Another day with wheels (and so on).
A customer brought in an Axiom Disc front wheel.
The rim has 24 holes with equal spoke count left and right,
and they want me to rebuild the wheel with a carbon rim
that's not related to Mavic.
The Axiom rim has a stated height of 21mm,
but actual measurement is about 20.5mm,
while the replacement rim is a 32mm-high
carbon tubeless rim with no eyelets and offset design.
With Mavic's old Cosmic Carbon,
there were spokes with 13mm threaded sections,
but this wheel uses 14mm.
Since I have no way at the shop to re-thread spokes to 13mm,
I made sure to check this first.
The spoke shape is unusual, so
I can't use normal straight spokes
with the Axiom hub.
I need to cut off the 14mm plain section on the rim side
and reuse the existing spokes.
↑This is the rim joint on the Axiom front wheel,
This side is acceptable, but
this side has terrible precision.
↑Viewed from the opposite side.
ALEXRIMS rims especially show this, but
with disc brake rims, a rim joint step that would always be
immediately obvious with rim brakes doesn't show up in disc brake performance,
so there seems to be slack in rim precision standards.
The Axiom rim in this case was made in Romania,
as I mentioned before.
↑This is the hub area of the front wheel on my three-roller trainer bike.
Leaf hub, 20 holes, Italian laced (6-6-Italian lacing),
which is 6-spoke, meaning left-right 3-cross,
but I've also woven the cross before the final cross—
double-cross.
Double-cross makes the wheel stiffer in a sense
and increases spoke resistance to deformation,
but the angles are forced, so the probability of spoke breakage
goes up dramatically.
So I almost never do this on wheels for sale.
This Axiom is technically 2-cross in terms of
lacing pattern reading, but
the spoke head positions on the hub flange show no left-right difference,
and if you look just at spoke head position, the phase is sparse-dense,
so the trajectory is close to 3-cross.
Most of the spoke is 14-gauge round section,
and the final cross is woven, but
the cross before that is also woven,
and to avoid the deformation specific to double-cross,
it uses flattened butted sections—
an unnecessarily elaborate specification.
When I calculated the spoke weight ratio, it came to about 94.11%,
so before the butted section was rolled,
it wasn't 14-gauge cross-sectional area
but slightly smaller.
(If it were 14-gauge, the actual measurement should show
something like 100.2% or 99.8%, within the 100% error margin).
For spokes on this hub flange,
as you can see in close-up photos later,
the spoke must become flattened immediately below the spoke head,
so for example, rebuilding entirely with straight CX-RAY spokes
isn't possible.
Photos of the wheel center taken to avoid the rim joint phase
(since there's a step).
The rim is off-center, but
for Mavic this is relatively decent, I'd say.
Doesn't matter anyway since I'm disassembling it.
The abruptly flattened spoke I mentioned before.
That's fine, but in the image above,
I've extracted the left and right spokes separately,
and they're the same length.
This isn't lazy work...
The spoke's threaded section is longer than standard spokes,
and I believe they're handling the difference in left-right spoke length
through this redundancy in the threaded section,
using the difference in thread depth engagement (effective length difference).
Campagnolo Bora spokes also have long threaded sections,
but that's also related to the special nipple's threaded depth
being different from standard nipples.
A Bora rim brake front wheel uses radial lacing on both sides,
while rim brake rear wheels or disc brake front and rear use G3 lacing,
with clearly different spoke lengths left and right.
If Campagnolo were doing equal-count lacing (4-4 or 6-6)
with left-right spoke length differences of only about 2mm,
I wanted to know whether they'd standardize spoke length
and absorb the difference through threaded section redundancy.
So I checked the Hyperon DB rear wheel spoke lengths,
which is equal-count lacing only on the rear.
Result: the rear wheel is high-low flange, so even though both sides use tangent lacing,
right side is 283.5mm and left side is 294.5mm—completely different lengths.
The front wheel is 2:1 lacing, with the few-spoke radial right at 281.5mm
and many-spoke tangent left at 283.5mm—different lacing methods,
but due to the high-low flange they end up close at 2mm difference,
yet they're not shared.
However, rear right and front left are both 283.5mm, so
these are shared, meaning four locations (front-rear-left-right)
use three different spoke lengths.
↑The image is dark, but
the silver spoke on the left is CX-RAY.
When I align it with the Axiom spoke at the thread start point,
the difference in threaded section length becomes very clear.
I threaded the CX-RAY with a standard nipple until both end faces were flush,
and advanced the Axiom spoke nipple threads to roughly the same point.
While the spoke length on the right appears to be
wrong since it's longer, it actually isn't wrong at all.
I inserted the spoke into an Axiom nipple
and measured the depth from spoke insertion to thread start—
essentially the depth of the "gingival pocket".
Where the spoke bottomed out, I marked with tape.
When I inserted that mark into a standard nipple,
there was a difference in depth,
but visually less difference than the spoke threaded section length difference.
As for the nipple itself, there's actually almost no difference
in gingival pocket depth.
↑Top image is a DT 12mm aluminum nipple,
bottom is an Axiom nipple.
When aligned at the outer face,
the DT nipple looks
incredibly short! but
comparing the length difference inboard from the rim hole contact point,
it's about 2mm, so the Axiom nipple,
excluding the hexagonal section with nylon inserted,
equals a 14mm standard nipple.
Since the gingival pocket depth difference was 2mm before,
if determining spoke length based on the nipple's
thread start point on the wheel's inner side,
there's no difference in spoke length.
Axiom makes the spoke threaded section long
so that the thread reaches all the way to where the nylon
lock is seated at the nipple's end.
With the additional length needed for disc brake front hub cup depth,
even if left-right spoke length differs by about 1mm,
the shorter side still reliably passes through the nylon,
ensuring the redundancy needed to use the same spoke length left and right
while reducing spare parts count.
Interestingly, this Axiom nipple
is made of steel, not brass.
I was shocked when it stuck to a magnet.
Even if brass (copper+zinc) had fine admixtures
with nickel or something else that magnets attract,
it wouldn't react this strongly to a magnet.
After checking, the official specs confirm it's steel.
The inside of the black anodized Axiom rim is
silver, with no anodizing inside
(by contrast, the rim on my lab wheel #8 and similar bikes
has anodizing on the inside too).
Plus, with the eyelet-less rim design
(Axiom originally had eyeleted rims)
long-term use will likely cause corrosion
from potential differences around the rim holes inside the rim.
The reason they don't use the standard cheap brass nipples available everywhere
(even mamachari use brass nipples)
seems like intentional downgrading
to create a larger weight difference in total front-rear weight
compared to higher-end models like Ksyrium.
Built it.
I shorten the spoke length by the rim inner diameter difference,
but if I cut too much, all the spokes are wasted,
and if I mess up the thread rolling on even one spoke,
since it's Mavic, I end up buying 10 or 20 spokes for one spoke,
so I was quite nervous.
The outer side has no holes except the valve hole.
I use a magnet for temporary assembly on this,
which is how I noticed the nipples were steel.
↑Going back in timeline to pre-rebuild condition,
when viewing the wheel from the right side,
the hedgehog-direction spokes both go outward,
meaning this is Italian laced.
In double-cross crossing interpretation,
from Mavic's perspective, this matches disc brake logic,
making it reverse Italian laced.
Since I didn't like that
and the hub flange spoke head positions were equal,
I relaced it as a pattern that would be interpreted as
reverse Italian laced in final cross reading.
A customer brought in an Axiom Disc front wheel.
The rim has 24 holes with equal spoke count left and right,
and they want me to rebuild the wheel with a carbon rim
that's not related to Mavic.
The Axiom rim has a stated height of 21mm,
but actual measurement is about 20.5mm,
while the replacement rim is a 32mm-high
carbon tubeless rim with no eyelets and offset design.
With Mavic's old Cosmic Carbon,
there were spokes with 13mm threaded sections,
but this wheel uses 14mm.
Since I have no way at the shop to re-thread spokes to 13mm,
I made sure to check this first.
The spoke shape is unusual, so
I can't use normal straight spokes
with the Axiom hub.
I need to cut off the 14mm plain section on the rim side
and reuse the existing spokes.
↑This is the rim joint on the Axiom front wheel,
This side is acceptable, but
this side has terrible precision.
↑Viewed from the opposite side.
ALEXRIMS rims especially show this, but
with disc brake rims, a rim joint step that would always be
immediately obvious with rim brakes doesn't show up in disc brake performance,
so there seems to be slack in rim precision standards.
The Axiom rim in this case was made in Romania,
as I mentioned before.
↑This is the hub area of the front wheel on my three-roller trainer bike.
Leaf hub, 20 holes, Italian laced (6-6-Italian lacing),
which is 6-spoke, meaning left-right 3-cross,
but I've also woven the cross before the final cross—
double-cross.
Double-cross makes the wheel stiffer in a sense
and increases spoke resistance to deformation,
but the angles are forced, so the probability of spoke breakage
goes up dramatically.
So I almost never do this on wheels for sale.
This Axiom is technically 2-cross in terms of
lacing pattern reading, but
the spoke head positions on the hub flange show no left-right difference,
and if you look just at spoke head position, the phase is sparse-dense,
so the trajectory is close to 3-cross.
Most of the spoke is 14-gauge round section,
and the final cross is woven, but
the cross before that is also woven,
and to avoid the deformation specific to double-cross,
it uses flattened butted sections—
an unnecessarily elaborate specification.
When I calculated the spoke weight ratio, it came to about 94.11%,
so before the butted section was rolled,
it wasn't 14-gauge cross-sectional area
but slightly smaller.
(If it were 14-gauge, the actual measurement should show
something like 100.2% or 99.8%, within the 100% error margin).
For spokes on this hub flange,
as you can see in close-up photos later,
the spoke must become flattened immediately below the spoke head,
so for example, rebuilding entirely with straight CX-RAY spokes
isn't possible.
Photos of the wheel center taken to avoid the rim joint phase
(since there's a step).
The rim is off-center, but
for Mavic this is relatively decent, I'd say.
Doesn't matter anyway since I'm disassembling it.
The abruptly flattened spoke I mentioned before.
That's fine, but in the image above,
I've extracted the left and right spokes separately,
and they're the same length.
This isn't lazy work...
The spoke's threaded section is longer than standard spokes,
and I believe they're handling the difference in left-right spoke length
through this redundancy in the threaded section,
using the difference in thread depth engagement (effective length difference).
Campagnolo Bora spokes also have long threaded sections,
but that's also related to the special nipple's threaded depth
being different from standard nipples.
A Bora rim brake front wheel uses radial lacing on both sides,
while rim brake rear wheels or disc brake front and rear use G3 lacing,
with clearly different spoke lengths left and right.
If Campagnolo were doing equal-count lacing (4-4 or 6-6)
with left-right spoke length differences of only about 2mm,
I wanted to know whether they'd standardize spoke length
and absorb the difference through threaded section redundancy.
So I checked the Hyperon DB rear wheel spoke lengths,
which is equal-count lacing only on the rear.
Result: the rear wheel is high-low flange, so even though both sides use tangent lacing,
right side is 283.5mm and left side is 294.5mm—completely different lengths.
The front wheel is 2:1 lacing, with the few-spoke radial right at 281.5mm
and many-spoke tangent left at 283.5mm—different lacing methods,
but due to the high-low flange they end up close at 2mm difference,
yet they're not shared.
However, rear right and front left are both 283.5mm, so
these are shared, meaning four locations (front-rear-left-right)
use three different spoke lengths.
↑The image is dark, but
the silver spoke on the left is CX-RAY.
When I align it with the Axiom spoke at the thread start point,
the difference in threaded section length becomes very clear.
I threaded the CX-RAY with a standard nipple until both end faces were flush,
and advanced the Axiom spoke nipple threads to roughly the same point.
While the spoke length on the right appears to be
wrong since it's longer, it actually isn't wrong at all.
I inserted the spoke into an Axiom nipple
and measured the depth from spoke insertion to thread start—
essentially the depth of the "gingival pocket".
Where the spoke bottomed out, I marked with tape.
When I inserted that mark into a standard nipple,
there was a difference in depth,
but visually less difference than the spoke threaded section length difference.
As for the nipple itself, there's actually almost no difference
in gingival pocket depth.
↑Top image is a DT 12mm aluminum nipple,
bottom is an Axiom nipple.
When aligned at the outer face,
the DT nipple looks
incredibly short! but
comparing the length difference inboard from the rim hole contact point,
it's about 2mm, so the Axiom nipple,
excluding the hexagonal section with nylon inserted,
equals a 14mm standard nipple.
Since the gingival pocket depth difference was 2mm before,
if determining spoke length based on the nipple's
thread start point on the wheel's inner side,
there's no difference in spoke length.
Axiom makes the spoke threaded section long
so that the thread reaches all the way to where the nylon
lock is seated at the nipple's end.
With the additional length needed for disc brake front hub cup depth,
even if left-right spoke length differs by about 1mm,
the shorter side still reliably passes through the nylon,
ensuring the redundancy needed to use the same spoke length left and right
while reducing spare parts count.
Interestingly, this Axiom nipple
is made of steel, not brass.
I was shocked when it stuck to a magnet.
Even if brass (copper+zinc) had fine admixtures
with nickel or something else that magnets attract,
it wouldn't react this strongly to a magnet.
After checking, the official specs confirm it's steel.
The inside of the black anodized Axiom rim is
silver, with no anodizing inside
(by contrast, the rim on my lab wheel #8 and similar bikes
has anodizing on the inside too).
Plus, with the eyelet-less rim design
(Axiom originally had eyeleted rims)
long-term use will likely cause corrosion
from potential differences around the rim holes inside the rim.
The reason they don't use the standard cheap brass nipples available everywhere
(even mamachari use brass nipples)
seems like intentional downgrading
to create a larger weight difference in total front-rear weight
compared to higher-end models like Ksyrium.
Built it.
I shorten the spoke length by the rim inner diameter difference,
but if I cut too much, all the spokes are wasted,
and if I mess up the thread rolling on even one spoke,
since it's Mavic, I end up buying 10 or 20 spokes for one spoke,
so I was quite nervous.
The outer side has no holes except the valve hole.
I use a magnet for temporary assembly on this,
which is how I noticed the nipples were steel.
↑Going back in timeline to pre-rebuild condition,
when viewing the wheel from the right side,
the hedgehog-direction spokes both go outward,
meaning this is Italian laced.
In double-cross crossing interpretation,
from Mavic's perspective, this matches disc brake logic,
making it reverse Italian laced.
Since I didn't like that
and the hub flange spoke head positions were equal,
I relaced it as a pattern that would be interpreted as
reverse Italian laced in final cross reading.