Mrs Sparky had an over the bars moment and taco’d her front wheel:

Mavic 717 rim on Deore hub, LBS quoted £108 for new rim and rebuild 😯

So can the spokes be reused or have they been weakened in the crash? I’m tempted to just by a new rim off CRC and attempt a rebuild myself.

Do it yourself and use the same spokes. Cost you the price of a rim. Make sure it has the same rim depth. Line up the rims and tape them togther then swap each spoke over. Remove old rim then tension and true wheel.

It’ll make it a bit harder to build but I’ve done it quite a few times without being killed in a ball of flames(yet). They won’t be as strong, they’ll probably be strong enough unless the mrs rides at the limit.

I like the taping the rim together idea, hadn’t thought of that! Ta

Mavic 717 rim on Deore hub, LBS quoted £108 for new rim and rebuild

You could buy a decent wheel for that, and an equivilent for less.

Spokes will be just as strong unless they are bent sharply or the shoulders at the hub are bent. Just curved a bit more as will be the case here won’t make a bit of difference. Will be 100% as strong as before.

“LBS quoted £108 for new rim and rebuild”
Merlin cycles handbuilt XC717 black disc with deore hub is £60 btw

I’ve seen worse jumped on straightened to get to spin through the fork (to get home) and then LBS trued it up. Still going over 1.5yrs on despite 3’+ drops etc

Is the rim actually broken or just bent? You could try loosening all the spokes right off and see what shape the rim wants to be?

i bought a set of hope xc on 717 on ebay once for about that, still going strong, tell your lbs to do one

Yep the wheels came from Merlin £120 or £130 for the set from memory.

I try and buy tubes, chains and the odd thing from the LBS to show my face and help support them. Thought I’d see what they’d say on the wheel, expected £60 odd so was a little surprised at the quote.

Thought I’d attempt a rim replacement for <£30 or if that fails I’ll hunt down a wheel for well under the £108.

Oh and tubes, chains will now be brought online again…

You could try loosening all the spokes right off and see what shape the rim wants to be

lol…”not straight” is my guess! True you can make anything better but you would spend forever trying to get this true.

Go for it with the new rim. If you can’t do it the lbs’ will finish it off for you.

As James said:
I would mark the spot of worst deflection, loosen all the spokes in the wheel a quarter or half turn and then gently (!) stand/bounce on it either side of the buckle to push the rim back to straight. Tweak it (ie. stand on it) until it’s as straight as poss and then it should be truable by adding back in some tension.
Sometimes they pringle more easily by being too tight in the first place.
If it all goes tits up then re-using the spokes is fine. I rebuilt the wheel on the front of my singlespeed after it was 10 years old using the same spokes.

“no wheel builder worth his salt would EVER re use spokes”
i can live with that comment

but ive re used spokes from pringled wheels loads of times and had no problem at all.

new rim and re lace it yourself.

at worst, once its laced,and appprox tensioned, get the LBS to tension it properly for you?

“no wheel builder worth his salt would EVER re use spokes”
What a strange comment to make.

They will be fine.
Search for wheelpro on line and get Rogers excellant book on wheel building.
Or if you are anywhere near Shrewsbury i’ll stick a rim on there for you.

Thanks for all the tips, went for a EN521 over replacing the 717 like for like.

Took me around an hour for the rebuild, the wheel is true (side to side) but is out by maybe 0.5-1mm vertically. Got ridden over Swinley yesterday after being tested by myself and held up nicely, very pleased with the savings vs LBS rebuild and as a bonus was pretty satisfying to do.

Pics:

Good effort. bet you’re well chuffed. were the spokes OK? personally I’d have binned any that were really out of true, but that’s just me. give them half a turn after a few miles.