Another wheel build today (and so on).
A customer left me two Open Pro UST rims for rim brakes (with brake zones).
Not 20H and 24H—both are 24H.
When I build front and rear wheels with the same spoke count, if the rims have different weights,
I usually use the lighter one for the rear.
But if these were my own wheels,
I'd definitely use the one that happens to be heavier for the front this time.
However, that reasoning is probably unique to me and
has nothing to do with the rim weight itself.
The reason is that only one rim had brake wear marks on it.
If I'd built my own wheels using the one with wear marks on the front,
the brake zone on my rear wheel
wouldn't develop wear marks.
I wondered if this customer might be like me—
someone who only uses the front brake—
but the cleaner rim had no rim tape adhesive residue at all,
so it's simply a new rim.
That said, this rim must have fairly widespread circulation, but
the serial numbers
are, true to the name, consecutive.
It seems the situation is that out of two rims purchased at the same time,
only one has a history of use.
The markings in the photo above are laser-etched
and not peelable like a sticker,
so I decided to use the fact that they read correctly from the right side when viewing the wheel as
the basis for determining the rim's left and right orientation.
Built.
Evolite hub, 24H, black CX-RAY outpoke radial lacing with
silver aluminum nipples.
They probably matched the color to the silver eyelets.
Traditional Open Pro rims have double eyelets, but
double-eyelet tubeless-compatible rims probably don't exist,
so this rim is single-eyelet.
However, there are elements that continue the tradition of
the classic Open Pro WO rims or
Reflex tubular rims
(now also called Open Pro Tubular),
reflected in the design.
At some point, Mavic started manufacturing aluminum rims in the budget segment—
both standalone and for complete wheels—
in Romania,
and complete wheel rims even in higher-end models became Romanian-made.
But Open Pro alone remains French-made, unchanged.
Whether it's because moving manufacturing equipment to Romania is a hassle,
or they just have semi-finished stock without decals
sitting in a warehouse somewhere—I don't know the reason.
And the French-made, SUP-processed rims
(Mavic's proprietary smooth arc welds)
for hand-built wheels (※) have a unique feel:
aside from the slight bulge or protrusion of the rim seam on the outer edge,
they offer a distinctively high precision limit that allows you to dial in radial runout,
and truing itself is very easy with a unique tactile feedback.
Even during this build, the feel while truing made me think
"This must be the French one,"
and I actually hunted for the MADE IN FRANCE marking on the rim—
that's how confident I was from the building feel alone
that this was the French-made rim.
※I wrote "for hand-built wheels" because even if a rim is French-made,
in the case of complete wheels like Ksyrium or Aksium,
they have fewer spokes and higher tension compared to
Open Pro rims or Reflex rims which previously had 28H as the minimum spoke count,
so the concentricity of the rim's outer circumference is marginally coarser.
Still, the precision is quite high overall.
A customer left me two Open Pro UST rims for rim brakes (with brake zones).
Not 20H and 24H—both are 24H.
When I build front and rear wheels with the same spoke count, if the rims have different weights,
I usually use the lighter one for the rear.
But if these were my own wheels,
I'd definitely use the one that happens to be heavier for the front this time.
However, that reasoning is probably unique to me and
has nothing to do with the rim weight itself.
The reason is that only one rim had brake wear marks on it.
If I'd built my own wheels using the one with wear marks on the front,
the brake zone on my rear wheel
wouldn't develop wear marks.
I wondered if this customer might be like me—
someone who only uses the front brake—
but the cleaner rim had no rim tape adhesive residue at all,
so it's simply a new rim.
That said, this rim must have fairly widespread circulation, but
the serial numbers
are, true to the name, consecutive.
It seems the situation is that out of two rims purchased at the same time,
only one has a history of use.
The markings in the photo above are laser-etched
and not peelable like a sticker,
so I decided to use the fact that they read correctly from the right side when viewing the wheel as
the basis for determining the rim's left and right orientation.
Built.
Evolite hub, 24H, black CX-RAY outpoke radial lacing with
silver aluminum nipples.
They probably matched the color to the silver eyelets.
Traditional Open Pro rims have double eyelets, but
double-eyelet tubeless-compatible rims probably don't exist,
so this rim is single-eyelet.
However, there are elements that continue the tradition of
the classic Open Pro WO rims or
Reflex tubular rims
(now also called Open Pro Tubular),
reflected in the design.
At some point, Mavic started manufacturing aluminum rims in the budget segment—
both standalone and for complete wheels—
in Romania,
and complete wheel rims even in higher-end models became Romanian-made.
But Open Pro alone remains French-made, unchanged.
Whether it's because moving manufacturing equipment to Romania is a hassle,
or they just have semi-finished stock without decals
sitting in a warehouse somewhere—I don't know the reason.
And the French-made, SUP-processed rims
(Mavic's proprietary smooth arc welds)
for hand-built wheels (※) have a unique feel:
aside from the slight bulge or protrusion of the rim seam on the outer edge,
they offer a distinctively high precision limit that allows you to dial in radial runout,
and truing itself is very easy with a unique tactile feedback.
Even during this build, the feel while truing made me think
"This must be the French one,"
and I actually hunted for the MADE IN FRANCE marking on the rim—
that's how confident I was from the building feel alone
that this was the French-made rim.
※I wrote "for hand-built wheels" because even if a rim is French-made,
in the case of complete wheels like Ksyrium or Aksium,
they have fewer spokes and higher tension compared to
Open Pro rims or Reflex rims which previously had 28H as the minimum spoke count,
so the concentricity of the rim's outer circumference is marginally coarser.
Still, the precision is quite high overall.