Another day of wheels (abbreviated hereon).
I received a Bontrager wheel from a customer for MTB enduro racing.
It looks like it came stock with a complete bike,
but since the customer's intended use is enduro racing,
I have no idea what the manufacturer originally intended this wheel for.
The model name is Line Carbon 30.
With recent rims, when the model name has a number,
it often indicates the inner rim width,
but after checking, the inner width is 29mm and outer width is 36mm.
The spec is black spokes with silver nipples.
The black spokes are Bontrager original,
and the silver nipples are Alpina brass nipples
with a hexagonal grip on the outside.
However, on the manufacturer's site,
the nipples do have a hex on the outside, that's true,
but they're aluminum, not brass.
And about the black spokes...
They were XERO (Zero) proprietary spokes.
The timeline jumps around a bit,
but applying orange thread-locking compound to the spoke threads
is also a characteristic of XERO proprietary spokes.
The hub has a ratchet with 54 teeth on the hub shell,
and while there's provision for six pawls on the freebody side,
only three of them are installed—a three-pawl setup.
Each pawl has its own individual spring loaded onto it,
the same design as the Mavic FTS-L freebody's two-pawl system.
This is actually quite important.
With designs like the Novatec freebody,
which uses a clothespin-like spring C-ring,
or Campagnolo's nearly-full-circle pawl return spring,
when you have six pawls, the spring power is distributed
across all the pawls, so if dirt builds up in the ratchet area
or if too much grease is packed in there,
the pawls engage sluggishly,
or in the worst case, they stay flat and don't engage at all.
Even Novatec's 482 hub went from three to four pawls
around the later evolution hub era,
but that was a step backward.
Oh, about that photo above—I was checking the bearing seal.
With a XERO proprietary wheel,
the hub bearings should also be the XERO brand,
but that wasn't the case with this wheel.
28H four-cross lacing is fine,
but building the rear wheel in reverse Italian (semi-radial rear) lacing
is an American practice.
There are two advantages: chain suck damage to the spokes is less severe,
and rather than instructing builders to use Italian lacing for rim brake rear wheels
and JIS lacing for disc brake rear wheels,
if you train builders to use reverse Italian lacing for all tangential wheels—
disc brake front and rear wheels plus rim brake rear wheels—
the builders don't need to think, which improves efficiency.
↑This is a bearing with a XERO logo on the seal, used in
Cannondale's Hologram wheel hub.
Anyway, with this wheel, even if it sags over time,
the spoke tension is soft,
but the ride quality seems exceptionally good
and matches the intended use well. It's honestly
one of the finest wheels I've seen in recent memory—
or so I told the customer,
but they didn't believe I was being sincere from the heart,
so I ended up rebuilding this damn wheel.
The low-gear 52T sprocket and
180mm disc rotor are
nearly the same diameter when viewed from the side.
XD and XDR freewheel bodies are newer standards,
so they've been thoroughly thought through.
The clever part is that "spline length is unrelated
to sprocket width (i.e., number of speeds)".
If hub width is increased further in the future
for 13-speed or 14-speed,
as long as you swap the right end cap
for one that's half the width longer than the current one,
the existing freebody can stay the same—that's the beauty of it.
Though pride would probably never allow it,
if Shimano had adopted the XD freebody standard
when releasing their 12-speed MTB components behind SRAM,
they'd be praised for thinking of the user,
and XT probably would have sold better.
Rebuilt.
Bontrager 148 BOOST hub, 28H,
Campagnolo/CX Sprint four-cross JIS lacing with spoke elbow wrapping,
and I reused the nipples.
This 28H Campagnolo/CX Sprint spec is the same spoke selection
I use on the rear wheel of my personal disc road bike,
the nomlab Wheel No. 8,
and it produces a brutally stiff wheel.
Though even that doesn't match the stiffness of a Racing Zero DB.
I mounted the tire because
the Bontrager stretch-band-type tubeless rim tape
that was originally on the rim
is functioning properly, and I want to monitor how it performs
without sealant, just lifting the bead and observing over time.
When mounting the tire on the rear wheel, there was no instruction to install it backward,
so I mounted the tire following the single directional marking indicated.
I received a Bontrager wheel from a customer for MTB enduro racing.
It looks like it came stock with a complete bike,
but since the customer's intended use is enduro racing,
I have no idea what the manufacturer originally intended this wheel for.
The model name is Line Carbon 30.
With recent rims, when the model name has a number,
it often indicates the inner rim width,
but after checking, the inner width is 29mm and outer width is 36mm.
The spec is black spokes with silver nipples.
The black spokes are Bontrager original,
and the silver nipples are Alpina brass nipples
with a hexagonal grip on the outside.
However, on the manufacturer's site,
the nipples do have a hex on the outside, that's true,
but they're aluminum, not brass.
And about the black spokes...
They were XERO (Zero) proprietary spokes.
The timeline jumps around a bit,
but applying orange thread-locking compound to the spoke threads
is also a characteristic of XERO proprietary spokes.
The hub has a ratchet with 54 teeth on the hub shell,
and while there's provision for six pawls on the freebody side,
only three of them are installed—a three-pawl setup.
Each pawl has its own individual spring loaded onto it,
the same design as the Mavic FTS-L freebody's two-pawl system.
This is actually quite important.
With designs like the Novatec freebody,
which uses a clothespin-like spring C-ring,
or Campagnolo's nearly-full-circle pawl return spring,
when you have six pawls, the spring power is distributed
across all the pawls, so if dirt builds up in the ratchet area
or if too much grease is packed in there,
the pawls engage sluggishly,
or in the worst case, they stay flat and don't engage at all.
Even Novatec's 482 hub went from three to four pawls
around the later evolution hub era,
but that was a step backward.
Oh, about that photo above—I was checking the bearing seal.
With a XERO proprietary wheel,
the hub bearings should also be the XERO brand,
but that wasn't the case with this wheel.
28H four-cross lacing is fine,
but building the rear wheel in reverse Italian (semi-radial rear) lacing
is an American practice.
There are two advantages: chain suck damage to the spokes is less severe,
and rather than instructing builders to use Italian lacing for rim brake rear wheels
and JIS lacing for disc brake rear wheels,
if you train builders to use reverse Italian lacing for all tangential wheels—
disc brake front and rear wheels plus rim brake rear wheels—
the builders don't need to think, which improves efficiency.
↑This is a bearing with a XERO logo on the seal, used in
Cannondale's Hologram wheel hub.
Anyway, with this wheel, even if it sags over time,
the spoke tension is soft,
but the ride quality seems exceptionally good
and matches the intended use well. It's honestly
one of the finest wheels I've seen in recent memory—
or so I told the customer,
but they didn't believe I was being sincere from the heart,
so I ended up rebuilding this damn wheel.
The low-gear 52T sprocket and
180mm disc rotor are
nearly the same diameter when viewed from the side.
XD and XDR freewheel bodies are newer standards,
so they've been thoroughly thought through.
The clever part is that "spline length is unrelated
to sprocket width (i.e., number of speeds)".
If hub width is increased further in the future
for 13-speed or 14-speed,
as long as you swap the right end cap
for one that's half the width longer than the current one,
the existing freebody can stay the same—that's the beauty of it.
if Shimano had adopted the XD freebody standard
when releasing their 12-speed MTB components behind SRAM,
they'd be praised for thinking of the user,
and XT probably would have sold better.
Rebuilt.
Bontrager 148 BOOST hub, 28H,
Campagnolo/CX Sprint four-cross JIS lacing with spoke elbow wrapping,
and I reused the nipples.
This 28H Campagnolo/CX Sprint spec is the same spoke selection
I use on the rear wheel of my personal disc road bike,
the nomlab Wheel No. 8,
and it produces a brutally stiff wheel.
Though even that doesn't match the stiffness of a Racing Zero DB.
I mounted the tire because
the Bontrager stretch-band-type tubeless rim tape
that was originally on the rim
is functioning properly, and I want to monitor how it performs
without sealant, just lifting the bead and observing over time.
When mounting the tire on the rear wheel, there was no instruction to install it backward,
so I mounted the tire following the single directional marking indicated.