Wheels again today (and so on).
A customer brought in a front wheel built with a 7700 Dura-Ace hub and
an Open Pro rim.
They wanted it rebuilt.
HB-7700, 32H, straight gauge spokes, outpoke radial lacing.
There was a period when Shimano explicitly prohibited radial lacing on their hubs,
and the HB-5501A—a minor variant of the HB-5501 (which was itself a version of the HB-5500 from the 5500 series 105 contemporary with this 7700-series Dura-Ace)
with the flange holes moved slightly inward to secure extra meat on the outer side—became Shimano's first hub that allowed radial lacing.
In other words, this hub has radial lacing prohibited.
Yet even in the pro racing scene at that time,
wheels built radial on this hub were used without issue,
and the front hub from the previous generation—the HB-6400 from the 6400 series 600 Altegra, contemporary with the 7400-series Dura-Ace—had an 18H option.
With 18H (odd-spoke on one side at 9H),
it's impossible to avoid radial lacing entirely.
Even lacing XIXIXIXI, three spokes end up radial anyway.
Moreover, this 7700 series has an extremely varied hole-count spec:
12, 16, 24, 28, 32, 36H, plus 18H for the front only—
the hub itself came in an 18H variant.
And while I'm at it, I'll note this:
Shimano's failure to read the market—right up until the 9000 series when they discontinued hub expansion—was their inability to produce a 20H front hub.
And their misreading with disc hubs like the RS770 and R7070—skipping 24H but then making 36H—is genuinely baffling.
If they'd made a 20H front hub for rim brakes
and 24H hubs for disc brakes front and rear,
it's no exaggeration to say that over 1,000 of the wheels I've built in my career would be on Shimano hubs.
Unlike when I received the rear wheel,
the spoke length on this one was on the short side,
and the spokes were CN spokes.
CN spoke stamps come in two versions—a capital C with a lowercase n inside, and this is the all-caps version.
The stamping machine was probably worn,
because the marks aren't very clear.
The hub flange looks like it reads ZH, but
of the year and month marks on the flange,
the month only goes up to L (the 12th letter),
so this is actually HZ, not ZH—
which means August 2001.
Since this is right before the 7800 series came out,
it's a very late-period build.
I thought about it for a moment:
among letters A through L, the ones that look the same upside down are
H and I.
So HI (September in 1983 or 2009)
and IH (August in 1984 or 2010)
could be indistinguishable if they're similar specimens.
Well, if you just need to know roughly when it was made,
maybe the system is that only IG gets used for two months once every 26 years—
something like that.
These days some component parts have QR codes laser-etched on them,
so more accurately, they probably track year, month, and day internally.
Also, the alphabet for the year cycles every 26 years,
but with Dura-Ace track hubs alone,
you might not be able to tell them apart just by looking at the hub itself.
For example, around V (1997 or 2023),
if the original box is missing (and the packaging would look different)
and it's been stored unused but is pristine—well, it's not impossible.
There was centering drift,
and even without the close-up shot,
it was clearly visible—significant runout.
Rebuilt it.
HB-7700, 32H, CX-RAY outpoke radial lacing
with silver aluminum nipples.
The radial lacing was at the customer's request.
With 32H and above, cleaning around the hub shell gets awkward,
but the original was the same way, so no problem there.
While this hub can accommodate inpoke radial lacing,
I didn't do that this time.
A customer brought in a front wheel built with a 7700 Dura-Ace hub and
an Open Pro rim.
They wanted it rebuilt.
HB-7700, 32H, straight gauge spokes, outpoke radial lacing.
There was a period when Shimano explicitly prohibited radial lacing on their hubs,
and the HB-5501A—a minor variant of the HB-5501 (which was itself a version of the HB-5500 from the 5500 series 105 contemporary with this 7700-series Dura-Ace)
with the flange holes moved slightly inward to secure extra meat on the outer side—became Shimano's first hub that allowed radial lacing.
In other words, this hub has radial lacing prohibited.
Yet even in the pro racing scene at that time,
wheels built radial on this hub were used without issue,
and the front hub from the previous generation—the HB-6400 from the 6400 series 600 Altegra, contemporary with the 7400-series Dura-Ace—had an 18H option.
With 18H (odd-spoke on one side at 9H),
it's impossible to avoid radial lacing entirely.
Even lacing XIXIXIXI, three spokes end up radial anyway.
Moreover, this 7700 series has an extremely varied hole-count spec:
12, 16, 24, 28, 32, 36H, plus 18H for the front only—
the hub itself came in an 18H variant.
And while I'm at it, I'll note this:
Shimano's failure to read the market—right up until the 9000 series when they discontinued hub expansion—was their inability to produce a 20H front hub.
And their misreading with disc hubs like the RS770 and R7070—skipping 24H but then making 36H—is genuinely baffling.
If they'd made a 20H front hub for rim brakes
and 24H hubs for disc brakes front and rear,
it's no exaggeration to say that over 1,000 of the wheels I've built in my career would be on Shimano hubs.
Unlike when I received the rear wheel,
the spoke length on this one was on the short side,
and the spokes were CN spokes.
CN spoke stamps come in two versions—a capital C with a lowercase n inside, and this is the all-caps version.
The stamping machine was probably worn,
because the marks aren't very clear.
The hub flange looks like it reads ZH, but
of the year and month marks on the flange,
the month only goes up to L (the 12th letter),
so this is actually HZ, not ZH—
which means August 2001.
Since this is right before the 7800 series came out,
it's a very late-period build.
I thought about it for a moment:
among letters A through L, the ones that look the same upside down are
H and I.
So HI (September in 1983 or 2009)
and IH (August in 1984 or 2010)
could be indistinguishable if they're similar specimens.
Well, if you just need to know roughly when it was made,
maybe the system is that only IG gets used for two months once every 26 years—
something like that.
These days some component parts have QR codes laser-etched on them,
so more accurately, they probably track year, month, and day internally.
Also, the alphabet for the year cycles every 26 years,
but with Dura-Ace track hubs alone,
you might not be able to tell them apart just by looking at the hub itself.
For example, around V (1997 or 2023),
if the original box is missing (and the packaging would look different)
and it's been stored unused but is pristine—well, it's not impossible.
There was centering drift,
and even without the close-up shot,
it was clearly visible—significant runout.
Rebuilt it.
HB-7700, 32H, CX-RAY outpoke radial lacing
with silver aluminum nipples.
The radial lacing was at the customer's request.
With 32H and above, cleaning around the hub shell gets awkward,
but the original was the same way, so no problem there.
While this hub can accommodate inpoke radial lacing,
I didn't do that this time.