I was Laced...

Well not with drugs, but with wheels. A customer of mine came in yesterday with a rather shot I9 29er front wheel. Standard wheel with No Tubes ZTR 355 rims. The front rim was definitely jacked. I let him know after pulling the tire that he had some issues. So we talked it over and decided on relacing to No Tubes Arches. Easy enough swap. The 355 and the Arch feature the same ERD.

I grab an Arch down, and tape the two rims together to swap. I slap it in the truing stand to check out the situation. As it turns out I taped the Arch to the right side. Simple enough attack. Take out non-disc side outer spokes, clean and prep threads with silver based anti-sieze (they told me boiled linseed oil which I thought was crazy), and place on the counter. Then remove the inner right spokes one at a time clean and prep install in the new rim. Then move on to the outers.

The I9's are awesome because due to the design, if you mess up lacing them you are a jerk hole and shouldn't be working on bikes. Yeah it would be easy to cross thread a spoke into the hub, but if you take your time things go well. I make it to the disc side. This is where one of the problems was with the old wheel. There were two longer length spokes in this side of the wheel. I9 didn't seem to stoked to find that out, but whatever man. They handle thousands of spokes a day of numerous colors and lengths. Things get mixed up. No big deal. I can understand that. It isn't like it killed the wheel.

So anyways these wheels are bitchen to lace. They take a little time to prep, but once you get towards rounding and final tensioning things are amazing. The rigidity of the hub and spoke combo make rounding these wheels and exact science. An eigth to quarter turn and there is a visible movement of the rim. Steel spokes are just too elastic sometimes to get results such as these.

I'll post pics tomorrow of the rear wheel build as I do it. I forgot to take a long a camera. Plus I have to go out on deliveries. Cheers to I9 for building a crazy product.