Another wheel day (et cetera).
A customer brought in a front wheel
that was built with a Mavic rim.
The rim is a Record Mond gold rim
and the hub is a Record small flange hub
with the globe mark, 36H.
There's a grease hole on the opposite side of the globe mark on the hub body,
and if the wheel were built with either the globe mark or the grease hole
positioned where you'd see it through the valve hole,
then in the photo above, the valve hole or rim label
should line up with the globe mark's orientation—
but this one was done pretty casually in that regard.
It doesn't affect wheel performance, but with 36 holes,
it's actually pretty easy to line up the valve hole with the hub body phase,
so I would've preferred they'd gotten that right.
The spokes are stainless star-brand, butted round spokes
based on the 15 gauge, 1.8–1.5–1.8 mm,
laced radially as outpokes.
They want me to rebuild this, but honestly,
if these had been Starbright spokes
I might've just tensioned them and called it done.
Starbright is technically categorized as a stainless spoke material,
but it sticks to a magnet with a satisfying snap—really strong.
By contrast, "stainless" (here, a specific product name rather than a generic term)
shows absolutely no reaction when you bring a magnet near it,
like it's responding to rubber or plastic instead.
There's a clear connection between this magnetic property
and spoke head separation,
and from experience, stainless spokes are prone to head separation,
so I don't use them.
Round butted spokes with a 1.5 mm butted section
start to develop plastic deformation—that stretchy "oooonh" elongation—
when tensioned above 100 kgf,
but Mavic's Record Mond rim can develop cracks around the rim holes
if you tension it like a modern aluminum rim.
In other words, this rim and these spokes
have compatibility limits that work against each other.
For the rebuild, the customer wants radial lacing.
For the nipples, they'd prefer to reuse them if possible—
they're brass, which is fine—
but they were 3.4 mm flats with a star pattern,
so I'll be swapping them for DT's 3.2 mm flats instead.
Just to be clear, it's the dimensions I'm not happy with,
not the manufacturer.
Spoke tension in radial lacing is lower than in tangential lacing,
and the more spokes you have, the lower it gets.
The phenomenon of spokes becoming completely loose and rattly
happens far more often in radial lacing
than in tangential.
The two major drawbacks of left-right radial lacing on front wheels
with many spokes (32H, 36H, etc.) are
a high likelihood of spokes becoming loose and rattly
and difficulty wiping the hub body.
As for spoke tension,
after decades of static storage,
this wheel had fallen far short
of what you'd call a wheel.
One spoke showed that rattly looseness I mentioned—
when I pinched it and shook it,
the spoke head lifted this much.
The wheel has never been used or ridden.
There are lots of fine dents on the inner surface of the rim,
so it probably spent a long time on display as part of a frameset.
Extremely light, though on the heavier side for this particular rim.
With spokes like CX-RAY that reach a material's yield point
before nipple overtightening,
spokes so strong that even the toughest aluminum or carbon rims
fail before the spoke does—
if you try to build tension-heavy with those,
the rim will crack, guaranteed.
Built.
15 gauge plain Starbright spokes,
laced radially as outpokes,
with DT brass nipples.
The higher you tension a wheel,
the smaller the difference becomes
between the highest and lowest individual spoke tensions within that wheel,
and the less variation overall.
For example, if a wheel has zero runout, perfectly centered,
and the highest tension is 120 kgf,
the lowest-tension spoke won't drop below 100 kgf,
but if the highest is only 80 kgf,
there's a good chance the lowest is dropping below 50 kgf.
What I'm getting at is,
even though you're intimidated by rim strength and don't want to overtension,
you still need to tension as much as you reasonably can.
Still, within that range of variation,
especially the lower-tension spokes tend to fall into
the range where they become rattly-loose,
so I applied locking compound to the spoke threads
a bit thicker than usual,
and after completing the build, I dripped Loctite one drop at a time
into the nipple slots from the outside.
Since it's not the high-strength type,
it won't interfere with truing later.
A customer brought in a front wheel
that was built with a Mavic rim.
The rim is a Record Mond gold rim
and the hub is a Record small flange hub
with the globe mark, 36H.
There's a grease hole on the opposite side of the globe mark on the hub body,
and if the wheel were built with either the globe mark or the grease hole
positioned where you'd see it through the valve hole,
then in the photo above, the valve hole or rim label
should line up with the globe mark's orientation—
but this one was done pretty casually in that regard.
It doesn't affect wheel performance, but with 36 holes,
it's actually pretty easy to line up the valve hole with the hub body phase,
so I would've preferred they'd gotten that right.
The spokes are stainless star-brand, butted round spokes
based on the 15 gauge, 1.8–1.5–1.8 mm,
laced radially as outpokes.
They want me to rebuild this, but honestly,
if these had been Starbright spokes
I might've just tensioned them and called it done.
Starbright is technically categorized as a stainless spoke material,
but it sticks to a magnet with a satisfying snap—really strong.
By contrast, "stainless" (here, a specific product name rather than a generic term)
shows absolutely no reaction when you bring a magnet near it,
like it's responding to rubber or plastic instead.
There's a clear connection between this magnetic property
and spoke head separation,
and from experience, stainless spokes are prone to head separation,
so I don't use them.
Round butted spokes with a 1.5 mm butted section
start to develop plastic deformation—that stretchy "oooonh" elongation—
when tensioned above 100 kgf,
but Mavic's Record Mond rim can develop cracks around the rim holes
if you tension it like a modern aluminum rim.
In other words, this rim and these spokes
have compatibility limits that work against each other.
For the rebuild, the customer wants radial lacing.
For the nipples, they'd prefer to reuse them if possible—
they're brass, which is fine—
but they were 3.4 mm flats with a star pattern,
so I'll be swapping them for DT's 3.2 mm flats instead.
Just to be clear, it's the dimensions I'm not happy with,
not the manufacturer.
Spoke tension in radial lacing is lower than in tangential lacing,
and the more spokes you have, the lower it gets.
The phenomenon of spokes becoming completely loose and rattly
happens far more often in radial lacing
than in tangential.
The two major drawbacks of left-right radial lacing on front wheels
with many spokes (32H, 36H, etc.) are
a high likelihood of spokes becoming loose and rattly
and difficulty wiping the hub body.
As for spoke tension,
after decades of static storage,
this wheel had fallen far short
of what you'd call a wheel.
One spoke showed that rattly looseness I mentioned—
when I pinched it and shook it,
the spoke head lifted this much.
The wheel has never been used or ridden.
There are lots of fine dents on the inner surface of the rim,
so it probably spent a long time on display as part of a frameset.
Extremely light, though on the heavier side for this particular rim.
With spokes like CX-RAY that reach a material's yield point
before nipple overtightening,
spokes so strong that even the toughest aluminum or carbon rims
fail before the spoke does—
if you try to build tension-heavy with those,
the rim will crack, guaranteed.
Built.
15 gauge plain Starbright spokes,
laced radially as outpokes,
with DT brass nipples.
The higher you tension a wheel,
the smaller the difference becomes
between the highest and lowest individual spoke tensions within that wheel,
and the less variation overall.
For example, if a wheel has zero runout, perfectly centered,
and the highest tension is 120 kgf,
the lowest-tension spoke won't drop below 100 kgf,
but if the highest is only 80 kgf,
there's a good chance the lowest is dropping below 50 kgf.
What I'm getting at is,
even though you're intimidated by rim strength and don't want to overtension,
you still need to tension as much as you reasonably can.
Still, within that range of variation,
especially the lower-tension spokes tend to fall into
the range where they become rattly-loose,
so I applied locking compound to the spoke threads
a bit thicker than usual,
and after completing the build, I dripped Loctite one drop at a time
into the nipple slots from the outside.
Since it's not the high-strength type,
it won't interfere with truing later.