc rotor,
I can't imagine the braking distance would change at a noticeable level when you brake.
Actually, people not reading this blog won't even notice in their lifetime
that the front hub's left side has DBL.
The kind of person who notices this is the same type who looks at Racing Zero DB spokes and thinks,
"Oh! The spoke width from the side is the same left and right,
but the fewer-spoke side is thicker, so it's reverse-asymmetrical sizing!"
There was brown rim tape on it similar to Mavic or Effetto Mariposa
(or maybe the same stuff),
and after peeling it off, that nasty residue
the customer cleaned up using adhesive remover over the course of a night.
A hooked rim's inner width is measured tip-to-tip of the hooks on both sides, so
if the outer width or rim flange thickness doesn't change,
going to a hookless rim increases the dimension of what's called the inner width.
This rim has an inner width of 22.4mm as a hookless rim, but
if it were hooked, it would probably be around 20mm inner width.
For this rim, there's no exclusive-use-only product requirement,
but GIANT only offers tubeless tires in 25C width, which seems a bit narrow.
With a hooked rim and 20mm inner width,
it's not an impossible tire width.
For ZIPP wheels, with hookless rims of 23mm and 25mm inner width,
the lower limit in both cases is 28C tires, so
if 23mm is the lower limit at 28C,
then 22.4mm with 25C tires is indeed narrow.
※For 23mm width, some manufacturers do allow 25C tires:
Challenge, Goodyear, IRC, and Schwalbe are OK,
while Continental, Panaracer, Pirelli, and Vittoria are NG,
and Michelin has ZIPP saying "check with Michelin."
This wheel's rim outer width is 30mm, so
the rim side is clearly wider than the tire side, which means
when passing through grating covers, depending on the grid width,
the tire can drop into the gap and
the rim side can easily get scratched—watch out for that.
carbon spokes.
They wanted truing work done.
The image above is the rear wheel, but I received both front and rear wheels.
Like LUN and HUNT carbon spoke wheels,
what looks like a universal nipple
is actually an anti-rotation grip that's integrated with the spoke.
While gripping that part (by the way, it's 3.4mm across flats),
you turn a hex-shaped nipple nut from the outer edge—
that's the structure. So every time I do truing work, I need to peel off the rim tape.
Since it's a hookless rim, it's not compatible with tubed operation, which means
a stretch-band-type rim tape is out of the question—
tape-type rim tape must be replaced each time,
and sealant has to be removed too.
Apparently this wheel was left at the shop where it was purchased for repair,
but instead of fixing it themselves, that shop sent it to GIANT
and had them handle it. When I asked the customer if maybe some spokes broke,
they said no—they just left it for simple truing,
and only found out afterwards it got sent to the manufacturer.
MTB suspension overhauls get sent to distributors pretty often.
For example, if you pull out the lower leg of a front suspension
over an oil pan, suspension oil spills all over,
and then you can see which O-rings are bad or
which bushings are damaged—but if the shop doesn't have the parts in stock,
you can't just leave it sitting there for days on end.
There's trust in the manufacturer service because they have the necessary parts on hand
and the knowledge, experience, and skill to do the repair properly.
But honestly, just sending in a wheel for truing work?
That's pretty lame. It doesn't require that specialized of tools.
I didn't ask which shop it was,
but if someone from that shop or GIANT reads this,
they probably know who I'm talking about.
As for the manufacturer's work:
the front wheel had just barely any runout—
it was centered perfectly enough to use as-is.
The rear wheel had more runout than the front,
but they went after it hard enough that you wouldn't be embarrassed
saying "we did truing work here!"—the rim was off by about a paper's thickness to the right,
but the precision was way better than the average shipping standard for complete wheels.
Both wheels had many spots where the flat sections of the carbon spokes
showed slight twist, and the most time-consuming work was
making fine adjustments by slightly rotating those nipple-shaped grip points.
The rear wheel is built 2:1 with both sides in tangential lacing.
When you do 2:1 tangential lacing on a rear wheel with the non-drive side tangential,
the drive side ends up with lower tension—
the spokes deform more.
This wheel has that situation, but since the spoke material isn't steel,
when you load the pedals and torque the hub in the rotation direction,
the deformation of the drive-side spokes feels mushy or has poor engagement—
well, the threshold for feeling that (it varies by person) is definitely exceeded,
so with carbon spokes like these, there's no problem.
In other words, if you built a wheel with this hub and rim size using steel spokes,
it wouldn't be anything special. Maybe just a bit better than a Rroval.
Even with steel spokes, if you used 32H or 36H,
you might be able to build a wheel with similar stiffness,
but it would definitely be heavier than this one.
If you swapped all the carbon spokes for CX-RAY or Aero Lite
and played with spoke tension,
you still couldn't build a stiffer wheel than this.
Actually, if you could do that,
there'd be no reason to use carbon spokes in the first place.
And these carbon spokes have a specific gravity under 65%,
so they're a complete upgrade over CX-RAY and Aero Lite in performance terms.
The downsides would be if they're too stiff and harsh on your body,
or if a spoke breaks, you can't repair it with generic materials.
you get stuck waiting for simple truing to go through the manufacturer—
I'll add that caveat with a line through it.
Also, this wheel has no marking anywhere on the rim, but
it uses single-side flange high-low flanges—what we call DBL.
DBL stands for Dynamic Balanced Lacing,
and "Lacing" comes from the same root as "lace" in the weaving sense.
The two images above show the non-drive side flange, and
even though the metal parts of the spoke heads are the same length,
the spokes heading toward the porcupine direction in the top image
end around where the hub flange outline is, while
the spokes heading the opposite direction in the bottom image
stick out beyond the hub outline.
With this "DBL at the hub flange," the final crossing pair of spokes
will have a slight tension difference (much less than spoke DBL, which I'll get to),
and with steel spokes, that low-tension side tends to loosen up,
so I don't like DBL—I think the downsides outweigh the benefits.
With carbon spokes, it probably won't cause problems, but...
Much worse is "spoke DBL."
This changes the specific gravity of the two final-crossing spokes—
specifically, it increases the specific gravity of the spoke heading toward the porcupine direction—
and this produces spoke looseness at a level you can observe in the short term
(meaning runout appears at that phase).
Even coating the spoke threads with high-strength threadlocker was useless.
Wheels like SLR that have seen some use are probably all in a state where
the looseness has stabilized, and people use them without realizing it.
GIANT must have thought spoke DBL was a bad idea too, because
they stopped using it on steel-spoke wheels after a certain point.
Compared to that, hub flange DBL is cute—just "looking smart about it" appeal—
and you can't actually feel it.
The front wheel is also 2:1 lacing, but
the non-rotor-mount side is radial laced,
and since 2:1 bundles can be odd-numbered,
three bundles of seven pairs each makes 21 spokes total.
On the rotor-mount side with tangential lacing,
if you look at the metal parts of the spoke heads,
you can see the hub flange has DBL.
It's unclear why they'd do this when it's not the drive wheel.
This is an intermediate size between large and small flanges on one side, non-DBL,
and if you built the front wheel the same way
(with the radial side spoke tension centered perfectly),
with the same tire, same air pressure, same disc rotor,
I can't imagine the braking distance would change at a noticeable level when you brake.
Actually, people not reading this blog won't even notice in their lifetime
that the front hub's left side has DBL.
The kind of person who notices this is the same type who looks at Racing Zero DB spokes and thinks,
"Oh! The spoke width from the side is the same left and right,
but the fewer-spoke side is thicker, so it's reverse-asymmetrical sizing!"
There was brown rim tape on it similar to Mavic or Effetto Mariposa
(or maybe the same stuff),
and after peeling it off, that nasty residue
the customer cleaned up using adhesive remover over the course of a night.
A hooked rim's inner width is measured tip-to-tip of the hooks on both sides, so
if the outer width or rim flange thickness doesn't change,
going to a hookless rim increases the dimension of what's called the inner width.
This rim has an inner width of 22.4mm as a hookless rim, but
if it were hooked, it would probably be around 20mm inner width.
For this rim, there's no exclusive-use-only product requirement,
but GIANT only offers tubeless tires in 25C width, which seems a bit narrow.
With a hooked rim and 20mm inner width,
it's not an impossible tire width.
For ZIPP wheels, with hookless rims of 23mm and 25mm inner width,
the lower limit in both cases is 28C tires, so
if 23mm is the lower limit at 28C,
then 22.4mm with 25C tires is indeed narrow.
※For 23mm width, some manufacturers do allow 25C tires:
Challenge, Goodyear, IRC, and Schwalbe are OK,
while Continental, Panaracer, Pirelli, and Vittoria are NG,
and Michelin has ZIPP saying "check with Michelin."
This wheel's rim outer width is 30mm, so
the rim side is clearly wider than the tire side, which means
when passing through grating covers, depending on the grid width,
the tire can drop into the gap and
the rim side can easily get scratched—watch out for that.