It's wheels again today (and so on).
A customer brought in a rear wheel assembled with a Campagnolo 9-speed freehub.
The rim is Mavic's Special Service Crux.
The SSC in the original Ksilium's Ksilium SSC
means the same thing as this.
It was assembled at a shop that deals in vintage bikes,
but the customer, while not in the bicycle business or industrial products field,
is actually a skilled craftsperson in a particular trade. While they couldn't articulate it clearly,
there was obviously something about the workmanship that felt slipshod,
so they asked me to inspect it, and if needed, rebuild it.
Shops that deal in vintage bikes
apparently can't build proper wheels.
It might be a bias, but I'm confident in saying this
because, as far as I know, there are no exceptions.
There was even a vintage bike shop near our place that called us
wanting to outsource wheel building to our shop,
but I told them "if you're a bike mechanic, you should be able to build a wheel yourself, you fool"
and refused.
Oh, this wheel was built by a shop in Tokyo.
If you're just admiring the rim and hub like bonsai,
regarding what rare parts they are and from what era,
then how well the wheel is built doesn't matter at all.
The lacing pattern is 6x lacing,
with spokes on the freewheel side being 2.0–1.8–2.0mm butted,
and on the non-drive side being 1.8mm plain,
creating a left-right unequal diameter build.
The non-drive side spokes are DT Champion,
and being almost stainless steel in composition,
they have that characteristic stainless steel luster, but
the freewheel side spokes have a grayish tone
from a passivation layer that forms like steel,
and they turned out to be Sachetti spokes.
Sachetti is an Italian spoke manufacturer that went out of business quite some time ago,
and judging from the boxes from the end of their run, they appear to have been acquired by ACI, also Italian.
For the nipples, whether they're using the spoke accessories as-is,
a DT 3.2mm spoke wrench fits, but
the Sachetti ones have 3.4mm nipples.
Since the freewheel and non-drive side spokes
use different spoke wrench sizes,
this wheel was likely assembled using only
a 3.4mm spoke wrench.
Incidentally, both sides have brass nipples.
↑Non-drive side
↑Freewheel side
↑Non-drive side
↑Freewheel side
As you can see, the freewheel side spokes are too long.
The circular cutting marks on the face of
the non-drive side nipple
are machining marks to make it clear
that these are #15 nipples.
They used spokes of the same length on both sides,
but since they're different gauges, this isn't just lazily taking spokes
from the same box and using them on both sides of the rear wheel.
With a freehub level flange offset, when using equal diameter flanges
on both sides and the same number of spokes on each side,
the spoke length should differ by about 2mm—they must know this,
yet to hand over a wheel to a customer with spoke protrusion that looks like this
shows contempt for the customer's eye for detail. But actually
it's not contempt just for this wheel's owner—
the wheel building itself is simply sloppy work.
Incidentally, the customer hadn't noticed
that the spoke length was inappropriate.
I can't write it all here,
but there were various other obviously bad aspects,
so they brought it directly from the Kanto region.
Both sides of spokes measured 302mm.
DT Champion responds only slightly to a magnet,
but the Sachetti spokes
stick with a "snap!" and stick so well that
even gently swinging the magnet around won't make them fall off.
Weighing the rim isn't just out of interest—
from whether it's hard-anodized or silver-painted,
the presence and style of eyelets, and the weight,
you can generally figure out how much tension it can handle.
I rebuilt it.
For the Sachetti, I only needed to cut 2–2.5mm,
but the customer wanted 4x lacing,
and there was enough plain section on the threaded end
to get the 4x lacing length, so
I cut it to 4x lacing length and did the build that way.
Also, per the customer's request, I tied and soldered the spokes.
By the way, this hub has a titanium axle shaft,
and with a titanium axle, the right end face
has a CAMPAGNOLO laser etching.
This hub is the type where Campagnolo took their first 8-speed freehub
and swapped in only the freebody to a matching
9-speed freebody.
↑Non-drive side
↑Freewheel side
The freewheel side spoke length is now flush with the face of the nipple.
The non-drive side, as expected, will see some slight additional tightening
(meaning the threads advance), but trimming 0.5mm proved difficult,
and shortening by 1mm was more than necessary, so
I'm reusing them as-is.
I also changed the freewheel side nipples to DT #14 brass
to standardize the tools.
A customer brought in a rear wheel assembled with a Campagnolo 9-speed freehub.
The rim is Mavic's Special Service Crux.
The SSC in the original Ksilium's Ksilium SSC
means the same thing as this.
It was assembled at a shop that deals in vintage bikes,
but the customer, while not in the bicycle business or industrial products field,
is actually a skilled craftsperson in a particular trade. While they couldn't articulate it clearly,
there was obviously something about the workmanship that felt slipshod,
so they asked me to inspect it, and if needed, rebuild it.
Shops that deal in vintage bikes
apparently can't build proper wheels.
It might be a bias, but I'm confident in saying this
because, as far as I know, there are no exceptions.
There was even a vintage bike shop near our place that called us
wanting to outsource wheel building to our shop,
but I told them "if you're a bike mechanic, you should be able to build a wheel yourself, you fool"
and refused.
Oh, this wheel was built by a shop in Tokyo.
regarding what rare parts they are and from what era,
then how well the wheel is built doesn't matter at all.
The lacing pattern is 6x lacing,
with spokes on the freewheel side being 2.0–1.8–2.0mm butted,
and on the non-drive side being 1.8mm plain,
creating a left-right unequal diameter build.
The non-drive side spokes are DT Champion,
and being almost stainless steel in composition,
they have that characteristic stainless steel luster, but
the freewheel side spokes have a grayish tone
from a passivation layer that forms like steel,
and they turned out to be Sachetti spokes.
Sachetti is an Italian spoke manufacturer that went out of business quite some time ago,
and judging from the boxes from the end of their run, they appear to have been acquired by ACI, also Italian.
For the nipples, whether they're using the spoke accessories as-is,
a DT 3.2mm spoke wrench fits, but
the Sachetti ones have 3.4mm nipples.
Since the freewheel and non-drive side spokes
use different spoke wrench sizes,
this wheel was likely assembled using only
a 3.4mm spoke wrench.
Incidentally, both sides have brass nipples.
↑Non-drive side
↑Freewheel side
↑Non-drive side
↑Freewheel side
As you can see, the freewheel side spokes are too long.
The circular cutting marks on the face of
the non-drive side nipple
are machining marks to make it clear
that these are #15 nipples.
They used spokes of the same length on both sides,
but since they're different gauges, this isn't just lazily taking spokes
from the same box and using them on both sides of the rear wheel.
With a freehub level flange offset, when using equal diameter flanges
on both sides and the same number of spokes on each side,
the spoke length should differ by about 2mm—they must know this,
yet to hand over a wheel to a customer with spoke protrusion that looks like this
shows contempt for the customer's eye for detail. But actually
it's not contempt just for this wheel's owner—
the wheel building itself is simply sloppy work.
Incidentally, the customer hadn't noticed
that the spoke length was inappropriate.
I can't write it all here,
but there were various other obviously bad aspects,
so they brought it directly from the Kanto region.
Both sides of spokes measured 302mm.
DT Champion responds only slightly to a magnet,
but the Sachetti spokes
stick with a "snap!" and stick so well that
even gently swinging the magnet around won't make them fall off.
Weighing the rim isn't just out of interest—
from whether it's hard-anodized or silver-painted,
the presence and style of eyelets, and the weight,
you can generally figure out how much tension it can handle.
I rebuilt it.
For the Sachetti, I only needed to cut 2–2.5mm,
but the customer wanted 4x lacing,
and there was enough plain section on the threaded end
to get the 4x lacing length, so
I cut it to 4x lacing length and did the build that way.
Also, per the customer's request, I tied and soldered the spokes.
By the way, this hub has a titanium axle shaft,
and with a titanium axle, the right end face
has a CAMPAGNOLO laser etching.
This hub is the type where Campagnolo took their first 8-speed freehub
and swapped in only the freebody to a matching
9-speed freebody.
↑Non-drive side
↑Freewheel side
The freewheel side spoke length is now flush with the face of the nipple.
The non-drive side, as expected, will see some slight additional tightening
(meaning the threads advance), but trimming 0.5mm proved difficult,
and shortening by 1mm was more than necessary, so
I'm reusing them as-is.
I also changed the freewheel side nipples to DT #14 brass
to standardize the tools.