I would actually suggest not unlacing it just yet. I’d want to compare it to another wheel of the same cross pattern (and number of spokes, if possible). Confirm that the crosses and angles to the rim are the same, nothing’s swapped to the wrong side of the rim, etc. I want to say my issue was all spokes were moved over by one hole.
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Sounds to me like this is the problem
Are you guys meaning the rim needing to be flipped 180 degrees? now that you mention it I can’t really remember if I was paying attention to that that time
If this is the case it will break the spokes. Don’t ask me how I know.
Y’all giving me the hugs emoji like I’m not looking for excuses to hang out in the garage while the weather is still nice lol
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Astral Solstice rims finally shipped after 5 months of backorder, wheelbuild should come in around 1350g
Welp I took the problem wheel apart, kept the DS and NDS spokes separate, and relaced it a la Jobst. All came together fine but after tensioning I am still showing a thread or 2 on pretty much every spoke. I don’t think I’m being a wimp about it either, they all feel pretty tight. In one way this is an improvement since I feel like it’s more even but I still don’t think you are supposed to be showing any threads at all lol.
Thinking maybe I need to run the spoke calculator and order some new ones since I have had that work for me! But also interested to hear any more ideas. This is just to be a backup for my cargo bike and it is tempting to just order another $150 complete Cliffhanger wheel off of Universal and call it a day but I am going to be Wheel Builder
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My guess is ERD variance, I wouldn’t put it past Alex’s QA to be off a couple mm’s in either direction.
Measure the ERD, run it through the spoke calc, then compare to your current spoke length.
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I fucked up the spoke calc on my pub wheels and I’ve got threads showing but I’ve been rocking it for like… 2-3 years on one of my most ridden bikes and haven’t had issues?
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If it wasn’t the bike I ride around with my kid on I would probably do a yolo trial but the last thing I need is this wheel to explode 5 miles from home while I’ve got my daughter with me. So maybe it would be fine but I’m trying to exercise a little caution
I’ll check the ERD. The Alex website says it should be 538.8mm for the 26” rim. The QBP website says it is 541.5 mm. Treefort website says 540.5 mm. I haven’t shopped enough wheels to know if these are normal discrepancies among available numbers.
Edit: ok I went out to the garage to measure the ERD. I don’t really trust myself to do this real accurately but I used the bumpers on my dishing tool to make a measurement and the new rim was somewhere around 535-540, probably about 537-538. I checked the OEM wheel and the ERD on that rim was like 530-535. Also forgot I had the OEM cracked rim, that one also appears to be ~530-535. Like I said I don’t trust my measurement within a couple mm but that’s more than a couple mm. Mystery probably solved.
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Of course now that I’m looking up how to measure ERD, that’s not what I did, I measured the inner diameter of the rim, but you get the picture lol
just speaking from my experience in the bike shop mines, I doubt it’s going to explode
it will probably work fine for a long time. but if somewhere down the line you started frequently breaking spokes down by the nipple or something like that, you’ll have a ready reason why
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Saw something on the Park Tool site that said pretty much the same thing so I guess I’ll get it trued up and hope I don’t need it…
If.it makes you feel any better, i laced up a wheel last week and halfway through the NDS the spokes were similtaneously too long and too short and i couldnt get any more to engage with the nips.
And the hub wasnt coaxial with the rim either. Cross count was right, DS went together fine…
Thought maybe i whiffed the spoke length for the first time ever, put it aside overnight, next day i looked at every step closely and realised i offset the first NDS spoke to the wrong side of the first DS and everything was rekt from there.
Umlaced the NDS, started again, all was well (except for forgetting to intertwine a bunch so i redid those too)
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The way I was taught was to take two spokes of known length, thread them flush into nipples in opposite holes on the rim, pull them fully into the rim, then measure the distance between them and add the spoke lengths. Repeat at a couple other points around the rim and take the average.
You could also make custom “reusable tools” by cutting the spokes to an even length and then using thread locker to keep them set in the nipples.
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I just got home from a ride and my partner was in the bike dungeon doing this
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QBP sold these little “rim rod” plastic sticks with stoppers which always worked great
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I’ve done something similar, except with marks on each spoke and a small rubber band for tension. Measure the length of each spoke to the marks, then measure between the marks. Just be sure to measure on the same side of the marks if the marks are wider than just a scribe line.
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Did my first ever rim swap yesterday and dang that was fast and easy. Swapped the regular nipples for double square on the rebuild because I had some spare, but a nipple driver or a flat bit with the sides ground down would have made undoing all the nips faster.