・・・When I asked the customer about the history of the wheel,
it turned out to be a complete wheel assembled in-house by the manufacturer (Gokiso).
I had suspected it wasn't a factory build since there were some unbelievable issues,
but it was.
There was quite significant center offset,
but actually this isn't that much of a problem.
The wheel was probably centered perfectly when it was built,
or the rim had only slight offset to the right at that time,
and over the years the rim has shifted right.
This drift happens even without active use.
If you build a rear wheel with a hub that has taper and let it sit unused for 10 years,
the rim will shift right enough to be detectable with a centering gauge,
even if built perfectly centered from day one.
It depends on spoke tension, but
higher tension accelerates this drift.
Of course, active use causes faster drift than just sitting.
This wheel is radial laced on the freewheel side,
and radial lacing has no angle loss in the spoke trajectory when viewed from the side,
so it tends to show faster center drift over time compared to
rear wheels with both sides tangent laced.
Up to this point, these are natural occurrences,
so I'm not criticizing.
This is where it gets bad.
The rim sides were built in the wrong orientation.
The side with the silver serial number sticker near the valve hole,
and the side with the caution sticker about using genuine brake shoes
(which has been peeled off this rim)
must be oriented to the left side when building.
Strictly speaking, only rear rims must be oriented this way.
For example, Nomuralab Wheel No. 2 rims from the same manufacturer
come in hole counts of 18, 20, 24, and 28H,
where the first two are 18F and 20F front rims
and the latter two are 24R and 28R rear rims.
You'd almost never build a rear wheel with an 18F rim,
but it's possible to build a 20H rear wheel with a 20F rim.
However, 24R and 28R rims have
directionality built in based on taper considerations,
whether or not there's hole offset on the inner rim surface.
With Nomuralab Wheel No. 2 rims, it's honestly hard to tell by eye,
but there's no good reason to deliberately go against what the manufacturer says.
Update: Through testing for this article, I confirmed the directionality.
↑That's apparently how it is.
So if they'd only flipped the rim orientation, it would have been bad enough,
but...
↑Freewheel side
↑Non-freewheel side
The wheel is built treating the rim as reversed.
Yet this rim's outer surface holes have clear offset,
and when I checked the orientation, it was actually a normal rim.
↑The rim hole in the center of the image—
the spokes from the freewheel side flange pass through it,
so if we offset the rim hole along the spoke trajectory extension,
it should be offset toward the bottom of the image,
but they're treating a normal offset rim
as if it's reversed offset,
so the hole is offset toward the top of the image.
↑Like this
Close-up.
Since it doesn't follow the offset,
a 3.2mm wrench grinding against
the rim hole's edge.
↑The next rim hole over looks like this.
Unless you're a complete idiot,
you'd notice something wrong during the initial lacing or soon after.
So either Gokiso's wheel builder is a complete idiot,
or they noticed the mistake but forced the build through anyway.
Either way, it's a problem.
The work quality doesn't match the price they charged for the wheel.
By the way, the front rim had no hole offset on the outer surface.
Also, the front wheel was originally built treating the rim as normal.
When rebuilding, since the spokes differ in length and color,
I won't reuse them, but
cutting spokes under tension damages this rim
I'm returning to the customer, so
I gradually loosen all the nipples partially in sequence.
Partway through, the rim's front-to-back direction and hub's left-to-right direction
aren't perpendicular, tilting as shown above, and
there was a hole where the wrench couldn't engage the nipple at all.
In the image above, the freewheel body is visible on the left,
and this rim hole is one whose offset is meant for
spokes from the non-freewheel side.
The nipple is offset toward the bottom of the image
because of the incident angle from the tangent laced non-porcupine direction.
Rather than an internal nipple,
they used a generic nipple in reverse.
I sometimes do this too, but
generic nipples have a slot that internal nipples lack,
which can mill the rim contact surface and
accumulate carbon dust in the slot.
Also, internal nipples have slight clearance on the inner end face
before the threading starts, which
slightly changes the acceptable spoke length range.
The problem here is they used
14mm nipples that come with CX-RAY.
Depending on rim height and how much the outer holes are offset,
longer reverse nipples get harder to grip properly with a wrench.
The diagram shows a tubular rim,
but the AXLightness 25mm-high rim I built recently
came stock with 12mm DT ProLock nipples,
but 12mm was too short to complete the build
(I got it to a decent intermediate state after initial lacing),
so I switched to ENVE 10mm internal nipples
to finish building the wheel.
That 2mm difference is huge.
So they got the hole offset wrong and forced the build with
long reverse nipples, so
after the initial lacing the wrench could only
engage shallowly—evidence of that was visible.
You can't tell from the wheel, but
looking closely at just the rim,
the inner holes also have offset.
Looking from the left image at right, the holes seem to alternate right, left, right, left,
but looking more closely they alternate center, left, center, left.
If right and left offset were symmetric,
the rim would have no left-right distinction, but
the freewheel hole is centered without lateral offset,
so this rim does have left-right distinction.
↑Slightly blurry close-up,
but on the left is the freewheel side spoke hole at rim center,
and on the right is the offset hole for the non-freewheel side.
This is really important:
Through the freewheel side spoke hole
at rim center, I threaded a #14 plain black straight spoke
and engaged the nipple threads.
With the rim level,
I measured how much the spoke sags under its own weight.
The silver sticker indicating the left side is visible in the background.
In other words, in this image the rim's downward-facing surface
is the wheel's left side.
The spoke passes through the freewheel side hole,
so its sag direction is opposite the intended trajectory.
From here, using the image's edges as rotation axes,
I flip the rim over.
The spoke sag changes drastically.
For a rim with hole offset this is expected,
but the key point is it's happening in what appears to be a centered hole.
In other words, there's directionality built in
beyond just the hole offset.
The original wheel had
not only the wrong rim orientation
but also treated a normal rim as reversed.
So even without changing rims,
a complete rebuild was mandatory.
Wrong rim orientation is bad enough (←really bad),
but treating a normal rim as reversed has
a Gokiso-specific cause.
To recap what I mean by
normal vs. reversed rim:
when viewing a wheel with equal spokes per side from the side,
there's a near hub flange and a far hub flange,
When rim holes have offset,
the vast majority of rims on the market are designed so that
the spoke passing through the next rim hole clockwise from the valve hole
comes from the far hub flange. We call these normal offset rims (normal rim),
and those designed oppositely reversed offset rims (reversed rim).
The diagram above shows a normal rim.
This relationship doesn't change if you flip the rim.
Examples of reversed rims include
the front rim on Racing Zero for rim brakes,
some Kolima rims,
the 28H (32H is normal) of Ambrosio Forma Crono 20 rim from certain periods (suspected manufacturing error),
and for unclear reasons, the IT wheel rims from Doué
(other Doué rims are normal).
↑Those were built as normal rims by idiots.
Also, Reynolds has carbon rims without hole offset
where the front wheel only is built as reversed.
I built the wheel with both sides tangent laced.
Viewing the rear wheel from the right,
the red spoke is freewheel side
and the blue spoke is non-freewheel side.
From this state, if we make the mistake of wrong rim offset
by shifting just the rim by one rim hole position
while keeping the hub and spokes the same,
in both cases, the valve hole ends up between the final cross's legs,
making an ugly wheel.
With single-side radial lacing
(non-freewheel radial in the diagram above),
only at position B does the valve hole position
look visually natural.
So at first glance it doesn't look like there's an offset mistake (reversed rim).
In the diagram, viewing the wheel from the right at position B,
counterclockwise from the valve hole the next spoke is the non-freewheel side spoke from the far flange,
clockwise the next spoke is the freewheel side spoke from the near flange.
However,
↑The actual wheel, viewed from the right, also has
counterclockwise from the valve hole the non-freewheel side spoke from the far flange,
clockwise the freewheel side spoke from the near flange.
Non-freewheel radial lacing is the type where offset mistakes are easy to miss,
so this is a Gokiso-specific mistake from using that lacing style.
But while grinding the tool's flat edge
against the rim hole edge because it can't reach deep into the nipple
due to the offset mistake and long reverse nipple,
not noticing or noticing but forcing the build anyway
is unacceptable either way.
Note: Things I forgot to write in the wheel article
Gokiso complete wheels have
quite high spoke tension.
If, starting from a state where wheel spoke tension is stable,
you loosen all nipples on both sides equally, say one full turn,
the lower the tension the greater the drop in tension.
Conversely, for already highly tensioned wheels,
further tightening the nipples barely changes the stiffness.
With 24H all-CX-RAY built
4-0 and 4-4 laced rear wheels,
when both wheels start with "same freewheel side tension,
wheel centers true"
and both have all nipples loosened equally,
the 4-0's non-freewheel spokes with large tension difference
become so loose you can jiggle them by hand with zero resistance
(tension meter needle doesn't move from zero).
Say that's from loosening all nipples 4 turns from completion,
the 4-4 laced wheel loosened the same 4 turns
won't reach that unusable state,
though it'll be limp enough to be problematic.
The point is,
equal-spoke rear wheels with non-freewheel radial lacing
need extremely high tension
to keep the non-freewheel spokes from being mushy.
By contrast, Gokiso hubs
are apparently extremely hard material—
the inpoke holes showed no spoke neck bite marks.
Only faint traces of spoke rubbing remain on the flange side.
It was already like this, but
when trying to align the hub body phase visible through the valve hole
with the maker's logo,
the freewheel side hole through which the outpoke spoke first threads
matched both before and after rebuild.
The right image is the former inpoke hole from the earlier image.
Incidentally, this is 4-6 Italian lacing,
so the first drop is "right drop" as shown.
↑Looking through the rebuilt rim's valve hole
↑Front rim 20F no outer hole offset
↑Rear rim 24R with outer hole offset
The rim was absurdly heavy.
Even though the rear rim isn't an offset rim,
the weight difference was like it was.
The weight difference was so extreme
that when I weighed the rear rim, I wondered if zero wasn't set properly,
so I checked by lifting it off the scale.
This is a custom Gokiso rim, but
they seem to have made it absurdly heavy
just to make their hub rotation performance stand out,
for the theatrical effect of making the demo spin longer—
pure manufacturer ego-tripping.
Only with Gokiso in-house complete wheels
(not just any wheel built with Gokiso hubs)
they add this absurd rim weight to the equation
of how long the "Place wheel on stand and spin—see how long it keeps spinning?" demo runs.
The downhill speed extension and coasting feel on flats are admittedly good,
but I wonder if the people using these complete wheels
understand they've agreed to this rim's insane weight.
If Gokiso's hub rotation truly is ultra-low-friction, they should trust that.
But making rims heavier than necessary just to look better on narrow tests
shows they don't think about their customers.
Well, customers who sense this weird heaviness
do ask for a rebuild with a lighter rim.
Bonus
Unless there's a good reason
(like when straight-spoke hubs restrict lacing options)
I never build equal-spoke wheels with
single-side radial lacing,
(and unlike Gokiso I wouldn't make that mistake even with single-side radial lacing),
but Rovial disk brake rear wheels
have a similar trap, so caution is needed.
Though really this only matters when rebuilding rear wheels—
truing-only work doesn't apply.
I drew the 16H freewheel side spokes of
the 24H 2:1 laced Rovial rear wheel.
From here, I draw a radial line from hub center
through the final tangent crossing.
I removed the spokes and kept the radial lines.
These lines, when rotated
360/8 = 45°,
return to their original position regardless of direction.
Visually indistinguishable.
For the non-freewheel 8H tangent laced side,
I draw the same radial line through its final crossing.
This one doesn't look the same when rotated 45°.
↑This is part of the wheel's development diagram with straight rim edges.
The Rovial XI laced rim is designed so that
when viewing the wheel from the right, the valve hole has
the clockwise rim hole from a non-freewheel spoke
and the counterclockwise rim hole from a freewheel spoke,
so the two holes flanking the valve look normal rim-like.
Since it's asymmetric lacing, there's no normal/reversed rim concept.
The diagram shows non-freewheel radial lacing,
but
for disk brake rear wheels,
the non-freewheel side is also tangent laced,
so I redrew with tangent lacing to avoid the final cross spanning the valve hole.
From here, I perform the same 45° rotation
but only for the freewheel side,
getting back to the same spoke trajectory.
For the non-freewheel tangent lacing,
you need two 45° rotations to return to the original shape,
but there's still a rim hole exactly where the 45° rotation places it,
so "no offset error, wheel is correct"
continues to hold.
↑That's this.
In the diagram, the 45° rotation corresponds to
the distance between two radial lines through
the freewheel spoke final crossing,
which equals 3 rim holes.
With non-freewheel radial lacing (single-side radial),
the "valve hole between the final cross legs" appearance
that wouldn't happen
now appears.
What I'm saying is,
for Rovial's 24H both-sides-tangent rear wheel,
if you mindlessly thread spokes through just 16H freewheel holes,
there's a 1/2 chance that even with perfect hole offset,
the non-freewheel tangent final cross
will span the valve hole.
To prevent this,
preliminary tacking the non-freewheel tangent side first helps.
↑This is the actual Rovial disk brake rear wheel.
Viewing from the non-freewheel side,
I taped 4 of the 8 non-freewheel spokes (half circumference)
to emphasize spoke trajectory.
The valve hole is not in the middle of the final cross legs.
From here, if I make the mistake of shifting the freewheel final cross
by one position
(equivalent to the 45° rotation mentioned earlier),
↑Counterclockwise from the left side view
↑Clockwise from the left side view
the valve hole shifts by 3 rim holes,
ending up at the positions shown in the images above.
With one 45° rotation, the positional relationship between
the valve hole and the freewheel spoke trajectory doesn't change,
but for the non-freewheel side it does.
it turned out to be a complete wheel assembled in-house by the manufacturer (Gokiso).
I had suspected it wasn't a factory build since there were some unbelievable issues,
but it was.
There was quite significant center offset,
but actually this isn't that much of a problem.
The wheel was probably centered perfectly when it was built,
or the rim had only slight offset to the right at that time,
and over the years the rim has shifted right.
This drift happens even without active use.
If you build a rear wheel with a hub that has taper and let it sit unused for 10 years,
the rim will shift right enough to be detectable with a centering gauge,
even if built perfectly centered from day one.
It depends on spoke tension, but
higher tension accelerates this drift.
Of course, active use causes faster drift than just sitting.
This wheel is radial laced on the freewheel side,
and radial lacing has no angle loss in the spoke trajectory when viewed from the side,
so it tends to show faster center drift over time compared to
rear wheels with both sides tangent laced.
Up to this point, these are natural occurrences,
so I'm not criticizing.
This is where it gets bad.
The rim sides were built in the wrong orientation.
The side with the silver serial number sticker near the valve hole,
and the side with the caution sticker about using genuine brake shoes
(which has been peeled off this rim)
must be oriented to the left side when building.
Strictly speaking, only rear rims must be oriented this way.
For example, Nomuralab Wheel No. 2 rims from the same manufacturer
come in hole counts of 18, 20, 24, and 28H,
where the first two are 18F and 20F front rims
and the latter two are 24R and 28R rear rims.
You'd almost never build a rear wheel with an 18F rim,
but it's possible to build a 20H rear wheel with a 20F rim.
However, 24R and 28R rims have
directionality built in based on taper considerations,
whether or not there's hole offset on the inner rim surface.
With Nomuralab Wheel No. 2 rims, it's honestly hard to tell by eye,
but there's no good reason to deliberately go against what the manufacturer says.
Update: Through testing for this article, I confirmed the directionality.
↑That's apparently how it is.
So if they'd only flipped the rim orientation, it would have been bad enough,
but...
↑Freewheel side
↑Non-freewheel side
The wheel is built treating the rim as reversed.
Yet this rim's outer surface holes have clear offset,
and when I checked the orientation, it was actually a normal rim.
↑The rim hole in the center of the image—
the spokes from the freewheel side flange pass through it,
so if we offset the rim hole along the spoke trajectory extension,
it should be offset toward the bottom of the image,
but they're treating a normal offset rim
as if it's reversed offset,
so the hole is offset toward the top of the image.
↑Like this
Close-up.
Since it doesn't follow the offset,
a 3.2mm wrench grinding against
the rim hole's edge.
↑The next rim hole over looks like this.
Unless you're a complete idiot,
you'd notice something wrong during the initial lacing or soon after.
So either Gokiso's wheel builder is a complete idiot,
or they noticed the mistake but forced the build through anyway.
Either way, it's a problem.
The work quality doesn't match the price they charged for the wheel.
By the way, the front rim had no hole offset on the outer surface.
Also, the front wheel was originally built treating the rim as normal.
When rebuilding, since the spokes differ in length and color,
I won't reuse them, but
cutting spokes under tension damages this rim
I'm returning to the customer, so
I gradually loosen all the nipples partially in sequence.
Partway through, the rim's front-to-back direction and hub's left-to-right direction
aren't perpendicular, tilting as shown above, and
there was a hole where the wrench couldn't engage the nipple at all.
In the image above, the freewheel body is visible on the left,
and this rim hole is one whose offset is meant for
spokes from the non-freewheel side.
The nipple is offset toward the bottom of the image
because of the incident angle from the tangent laced non-porcupine direction.
Rather than an internal nipple,
they used a generic nipple in reverse.
I sometimes do this too, but
generic nipples have a slot that internal nipples lack,
which can mill the rim contact surface and
accumulate carbon dust in the slot.
Also, internal nipples have slight clearance on the inner end face
before the threading starts, which
slightly changes the acceptable spoke length range.
The problem here is they used
14mm nipples that come with CX-RAY.
Depending on rim height and how much the outer holes are offset,
longer reverse nipples get harder to grip properly with a wrench.
The diagram shows a tubular rim,
but the AXLightness 25mm-high rim I built recently
came stock with 12mm DT ProLock nipples,
but 12mm was too short to complete the build
(I got it to a decent intermediate state after initial lacing),
so I switched to ENVE 10mm internal nipples
to finish building the wheel.
That 2mm difference is huge.
So they got the hole offset wrong and forced the build with
long reverse nipples, so
after the initial lacing the wrench could only
engage shallowly—evidence of that was visible.
You can't tell from the wheel, but
looking closely at just the rim,
the inner holes also have offset.
Looking from the left image at right, the holes seem to alternate right, left, right, left,
but looking more closely they alternate center, left, center, left.
If right and left offset were symmetric,
the rim would have no left-right distinction, but
the freewheel hole is centered without lateral offset,
so this rim does have left-right distinction.
↑Slightly blurry close-up,
but on the left is the freewheel side spoke hole at rim center,
and on the right is the offset hole for the non-freewheel side.
This is really important:
Through the freewheel side spoke hole
at rim center, I threaded a #14 plain black straight spoke
and engaged the nipple threads.
With the rim level,
I measured how much the spoke sags under its own weight.
The silver sticker indicating the left side is visible in the background.
In other words, in this image the rim's downward-facing surface
is the wheel's left side.
The spoke passes through the freewheel side hole,
so its sag direction is opposite the intended trajectory.
From here, using the image's edges as rotation axes,
I flip the rim over.
The spoke sag changes drastically.
For a rim with hole offset this is expected,
but the key point is it's happening in what appears to be a centered hole.
In other words, there's directionality built in
beyond just the hole offset.
The original wheel had
not only the wrong rim orientation
but also treated a normal rim as reversed.
So even without changing rims,
Wrong rim orientation is bad enough (←really bad),
but treating a normal rim as reversed has
a Gokiso-specific cause.
To recap what I mean by
normal vs. reversed rim:
when viewing a wheel with equal spokes per side from the side,
there's a near hub flange and a far hub flange,
When rim holes have offset,
the vast majority of rims on the market are designed so that
the spoke passing through the next rim hole clockwise from the valve hole
comes from the far hub flange. We call these normal offset rims (normal rim),
and those designed oppositely reversed offset rims (reversed rim).
The diagram above shows a normal rim.
This relationship doesn't change if you flip the rim.
Examples of reversed rims include
the front rim on Racing Zero for rim brakes,
some Kolima rims,
the 28H (32H is normal) of Ambrosio Forma Crono 20 rim from certain periods (suspected manufacturing error),
and for unclear reasons, the IT wheel rims from Doué
(other Doué rims are normal).
↑Those were built as normal rims by idiots.
Also, Reynolds has carbon rims without hole offset
where the front wheel only is built as reversed.
I built the wheel with both sides tangent laced.
Viewing the rear wheel from the right,
the red spoke is freewheel side
and the blue spoke is non-freewheel side.
From this state, if we make the mistake of wrong rim offset
by shifting just the rim by one rim hole position
while keeping the hub and spokes the same,
in both cases, the valve hole ends up between the final cross's legs,
making an ugly wheel.
With single-side radial lacing
(non-freewheel radial in the diagram above),
only at position B does the valve hole position
look visually natural.
So at first glance it doesn't look like there's an offset mistake (reversed rim).
In the diagram, viewing the wheel from the right at position B,
counterclockwise from the valve hole the next spoke is the non-freewheel side spoke from the far flange,
clockwise the next spoke is the freewheel side spoke from the near flange.
However,
↑The actual wheel, viewed from the right, also has
counterclockwise from the valve hole the non-freewheel side spoke from the far flange,
clockwise the freewheel side spoke from the near flange.
Non-freewheel radial lacing is the type where offset mistakes are easy to miss,
so this is a Gokiso-specific mistake from using that lacing style.
But while grinding the tool's flat edge
against the rim hole edge because it can't reach deep into the nipple
due to the offset mistake and long reverse nipple,
not noticing or noticing but forcing the build anyway
is unacceptable either way.
Note: Things I forgot to write in the wheel article
Gokiso complete wheels have
quite high spoke tension.
If, starting from a state where wheel spoke tension is stable,
you loosen all nipples on both sides equally, say one full turn,
the lower the tension the greater the drop in tension.
Conversely, for already highly tensioned wheels,
further tightening the nipples barely changes the stiffness.
With 24H all-CX-RAY built
4-0 and 4-4 laced rear wheels,
when both wheels start with "same freewheel side tension,
wheel centers true"
and both have all nipples loosened equally,
the 4-0's non-freewheel spokes with large tension difference
become so loose you can jiggle them by hand with zero resistance
(tension meter needle doesn't move from zero).
Say that's from loosening all nipples 4 turns from completion,
the 4-4 laced wheel loosened the same 4 turns
won't reach that unusable state,
though it'll be limp enough to be problematic.
The point is,
equal-spoke rear wheels with non-freewheel radial lacing
need extremely high tension
to keep the non-freewheel spokes from being mushy.
By contrast, Gokiso hubs
are apparently extremely hard material—
the inpoke holes showed no spoke neck bite marks.
Only faint traces of spoke rubbing remain on the flange side.
It was already like this, but
when trying to align the hub body phase visible through the valve hole
with the maker's logo,
the freewheel side hole through which the outpoke spoke first threads
matched both before and after rebuild.
The right image is the former inpoke hole from the earlier image.
Incidentally, this is 4-6 Italian lacing,
so the first drop is "right drop" as shown.
↑Looking through the rebuilt rim's valve hole
↑Front rim 20F no outer hole offset
↑Rear rim 24R with outer hole offset
The rim was absurdly heavy.
Even though the rear rim isn't an offset rim,
the weight difference was like it was.
The weight difference was so extreme
that when I weighed the rear rim, I wondered if zero wasn't set properly,
so I checked by lifting it off the scale.
This is a custom Gokiso rim, but
they seem to have made it absurdly heavy
just to make their hub rotation performance stand out,
for the theatrical effect of making the demo spin longer—
pure manufacturer ego-tripping.
Only with Gokiso in-house complete wheels
(not just any wheel built with Gokiso hubs)
they add this absurd rim weight to the equation
of how long the "Place wheel on stand and spin—see how long it keeps spinning?" demo runs.
The downhill speed extension and coasting feel on flats are admittedly good,
but I wonder if the people using these complete wheels
understand they've agreed to this rim's insane weight.
If Gokiso's hub rotation truly is ultra-low-friction, they should trust that.
But making rims heavier than necessary just to look better on narrow tests
shows they don't think about their customers.
do ask for a rebuild with a lighter rim.
Bonus
Unless there's a good reason
(like when straight-spoke hubs restrict lacing options)
I never build equal-spoke wheels with
single-side radial lacing,
but Rovial disk brake rear wheels
have a similar trap, so caution is needed.
Though really this only matters when rebuilding rear wheels—
truing-only work doesn't apply.
I drew the 16H freewheel side spokes of
the 24H 2:1 laced Rovial rear wheel.
From here, I draw a radial line from hub center
through the final tangent crossing.
I removed the spokes and kept the radial lines.
These lines, when rotated
360/8 = 45°,
return to their original position regardless of direction.
Visually indistinguishable.
For the non-freewheel 8H tangent laced side,
I draw the same radial line through its final crossing.
This one doesn't look the same when rotated 45°.
↑This is part of the wheel's development diagram with straight rim edges.
The Rovial XI laced rim is designed so that
when viewing the wheel from the right, the valve hole has
the clockwise rim hole from a non-freewheel spoke
and the counterclockwise rim hole from a freewheel spoke,
so the two holes flanking the valve look normal rim-like.
Since it's asymmetric lacing, there's no normal/reversed rim concept.
The diagram shows non-freewheel radial lacing,
but
for disk brake rear wheels,
the non-freewheel side is also tangent laced,
so I redrew with tangent lacing to avoid the final cross spanning the valve hole.
From here, I perform the same 45° rotation
but only for the freewheel side,
getting back to the same spoke trajectory.
For the non-freewheel tangent lacing,
you need two 45° rotations to return to the original shape,
but there's still a rim hole exactly where the 45° rotation places it,
so "no offset error, wheel is correct"
continues to hold.
↑That's this.
In the diagram, the 45° rotation corresponds to
the distance between two radial lines through
the freewheel spoke final crossing,
which equals 3 rim holes.
With non-freewheel radial lacing (single-side radial),
the "valve hole between the final cross legs" appearance
that wouldn't happen
now appears.
What I'm saying is,
for Rovial's 24H both-sides-tangent rear wheel,
if you mindlessly thread spokes through just 16H freewheel holes,
there's a 1/2 chance that even with perfect hole offset,
the non-freewheel tangent final cross
will span the valve hole.
To prevent this,
preliminary tacking the non-freewheel tangent side first helps.
↑This is the actual Rovial disk brake rear wheel.
Viewing from the non-freewheel side,
I taped 4 of the 8 non-freewheel spokes (half circumference)
to emphasize spoke trajectory.
The valve hole is not in the middle of the final cross legs.
From here, if I make the mistake of shifting the freewheel final cross
by one position
(equivalent to the 45° rotation mentioned earlier),
↑Counterclockwise from the left side view
↑Clockwise from the left side view
the valve hole shifts by 3 rim holes,
ending up at the positions shown in the images above.
With one 45° rotation, the positional relationship between
the valve hole and the freewheel spoke trajectory doesn't change,
but for the non-freewheel side it does.
Products Mentioned in This Article
- 🛒 DT Swiss CX-RAY spoke
- 🛒 DT Swiss Pro Lock nipple
- 🛒 ENVE internal nipple 10mm
- 🛒 AXLightness tubular rim
* Amazon affiliate links — prices may vary
Original Japanese post: のむラボ日記 #7104