Another wheel day (and so on...).
I received a front wheel from a customer that was built with
a Mavic rim.
The rim is a Record Mondo gold rim
The hub is a Record small flange hub with the globe logo
36H.
There's a grease hole at the opposite phase of the hub body from the globe logo,
but if you were to position it so the globe logo or grease hole
was visible when looking through the valve hole,
in the state shown in the image above,
the valve hole or rim label should align with the extension of the globe logo's phase—
but this wheel was built pretty carelessly in that regard.
It doesn't affect the wheel's performance,
but with 36 holes it's actually quite easy to align
the valve hole with the hub body phase,
so I wish this had been done properly.
The spokes are stainless star-branded
15-base butted round spokes
1.8–1.5–1.8mm
laced in an inverted radial pattern.
The customer wants me to rebuild these,
but if the spokes had been Starbright instead,
I might have just tensioned them up
and called it done.
Starbright is technically classified as a stainless spoke by material,
but it sticks to a magnet with a strong "pching!" sound.
In contrast, stainless steel (in this case a product brand name, not a generic term)
shows no reaction to a magnet—it's like the magnet is approaching rubber or plastic.
There's clearly a relationship between this magnetism and spoke breakage at the neck,
and from experience, stainless tends to break at the neck easily,
so I don't use it.
Round butted spokes with a 1.5mm butted section start showing
plastic deformation in the longitudinal direction—that "unyooon" effect—
when tensioned over 100 kgf,
but if you tension a Mavic Record Mondo rim the way you would a modern aluminum rim,
there's a real risk of cracks developing around the rim holes.
In other words, this rim and these spokes have limits that feed directly into each other.
For the rebuild, the customer wants a radial lacing pattern.
They'd prefer to reuse the nipples if possible,
and while the brass nipples are fine,
these were 3.4mm across-flats star nipples,
so I'll swap them for DT 3.2mm across-flats nipples.
To be clear, my issue isn't with the brand—it's with the dimensions.
Spoke tension is lower in a radial lacing
than in a tangential lacing,
and the more spokes you have,
the lower the tension becomes.
The phenomenon where spokes rattle loose is far more common
in radial lacing than in tangential lacing.
The two major drawbacks of left-right radial lacing on front wheels
with many spokes like 32H or 36H are:
a high likelihood that some spokes will become very loose and rattle,
and the hub body becomes harder to clean.
As for spoke tension,
after decades of static storage
it had fallen far short of what you'd call a proper wheel.
One spot showed the spoke rattle I mentioned earlier—
when I pinched and shook it with my fingers, the spoke head
lifted this much.
The wheel itself has never been used or ridden.
There are many fine dents on the inner surface of the rim,
so I suspect it has a long history of being displayed mounted on a frameset.
Extremely light, but a bit on the heavy side for this rim.
If you were to use spokes like CX-RAY, which reach the material's yield point
before the nipples max out, causing even the strongest aluminum or carbon rims
to crack before the spoke does,
and you tried to build it tight,
the rim would definitely crack.
Built.
15-gauge plain Starbright spokes
inverted radial lacing
with DT brass nipples.
Spoke tension: the tighter you build, the smaller
the difference and variation between the highest and lowest
spoke tensions within that wheel.
For example, if a wheel is perfectly centered with no radial or lateral runout
and the highest tension in the wheel is 120 kgf,
the lowest-tensioned spoke won't fall below 100 kgf,
but if the highest tension were only 80 kgf,
there's a real chance the lowest could drop below 50 kgf.
What I'm getting at is:
even though you might shy away from tensioning because of rim strength concerns,
you still need to tension as much as you can.
Even so, some spokes—especially the low-tension ones—
can end up in the range where spoke rattle becomes
likely, so I applied thread-locking compound
a bit thicker than usual to the nipple threads,
and after finishing the build, I dropped Loctite one drop at a time
into the slot of each nipple from the outside.
Since it's not high-strength,
it won't interfere with truing the wheel later.
I received a front wheel from a customer that was built with
a Mavic rim.
The rim is a Record Mondo gold rim
The hub is a Record small flange hub with the globe logo
36H.
There's a grease hole at the opposite phase of the hub body from the globe logo,
but if you were to position it so the globe logo or grease hole
was visible when looking through the valve hole,
in the state shown in the image above,
the valve hole or rim label should align with the extension of the globe logo's phase—
but this wheel was built pretty carelessly in that regard.
It doesn't affect the wheel's performance,
but with 36 holes it's actually quite easy to align
the valve hole with the hub body phase,
so I wish this had been done properly.
The spokes are stainless star-branded
15-base butted round spokes
1.8–1.5–1.8mm
laced in an inverted radial pattern.
The customer wants me to rebuild these,
but if the spokes had been Starbright instead,
I might have just tensioned them up
and called it done.
Starbright is technically classified as a stainless spoke by material,
but it sticks to a magnet with a strong "pching!" sound.
In contrast, stainless steel (in this case a product brand name, not a generic term)
shows no reaction to a magnet—it's like the magnet is approaching rubber or plastic.
There's clearly a relationship between this magnetism and spoke breakage at the neck,
and from experience, stainless tends to break at the neck easily,
so I don't use it.
Round butted spokes with a 1.5mm butted section start showing
plastic deformation in the longitudinal direction—that "unyooon" effect—
when tensioned over 100 kgf,
but if you tension a Mavic Record Mondo rim the way you would a modern aluminum rim,
there's a real risk of cracks developing around the rim holes.
In other words, this rim and these spokes have limits that feed directly into each other.
For the rebuild, the customer wants a radial lacing pattern.
They'd prefer to reuse the nipples if possible,
and while the brass nipples are fine,
these were 3.4mm across-flats star nipples,
so I'll swap them for DT 3.2mm across-flats nipples.
To be clear, my issue isn't with the brand—it's with the dimensions.
Spoke tension is lower in a radial lacing
than in a tangential lacing,
and the more spokes you have,
the lower the tension becomes.
The phenomenon where spokes rattle loose is far more common
in radial lacing than in tangential lacing.
The two major drawbacks of left-right radial lacing on front wheels
with many spokes like 32H or 36H are:
a high likelihood that some spokes will become very loose and rattle,
and the hub body becomes harder to clean.
As for spoke tension,
after decades of static storage
it had fallen far short of what you'd call a proper wheel.
One spot showed the spoke rattle I mentioned earlier—
when I pinched and shook it with my fingers, the spoke head
lifted this much.
The wheel itself has never been used or ridden.
There are many fine dents on the inner surface of the rim,
so I suspect it has a long history of being displayed mounted on a frameset.
Extremely light, but a bit on the heavy side for this rim.
If you were to use spokes like CX-RAY, which reach the material's yield point
before the nipples max out, causing even the strongest aluminum or carbon rims
to crack before the spoke does,
and you tried to build it tight,
the rim would definitely crack.
Built.
15-gauge plain Starbright spokes
inverted radial lacing
with DT brass nipples.
Spoke tension: the tighter you build, the smaller
the difference and variation between the highest and lowest
spoke tensions within that wheel.
For example, if a wheel is perfectly centered with no radial or lateral runout
and the highest tension in the wheel is 120 kgf,
the lowest-tensioned spoke won't fall below 100 kgf,
but if the highest tension were only 80 kgf,
there's a real chance the lowest could drop below 50 kgf.
What I'm getting at is:
even though you might shy away from tensioning because of rim strength concerns,
you still need to tension as much as you can.
Even so, some spokes—especially the low-tension ones—
can end up in the range where spoke rattle becomes
likely, so I applied thread-locking compound
a bit thicker than usual to the nipple threads,
and after finishing the build, I dropped Loctite one drop at a time
into the slot of each nipple from the outside.
Since it's not high-strength,
it won't interfere with truing the wheel later.