Another day of wheels (et cetera).
A customer brought in the front wheel of a Cannondale Bad Boy's Lefty fork with a 650B rim
They'd won the complete bike at auction, and while the frame was in excellent condition,
the front wheel had serious runout, so they asked if we could fix it.
But it was obvious the rim was bent.
Not only that, but some amateur (I won't add an honorific) had tried to hide the runout by
messing with the nipples, loosening them haphazardly,
and on some nipples the spoke threads were protruding
about 5 turns from the nipple.
So to convince the customer that the rim was garbage anyway,
I disassembled the wheel to the state shown in the image above.
When I suggested they contact the previous owner,
they said too much time had passed and they couldn't track them down.
I thought about asking the Cannondale shop to sell just the Bad Boy's front wheel,
but they wanted us to build the wheel using the existing Lefty hub.
The problem is finding a reasonably-priced 650B rim with ETRTO 584mm diameter
and internal width of 25mm or close to it.
DT Swiss rims are expensive, Stans makes the Crest MK4 but
it's only slightly cheaper than DT and still pricey, plus
it's a pure XC race rim so it's too light for everyday use.
Tni's ED30 TL rim has a confusing naming scheme—
while other brands use numbers to mean rim height, here 30 means 30mm internal width, which is too wide
(it's 19mm tall and 35mm outer width incidentally),
WTB we don't stock,
Praxis makes the AL24 which does fit the criteria—
the 24 means 24mm internal width and it comes in 650B 32H
but the price was a bit high so we ruled it out.
With ALEXRIMS, the only options that matched our specs
were ones with rim brake zones, which are stably available.
After searching around,
I found that the cheapest option was to source a complete wheel built with
an ALEXRIMS MD23 rim and strip just the rim from it,
so I ordered one.
The internal width is 2mm different, but the compatible tire sizes
are essentially the same so there's no issue.
The MD23 rim wheel isn't just a bare rim of course,
so it probably has some runout,
but it's within 1mm,
and comparing it against the Cannondale rim,
on the opposite side where the rims are in contact
there's this much clearance.
The MD23 rim wheel has
an HB-QC300 hub,
32H pillar 14-gauge plain black spokes
Not reverse Italian (the casual term for criss-cross lacing), but JIS lacing.
There was a ridiculous center offset.
Well, I'm going to disassemble it anyway.
I carefully disassembled the Lefty hub's original wheel too and
recovered all the spokes—
none of them were bent.
The Lefty hub had XERO marked on the bearing seal, so
it's presumably XERO brand (like holograms),
but there's no marking on the spoke head,
and they're not Sapim spokes either.
In terms of magnetism, the Lefty spokes are superior—
I suspect they're much closer to iron spokes than stainless steel.
The pillar 14-gauge plain spokes only responded slightly to a magnet.
The left side (rotor mount side) spokes are short—
shorter than the nipple slot width,
The right side is ridiculously short,
Left side is short,
Right side is ridiculous...alternating like this.
There are marks from a cordless drill, and
to be able to assemble it almost entirely with a screwdriver,
they used short spokes, but
in addition to that, the left-right difference exists because
as I suspected, they used the same length spokes on both sides.
Most of the too-short right side spokes
had about 1 turn of thread visible,
but a couple had about 3 turns showing.
With 12mm nipples you can see the threads like this, but
with 14mm nipples like those that come with Sapim CX-RAY,
most of the short spokes would look fine visually.
On the Lefty hub, the quick release cap has reverse threads, and
there are slip marks where someone tried to turn it with
a spanner-type wrench, apparently not understanding the reverse thread.
It's amusing, but from this angle
the flanges look like they're the same diameter.
Actually it's a pretty decent high-low flange setup,
And with the large flange side up,
the perspective distortion makes it look extreme.
It's built.
Both the original Lefty spokes and the MD23 junk-built wheel's original spokes
came up 3mm short for the right-side 6-spoke build,
so I cut the MD23 pillar spokes to 4-spoke length for the left side,
and sourced black Competition spokes in 6-spoke length for the right,
making it an asymmetrical left-right, different-gauge, different-count reverse Italian lacing.
No result binding.
If the MD23 spokes had been the proper length with both sides flush to the nipple end,
I could have reused them for a standard lacing,
but the original state was too sloppy.
Using Champion spokes for the makeup would have been cheaper,
but the price difference between Champion and Competition
buys enough benefit that asymmetrical building makes sense.
I used the pillar spokes on the left side despite their magnetic disadvantage because,
considering that the Lefty spokes might rust through the paint,
and considering the possibility of spoke neck breakage with the pillar spokes,
the pillar seemed like the better choice.
Actually, as you can see even in the earlier MD23 original state photos,
there's a rib-like ridge line on the rim's outer edge, offset from center,
and looking at the relationship between that and the rim holes which have runout,
you can prove that the earlier nipple photos
show alternating left-right holes.
↑Like this.
The rim hole positions relative to the ridge line are different.
Oh, I also forgot to mention—
I used black brass nipples.
A customer brought in the front wheel of a Cannondale Bad Boy's Lefty fork with a 650B rim
They'd won the complete bike at auction, and while the frame was in excellent condition,
the front wheel had serious runout, so they asked if we could fix it.
But it was obvious the rim was bent.
Not only that, but some amateur (I won't add an honorific) had tried to hide the runout by
messing with the nipples, loosening them haphazardly,
and on some nipples the spoke threads were protruding
about 5 turns from the nipple.
So to convince the customer that the rim was garbage anyway,
I disassembled the wheel to the state shown in the image above.
When I suggested they contact the previous owner,
they said too much time had passed and they couldn't track them down.
I thought about asking the Cannondale shop to sell just the Bad Boy's front wheel,
but they wanted us to build the wheel using the existing Lefty hub.
The problem is finding a reasonably-priced 650B rim with ETRTO 584mm diameter
and internal width of 25mm or close to it.
DT Swiss rims are expensive, Stans makes the Crest MK4 but
it's only slightly cheaper than DT and still pricey, plus
it's a pure XC race rim so it's too light for everyday use.
Tni's ED30 TL rim has a confusing naming scheme—
while other brands use numbers to mean rim height, here 30 means 30mm internal width, which is too wide
(it's 19mm tall and 35mm outer width incidentally),
WTB we don't stock,
Praxis makes the AL24 which does fit the criteria—
the 24 means 24mm internal width and it comes in 650B 32H
but the price was a bit high so we ruled it out.
With ALEXRIMS, the only options that matched our specs
were ones with rim brake zones, which are stably available.
After searching around,
I found that the cheapest option was to source a complete wheel built with
an ALEXRIMS MD23 rim and strip just the rim from it,
so I ordered one.
The internal width is 2mm different, but the compatible tire sizes
are essentially the same so there's no issue.
The MD23 rim wheel isn't just a bare rim of course,
so it probably has some runout,
but it's within 1mm,
and comparing it against the Cannondale rim,
on the opposite side where the rims are in contact
there's this much clearance.
The MD23 rim wheel has
an HB-QC300 hub,
32H pillar 14-gauge plain black spokes
Not reverse Italian (the casual term for criss-cross lacing), but JIS lacing.
There was a ridiculous center offset.
Well, I'm going to disassemble it anyway.
I carefully disassembled the Lefty hub's original wheel too and
recovered all the spokes—
none of them were bent.
The Lefty hub had XERO marked on the bearing seal, so
it's presumably XERO brand (like holograms),
but there's no marking on the spoke head,
and they're not Sapim spokes either.
In terms of magnetism, the Lefty spokes are superior—
I suspect they're much closer to iron spokes than stainless steel.
The pillar 14-gauge plain spokes only responded slightly to a magnet.
The left side (rotor mount side) spokes are short—
shorter than the nipple slot width,
The right side is ridiculously short,
Left side is short,
Right side is ridiculous...alternating like this.
There are marks from a cordless drill, and
to be able to assemble it almost entirely with a screwdriver,
they used short spokes, but
in addition to that, the left-right difference exists because
as I suspected, they used the same length spokes on both sides.
Most of the too-short right side spokes
had about 1 turn of thread visible,
but a couple had about 3 turns showing.
With 12mm nipples you can see the threads like this, but
with 14mm nipples like those that come with Sapim CX-RAY,
most of the short spokes would look fine visually.
On the Lefty hub, the quick release cap has reverse threads, and
there are slip marks where someone tried to turn it with
a spanner-type wrench, apparently not understanding the reverse thread.
It's amusing, but from this angle
the flanges look like they're the same diameter.
Actually it's a pretty decent high-low flange setup,
And with the large flange side up,
the perspective distortion makes it look extreme.
It's built.
Both the original Lefty spokes and the MD23 junk-built wheel's original spokes
came up 3mm short for the right-side 6-spoke build,
so I cut the MD23 pillar spokes to 4-spoke length for the left side,
and sourced black Competition spokes in 6-spoke length for the right,
making it an asymmetrical left-right, different-gauge, different-count reverse Italian lacing.
No result binding.
If the MD23 spokes had been the proper length with both sides flush to the nipple end,
I could have reused them for a standard lacing,
but the original state was too sloppy.
Using Champion spokes for the makeup would have been cheaper,
but the price difference between Champion and Competition
buys enough benefit that asymmetrical building makes sense.
I used the pillar spokes on the left side despite their magnetic disadvantage because,
considering that the Lefty spokes might rust through the paint,
and considering the possibility of spoke neck breakage with the pillar spokes,
the pillar seemed like the better choice.
Actually, as you can see even in the earlier MD23 original state photos,
there's a rib-like ridge line on the rim's outer edge, offset from center,
and looking at the relationship between that and the rim holes which have runout,
you can prove that the earlier nipple photos
show alternating left-right holes.
↑Like this.
The rim hole positions relative to the ridge line are different.
Oh, I also forgot to mention—
I used black brass nipples.