Tim Cullip

I have a 2007 Scattante R560 bike that has a rear freehub made by Xero. The freehub has started making a clicking sound so I've decided to replace the whole hub (the freehub body takes a standard 10 speed Shimano cassette, but the freehub body has a different mounting mechanism to the hub than the standard Shimano method).

To complicate things, the wheel has 24 spokes arranged in 12 pairs (rather than 24 equally spaced spokes on the rim, the rim has 12 side-by-side pairs of spoke holes). Since the spokes are paired up, the hub has the spoke holes on each side aligned (if the holes on the left side of the hub are aligned like a clock: 12 oclock, 1, 2, etc, then the holes on the right side are also at 12, 1, 2, etc.).

I bought a standard Shimano Ultegra 24 hole hub as a replacement without considering the above complication. This Shimano hub is obviously designed for a 24 spoke wheel that has 24 equally spaced spokes (if left side holes are at 12, 1, 2, etc., then the right side holes are at 12:30, 1:30, 2:30, etc.).

Being cheap (the Ultregra freehub only cost $65 new from Nashbar), I don't want to buy a new rim and being impatient I didn't even want to buy new spokes, so I laced the wheel up with what I had using the same 2 cross pattern of the original wheel. One obvious result is that the skewed hub hole spacing results in half the spokes being threaded further into the nipples than the other half, but I can live with that.

What I want to know is if there will be any long term problems due to the slight skewing of where the spokes mount on the right side of the hub with respect to where they mount on the left side. So far I've ridden it on two hard rides and the the wheel is performing fine.

Thanks,
Tim