robow

A friend asked me to rebuild his rear wheel which included a Bontrager Racelight 850 rim and 24 bladed spokes (12 pairs of 2). Unfortunately he had already removed the spokes before handing it to me and so I have no idea what tension the spokes were under before. I did take a look at his front wheel and often the front spokes should be around the ideal tension and should be similar to the drive side rear spokes but according to my Park spoke tension meter, they're all over the place. The spoke blades are 1.15 thick and 3.3 mm wide. Using the Park calculator, with those dimensions, I come up with the chart below, but the tension meter rarely showed a front spoke over 12 or 13 and many much less. So are these rims designed to accept a lot less pressure than say a Mavic Open Pro that has a more ideal tension of 100- 110 Kgf ? What would you shoot for as spoke tension goes? As always, thanks for your input.

TM-1 Reading - Spoke Tension (Kgf)
10 - 54
11 - 58
12 - 63
13 - 69
14 - 76
15 - 83
16 - 92
17 - 102
18 - 113
19 - 126
20 - 140

mconlonx

Sounds like the front wheel is undertensioned. I would be building the rear with a reading of 17-18 from the TM-1 on the drive side.

Are these traditional lacing or paired spoke design? I think the paired spoke design went with even higher tension values...

robow

they're built up with paired spoke design but they are crossed.
thanks