Another wheel day (and so on).
A customer brought in a Rovar Rapidé CLX for me to work on.
They wanted a rebuild, so
I'm swapping the spokes on one side from
Aerolight to CX Sprint.
They said if the bearings needed replacing,
to go ahead and do it.
They were completely shot—the rotation was grinding badly.
I've mentioned this before, but
Specialized's through-axle
uses the Syntace X-12 standard,
which is an extremely tight through-axle.
In contrast, Rovar
uses DT hubs from their manufacturing partner,
which feature larger-diameter bearings—or rather,
bearings with a big difference between inner and outer diameter
(meaning larger balls can be used).
But on the hub interior, even though
it looks like you could press in a slightly larger bearing,
for reasons that only an idiot would understand
they use 6802 bearings with a small outer diameter
relative to the inner diameter.
This mismatch between the very tight through-axle
and bearings that can't handle that compression
means Rovar front wheels
have grinding bearing rotation incredibly often.
When you grab the top of the front wheel and shake it side to side,
if there's no play, the wheel is properly fixed.
As a rule of thumb, from hand-tight
loosen it about 80 degrees,
and if there's no play side to side, that's sufficient.
Tightening those unnecessary extra 80 degrees
drastically shortens bearing life.
All rebuilt.
As I mentioned at the start,
I changed the right-side spokes to CX Sprint
and rebuilt the wheel.
I also replaced the hub bearings.
Rovar's 2:1 lacing wheels use a radial pattern,
but the Rapidé CLX front wheel alone uses a radial lacing.
With fewer spokes and the tangent-laced side
at one cross, the final crossing is
close to the hub flange,
so bracing the spokes has almost no benefit.
After rebuilding, I flexed the final crossing area,
but there wasn't enough deflection that bracing would help,
so I skipped it.
A customer brought in a Rovar Rapidé CLX for me to work on.
They wanted a rebuild, so
I'm swapping the spokes on one side from
Aerolight to CX Sprint.
They said if the bearings needed replacing,
to go ahead and do it.
They were completely shot—the rotation was grinding badly.
I've mentioned this before, but
Specialized's through-axle
uses the Syntace X-12 standard,
which is an extremely tight through-axle.
In contrast, Rovar
uses DT hubs from their manufacturing partner,
which feature larger-diameter bearings—or rather,
bearings with a big difference between inner and outer diameter
(meaning larger balls can be used).
But on the hub interior, even though
it looks like you could press in a slightly larger bearing,
they use 6802 bearings with a small outer diameter
relative to the inner diameter.
This mismatch between the very tight through-axle
and bearings that can't handle that compression
means Rovar front wheels
have grinding bearing rotation incredibly often.
When you grab the top of the front wheel and shake it side to side,
if there's no play, the wheel is properly fixed.
As a rule of thumb, from hand-tight
loosen it about 80 degrees,
and if there's no play side to side, that's sufficient.
Tightening those unnecessary extra 80 degrees
drastically shortens bearing life.
All rebuilt.
As I mentioned at the start,
I changed the right-side spokes to CX Sprint
and rebuilt the wheel.
I also replaced the hub bearings.
Rovar's 2:1 lacing wheels use a radial pattern,
but the Rapidé CLX front wheel alone uses a radial lacing.
With fewer spokes and the tangent-laced side
at one cross, the final crossing is
close to the hub flange,
so bracing the spokes has almost no benefit.
After rebuilding, I flexed the final crossing area,
but there wasn't enough deflection that bracing would help,
so I skipped it.