A customer brought in a wheel called the L5 from 8LIEN (Alien)
for us to work on.
↑That's how you read "Alien."
Back in the day, Cinelli had a frame called the XLR8R (Accelerator),
and it's kind of like that.
This one is the L5 model, and the customer wanted an inspection.
The L series has carbon spokes,
while the F series has steel spokes.
In the L series, there are also L3 and L4 models,
and they all have 21mm internal width rims.
The rim heights (front/rear) are:
L3: 30/35mm
L4: 40/45mm
L5: 45/50mm
I rarely use anything but my own photos, but I'm borrowing images
from the manufacturer's website:
↑The L3 is fine, but...
↑the L4 and
↑L5 are pretty lazily presented—they just used the same wheel image
and swapped out the model name at the 6 o'clock position.
Time for the inspection.
Starting with the rear wheel.
The freewheel body has lightening holes,
and the center-lock spline is partially omitted—typical
lightweight hub specs. It's a straight-spoked hub design
adapted to carbon spoke flanges.
The rear wheel had a slight centering issue, so I corrected it.
Since I did it right in front of the customer and
I didn't feel there was much value to documenting it at that point,
I didn't take photos.
The front wheel just had slight lateral runout
and no centering issues.
Now, the wheel photos I'm showing
were actually taken after the work was done,
once I realized there was something worth documenting.
And that something is:
The dimensions of the spoke wrench grip area on what looks like nipples.
The first time I saw this type of carbon spoke was probably HUNT,
then LUN, and those had a grip width of 3.4mm.
But lately they seem to be transitioning to 3.2mm,
and all the front wheel spokes were 3.2mm, but
the rear wheel had a mix of 3.4mm ones.
As you can see in the image above, the 3.2mm tool won't fit at all, and
with 3.4mm it goes in smoothly with very tight tolerances,
so there's no doubt it's 3.4mm.
The 3.4mm ones were all 10 spokes on the freewheel side
and only 2 out of 10 on the non-freewheel side.
I wish they'd at least kept the sizes consistent within spokes from the same flange.
Maybe we're in a transition period right now, but
the potential problem I can imagine is if someone
who didn't notice this discrepancy or who's just sloppy
uses a 3.4mm tool on a 3.2mm nipple,
they could strip it.
for us to work on.
↑That's how you read "Alien."
Back in the day, Cinelli had a frame called the XLR8R (Accelerator),
and it's kind of like that.
This one is the L5 model, and the customer wanted an inspection.
The L series has carbon spokes,
while the F series has steel spokes.
In the L series, there are also L3 and L4 models,
and they all have 21mm internal width rims.
The rim heights (front/rear) are:
L3: 30/35mm
L4: 40/45mm
L5: 45/50mm
I rarely use anything but my own photos, but I'm borrowing images
from the manufacturer's website:
↑The L3 is fine, but...
↑the L4 and
↑L5 are pretty lazily presented—they just used the same wheel image
and swapped out the model name at the 6 o'clock position.
Time for the inspection.
Starting with the rear wheel.
The freewheel body has lightening holes,
and the center-lock spline is partially omitted—typical
lightweight hub specs. It's a straight-spoked hub design
adapted to carbon spoke flanges.
The rear wheel had a slight centering issue, so I corrected it.
Since I did it right in front of the customer and
I didn't feel there was much value to documenting it at that point,
I didn't take photos.
The front wheel just had slight lateral runout
and no centering issues.
Now, the wheel photos I'm showing
were actually taken after the work was done,
once I realized there was something worth documenting.
And that something is:
The dimensions of the spoke wrench grip area on what looks like nipples.
The first time I saw this type of carbon spoke was probably HUNT,
then LUN, and those had a grip width of 3.4mm.
But lately they seem to be transitioning to 3.2mm,
and all the front wheel spokes were 3.2mm, but
the rear wheel had a mix of 3.4mm ones.
As you can see in the image above, the 3.2mm tool won't fit at all, and
with 3.4mm it goes in smoothly with very tight tolerances,
so there's no doubt it's 3.4mm.
The 3.4mm ones were all 10 spokes on the freewheel side
and only 2 out of 10 on the non-freewheel side.
I wish they'd at least kept the sizes consistent within spokes from the same flange.
Maybe we're in a transition period right now, but
the potential problem I can imagine is if someone
who didn't notice this discrepancy or who's just sloppy
uses a 3.4mm tool on a 3.2mm nipple,
they could strip it.