A customer brought in the rear wheel from an ENVE 45 Foundation (carbon wheelset) for repair.
The chain had dropped inside the sprocket and bent some spokes, so they wanted them straightened out.
I have three reasons to believe this is an in-house manufactured wheel.
First, it's laced in reverse Italian (American) lacing.
Pretty much only Americans do this kind of thing.
Besides this, PowerTap's American-made wheels also use reverse Italian lacing.
Second, under the rim tape on the outer edge of the rim, there's a non-removable label embedded with the wheelbuilder's name.
Third, I'll explain that later.
One advantage of reverse Italian lacing is that
when the chain drops,
only the spokes on the anti-freewheel side take most of the damage,
and the hub flanges usually don't get scratched.
This time, it turned out to be just a matter of replacing those six spokes on the anti-freewheel side.
By the way, we're currently the only shop that can fix this wheel on the spot (probably).
Fixed!
Here's something interesting—this wheel had different sized spokes on each side!
The freewheel side uses black CX Sprint,
and the non-freewheel side uses black CX-RAY.
The freewheel-side spokes were 271mm long, so
the CX Sprint (which can be machined to 310–270mm) isbeing hoarded and
currently unavailable at Sapim distributors,
and while it might be possible to get it as an ENVE spare spoke,
it's unlikely any shop stocks these on hand.
So I'd say we're the only shop that could source and replace these spokes right away.
Even if a shop had the spokes on hand,
many wouldn't be able to rebuild the wheel on the spot.
↑The 271mm CX Sprint we cut in-house
The nominal length is actually 272mm, but
this particular rim has a thin inner sidewall,
and the spoke threads were about to bottom out against the nipple threads,
so we intentionally made it slightly shorter.
Whether it's 271mm or 272mm, the length of the 2.0mm diameter portion sticking out of the rim is the same when assembly is complete
(as long as it's within the buildable range).
If this wheel's spoke length had been 310mm,
the round portion extending from the rim would look unusually long,
but since we cut the 270mm-capable spoke to 271mm,
it has a similar appearance to what you'd get with the manufacturer's off-the-shelf spoke.
↑This is an off-the-shelf CX Sprint.
It actually had a longer round portion sticking out.
↑This is the non-freewheel side spoke,
a special custom CX-RAY used in ENVE complete wheels
with a flattened square section between the end of the threads and the start of the butted section
to serve as a tool grip.
The fact that this isn't sold to the general public is the third reason
this is an in-house manufactured wheel.
I've never seen a square-flattened version of the CX Sprint.
Japanese distributors' websites only list CX Sprint for this wheel's spokes,
but the non-freewheel side spokes are definitely CX-RAY.
↑The replaced spokes
I held the butted section in place with my finger to align them, then photographed the outside of the non-freewheel spokes.
There were also rub marks from the final crossing.
Even with very high spoke tension, these marks are hard to avoid,
but separately from that, despite ENVE making a rim that can be tensioned very high,
the spoke tension was lower than what mere age-related sagging would explain.
So I asked the customer's permission, saying "higher tension isn't always better, but this is clearly too loose—can we tighten it more?"
and I increased the tension beyond the original specs.
Bonus
This is unrelated to the ENVE wheel in this post,
but the image above is from the 303S rear wheel we did recently.
It's a compression of 2592×1944 pixels down to 640×480 pixels, but
a portion of the original image cropped to 640×480 size is
↑This.
The non-freewheel side spokes on the JIS-laced wheel show minor chain-drop marks,
but since there were no gouges or deep scratches, we reused them as-is.
The chain had dropped inside the sprocket and bent some spokes, so they wanted them straightened out.
I have three reasons to believe this is an in-house manufactured wheel.
First, it's laced in reverse Italian (American) lacing.
Pretty much only Americans do this kind of thing.
Besides this, PowerTap's American-made wheels also use reverse Italian lacing.
Second, under the rim tape on the outer edge of the rim, there's a non-removable label embedded with the wheelbuilder's name.
Third, I'll explain that later.
One advantage of reverse Italian lacing is that
when the chain drops,
only the spokes on the anti-freewheel side take most of the damage,
and the hub flanges usually don't get scratched.
This time, it turned out to be just a matter of replacing those six spokes on the anti-freewheel side.
By the way, we're currently the only shop that can fix this wheel on the spot (probably).
Fixed!
Here's something interesting—this wheel had different sized spokes on each side!
The freewheel side uses black CX Sprint,
and the non-freewheel side uses black CX-RAY.
The freewheel-side spokes were 271mm long, so
the CX Sprint (which can be machined to 310–270mm) is
currently unavailable at Sapim distributors,
and while it might be possible to get it as an ENVE spare spoke,
it's unlikely any shop stocks these on hand.
So I'd say we're the only shop that could source and replace these spokes right away.
many wouldn't be able to rebuild the wheel on the spot.
↑The 271mm CX Sprint we cut in-house
The nominal length is actually 272mm, but
this particular rim has a thin inner sidewall,
and the spoke threads were about to bottom out against the nipple threads,
so we intentionally made it slightly shorter.
Whether it's 271mm or 272mm, the length of the 2.0mm diameter portion sticking out of the rim is the same when assembly is complete
(as long as it's within the buildable range).
If this wheel's spoke length had been 310mm,
the round portion extending from the rim would look unusually long,
but since we cut the 270mm-capable spoke to 271mm,
it has a similar appearance to what you'd get with the manufacturer's off-the-shelf spoke.
↑This is an off-the-shelf CX Sprint.
It actually had a longer round portion sticking out.
↑This is the non-freewheel side spoke,
a special custom CX-RAY used in ENVE complete wheels
with a flattened square section between the end of the threads and the start of the butted section
to serve as a tool grip.
The fact that this isn't sold to the general public is the third reason
this is an in-house manufactured wheel.
I've never seen a square-flattened version of the CX Sprint.
Japanese distributors' websites only list CX Sprint for this wheel's spokes,
but the non-freewheel side spokes are definitely CX-RAY.
↑The replaced spokes
I held the butted section in place with my finger to align them, then photographed the outside of the non-freewheel spokes.
There were also rub marks from the final crossing.
Even with very high spoke tension, these marks are hard to avoid,
but separately from that, despite ENVE making a rim that can be tensioned very high,
the spoke tension was lower than what mere age-related sagging would explain.
So I asked the customer's permission, saying "higher tension isn't always better, but this is clearly too loose—can we tighten it more?"
and I increased the tension beyond the original specs.
Bonus
This is unrelated to the ENVE wheel in this post,
but the image above is from the 303S rear wheel we did recently.
It's a compression of 2592×1944 pixels down to 640×480 pixels, but
a portion of the original image cropped to 640×480 size is
↑This.
The non-freewheel side spokes on the JIS-laced wheel show minor chain-drop marks,
but since there were no gouges or deep scratches, we reused them as-is.