Another day, another wheel job (and so on).
A customer brought in a front and rear wheelset
that was supposedly built for cyclocross.
I'd planned to just do an inspection at first,
but the condition was so terrible
that a complete rebuild became necessary.
At the customer's request,
I'm keeping the shop and owner's name out of this,
but these wheels were built at a shop started by
a top-tier cyclocross racer in Nagano Prefecture,
and the owner himself is the one who built them.
There are awful issues at virtually every point of inspection.
These are such terrible wheels that even if you
deliberately tried to build something this bad,
I'm not sure you could manage it.
The rim is a cheap Chinese carbon tubular
that the shop sourced.
Shimano RS470 hub, 28H, laced 4-cross.
Front wheel: reverse Italian lacing,
Rear wheel: JIS lacing.
The front wheel image above
is something we'll be revisiting later.
The spokes are Star brand Starbright,
the kind that barely reacts to a magnet—
what we call here "crap Starbright."
I had the customer compare the magnetic properties
with the current-generation Starbright we have in stock.
Despite being sold as Starbright spokes
and stamped with the Starbright marking (capital H),
the composition is definitely not Starbright—
it's a counterfeit product. I'd tell the customer
it's not too late to demand a replacement from the supplier.
The current Starbright comes in a bag with a paper
that lists the model name and size,
and includes a serial number stamp.
There are no magnetic issues with those.
There's no "crap Starbright" among NJS-certified
keirin-spec Starbright spokes
(at least, I've never seen any).
It seems they only do proper work for customers
where cutting corners would be noticeable.
I'd already stripped the tires as shown in the opening image.
When the customer dropped off the wheels,
I asked them to wait and removed the tires before they left
because there was something I wanted to show them.
The tires were old Dugast (before the Vittoria acquisition),
and since they weren't going to be reused,
I didn't remove them carefully.
I was absolutely certain these wheels were garbage,
so I demonstrated with a truing stand
right in front of the customer.
↑Front wheel
↑Rear wheel
The wheel center is severely out of true.
Even a department store bike wouldn't be this bad.
The rear wheel is centered off in the opposite direction
from normal wear (toward the non-freewheel side),
which means the spoke tension should be tighter there.
But with this much centering error,
the non-freewheel side is slack—a completely botched job.
Charging money for this? What nerve.
Whoever built these wheels should drop dead.
The following is something I noticed during the rebuild work,
not something I showed the customer:
The inner corners of the 3.4mm aluminum nipples
were stripped.
I wondered what kind of tool they used, and then—
I found many nipples in even worse condition.
With the front wheel being built with
matching left and right sides (4-cross)
and reverse Italian lacing,
the initial spoke route should be "left drop,"
but instead it was "right drop"
(you can see this in the front wheel image from earlier).
When that happens, you're forced to choose between two problems:
either "lace as a reverse rim rather than normal
relative to the rim hole orientation,"
or "have the valve hole positioned between spoke pairs
instead of in the gap between the final cross spoke pair bundle."
They went with the "ugly valve hole position" option.
It's hard to imagine building a wheel without noticing this,
but given the generally poor workmanship evident elsewhere,
maybe they genuinely didn't notice.
Stop scamming people with wheel-building playacting.
I rebuilt it.
HB-RS470 28H half-CX sprint
6-4 reverse Italian lacing.
Not that it's worth mentioning, but
the initial spoke route is right drop with normal rim orientation,
and the valve hole sits between spoke pairs.
Again, not worth noting, but
the wheel center is properly trued.
A customer brought in a front and rear wheelset
that was supposedly built for cyclocross.
I'd planned to just do an inspection at first,
but the condition was so terrible
that a complete rebuild became necessary.
At the customer's request,
I'm keeping the shop and owner's name out of this,
but these wheels were built at a shop started by
a top-tier cyclocross racer in Nagano Prefecture,
and the owner himself is the one who built them.
There are awful issues at virtually every point of inspection.
These are such terrible wheels that even if you
deliberately tried to build something this bad,
I'm not sure you could manage it.
The rim is a cheap Chinese carbon tubular
that the shop sourced.
Shimano RS470 hub, 28H, laced 4-cross.
Front wheel: reverse Italian lacing,
Rear wheel: JIS lacing.
The front wheel image above
is something we'll be revisiting later.
The spokes are Star brand Starbright,
the kind that barely reacts to a magnet—
what we call here "crap Starbright."
I had the customer compare the magnetic properties
with the current-generation Starbright we have in stock.
Despite being sold as Starbright spokes
and stamped with the Starbright marking (capital H),
the composition is definitely not Starbright—
it's a counterfeit product. I'd tell the customer
it's not too late to demand a replacement from the supplier.
The current Starbright comes in a bag with a paper
that lists the model name and size,
and includes a serial number stamp.
There are no magnetic issues with those.
There's no "crap Starbright" among NJS-certified
keirin-spec Starbright spokes
(at least, I've never seen any).
It seems they only do proper work for customers
where cutting corners would be noticeable.
I'd already stripped the tires as shown in the opening image.
When the customer dropped off the wheels,
I asked them to wait and removed the tires before they left
because there was something I wanted to show them.
The tires were old Dugast (before the Vittoria acquisition),
and since they weren't going to be reused,
I didn't remove them carefully.
I was absolutely certain these wheels were garbage,
so I demonstrated with a truing stand
right in front of the customer.
↑Front wheel
↑Rear wheel
The wheel center is severely out of true.
Even a department store bike wouldn't be this bad.
The rear wheel is centered off in the opposite direction
from normal wear (toward the non-freewheel side),
which means the spoke tension should be tighter there.
But with this much centering error,
the non-freewheel side is slack—a completely botched job.
Charging money for this? What nerve.
Whoever built these wheels should drop dead.
The following is something I noticed during the rebuild work,
not something I showed the customer:
The inner corners of the 3.4mm aluminum nipples
were stripped.
I wondered what kind of tool they used, and then—
I found many nipples in even worse condition.
With the front wheel being built with
matching left and right sides (4-cross)
and reverse Italian lacing,
the initial spoke route should be "left drop,"
but instead it was "right drop"
(you can see this in the front wheel image from earlier).
When that happens, you're forced to choose between two problems:
either "lace as a reverse rim rather than normal
relative to the rim hole orientation,"
or "have the valve hole positioned between spoke pairs
instead of in the gap between the final cross spoke pair bundle."
They went with the "ugly valve hole position" option.
It's hard to imagine building a wheel without noticing this,
but given the generally poor workmanship evident elsewhere,
maybe they genuinely didn't notice.
Stop scamming people with wheel-building playacting.
I rebuilt it.
HB-RS470 28H half-CX sprint
6-4 reverse Italian lacing.
Not that it's worth mentioning, but
the initial spoke route is right drop with normal rim orientation,
and the valve hole sits between spoke pairs.
Again, not worth noting, but
the wheel center is properly trued.