[Closed] Both fookin rims now bent

Assuming they came on a complete bike, they're likely to have been built my a machine, not by a person and tend to not have been tensioned as well (as evenly).
Get a bike shop to straighten them up properly (if they're pretty terrible from new you might/ought to be able to get the shop you bought the bike from to sort them out as they're not right)

Had the bike 4 months now, would my lbs still straighten them up for nothing? I'm not so sure?

Unikely IMO, and an interesting suggestion given webknow nothing about the bike, wheels, riding etc.

Only the cheapest wheels are built by machines.

I rekon its worth a try, but even if they dont its cheap enough.

My LBS has a built a couple of wheels for me and always say let them settle down for a few weeks and bring them back in for a check, so I think its fair to expect a little tuning of wheels once in a while.

The hot tip is dont take them in on a saturday wanting it done there and then, and only take the stripped wheels in no cassettes, tyres or tubes, as that all just adds time to quite a quick and painless job.

and only take the stripped wheels in no cassettes, tyres or tubes, as that all just adds time to quite a quick and painless job.

what kind of wheel truing do you do that needs tires , tubes and cassette off ?

or does your LBS just have a particularly shit truing jig ?

its easier with all the gubbins removed, not entirely neccecary, but if i was doing a set I'd take off the tires and tubes as spinning the nupples (ohh errr missis) has a habit of chewing up the rim tape and tearing tubes. Its also easier to see both sides of the rim when the rubbers off so trueing is much quicker as you can spot where the wheel is out of true, and where its just narrower/wider than it should be.

Taking the cassette off just makes the whole job nicer as you dont get covered in oil. I imagine if your working in an LBS doing 10's of bikes a day youve got a lot less paitience with oily kit then you have at home where you can go shower after some minor fiddling.

Taking the cassette off just makes the whole job nicer as you dont get covered in oil. I imagine if your working in an LBS doing 10's of bikes a day youve got a lot less paitience with oily kit then you have at home where you can go shower after some minor fiddling.

what like i did for 10 years ?

I'm with Terry, no need to strip wheels for a quick true. I've never bothered.

if i was doing a set I'd take off the tires and tubes as spinning the nupples (ohh errr missis) has a habit of chewing up the rim tape and tearing tubes.

WTF? How long are your spokes if turning the nipples is ripping the tube!?

trail rat, is it nicer to work on them stripped? I just thought it was etiquette really, and baring in mind he is hoping to get it done for free might as well try and help the LBS out, anyhow its how I take mine in when I do, only 5 mins effort so it cant hurt...

Happened to me once, thin and quite old rim tape + 120psi + 50g innertubes = shreded innertube

Nothing to do with spoke length, just the inner and outer walls of the rim were quite close together so the tube bulged enough through them to rub against the nipples.

Just saying for the sake of a few seconds pulling the cassete off, makes life easier/nicer, especialy if its oily. And IME bike shops just look for things to charge for, Langsetts once tried to charge me £30 to face a bb shell, apparently it would cost more as they'd have to remove the cranks etc first (saints, so a 60second job to remove). I took my business elswhere and now strip my bike in the car park if I ever need work doing at a shop.

Alex rhd rims on a standard spesh xc comp, i do like to give it some hammer on the dh's but were not talking metre drop offs where I ride, quite rocky in areas tho!

yea, they'll probably just need a little tweak and will then run straight the rest of their natural life. Expect to pay £8-£12 per wheel.

If you've got some cash spare, getting some better wheels might be a good idea, either some good condition hope XC on something like mavic en321's (I happen to be selling a pair, mail me if your interested). Or CRC etc will sell you new ones with shimano XT hubs. Just bear in mind any new wheel however well built will nedd a little love and care after the first few hundred miles. Its just that better built ones need a little less.

I had some alex XC rims (dp17?), lighter than mavic 717's, but made of cheese and replaced with mavic 717's on XT.

Just bear in mind any new wheel however well built will nedd a little love and care after the first few hundred miles

That is bollocks spouted by bad wheel builders. A well built and stress relieved wheel should not need truing unless you damage the rim. If someone spouts this at you (a lot of shops will), they are bad wheel builders, and you might want to try elsewhere.

Wheels I've built are at 8000km (road bike), 3000km (mountain unicycle), 1000km (24" unicycle) and a load on the 29er wheel I built years back. They are solid and true. I've also got a 29er wheel built by unicycle.co.uk which has at least 3000km in it, on everything from roads to rocky downhill tracks without needing truing - I've seen them build wheels, and they do it jolly carefully, using a spoke tension meter, and so do a good job.

If a wheel can stay true with a 110psi tyre, ridden through the year on potholed roads like my road front wheel (I've hit a good few potholes too), then any wheel should.

Although to be fair, I guess most shops take a lot less care over wheels than you would if you're building them slowly and carefully for yourself, so I wouldn't be surprised if a shop built wheel didn't stay true, but it would still be a bit unprofessional of them.

Joe

If a wheel can stay true with a 110psi tyre, ridden through the year on potholed roads like my road front wheel (I've hit a good few potholes too), then any wheel should.

Rear wheels are under a lot more stress and fundamentally weaker.

My back wheel has stayed true ever since I fixed the terrible Bontrager factory build (which was everywhere tension wise). Certainly is under more stress generally though, especially on a loaded bike like my commuter, I just haven't built a back wheel to check whether I'm right about wheels staying true. I imagine once that rim wears out I'll build up something with a mavic open pro rather than the crazy low spoke count wheel that is on there now, so check in a year or two and I'll let you know!

Although the back wheel rarely hits a pothole, as I usually get it out of the way in time, whereas the front wheel, all too often I'm not paying attention and I get a "bang bang" "oh bugger" moment.

Joe

i agree with you joe

only complaint i ever had about my wheels(in the region of about 200 builds) was from a 20stone DH rider who rode fort william the day after collection and actually put a 4 cm dent into the rim - not just the breaking surface - rather similar to him riding into a kerb at about 40 mph ....

turns out that after speaking to friends he had a huge off at fort william and landed in a similar manner to that which i describe above on a rock and dented the rim that badly and flatted .... wheel was perfectly true and reasonably tensioned except for 6 or 7 spokes round the dent where the rim had moved and cracked about 4 cms inwards ......

came in ranting and raving about how it was my fault till i asked him about the crash - to which he replied "how did you know"

trail rat, is it nicer to work on them stripped?

Clean yes, but stripped genuinely makes no difference to me whatsoever! In fact I'd rather someone spent 5 minutes with some Fairy liquid and a scrubbing brush to clean up the tyre then gave me a dirty wheel with no tyre/tube/cassette on.

What's the cassette got to do with it anyway, you're not touching it!

I've never built with a tension meter, just by eye, tried it once and the resulting wheel whils with perfectly even tension, was all over the place, so I just relieve the tension/windup 4 or 5 times before I'm happy that there are no more problems, but every wheel I've ever owned has needed some love at some point in the first year. Although it usualy gets left untill a crash puts it out of true rather than uneven spoke tension.

Anyway, not need to get so uppity about it, we're talking a quick 10-15minute job after the first 500 miles or so? Whats the big deal?

As for the comment about paying top dollar for some one man band to build your wheels, whats the point, buy them form CRC for half the price and take the tension out yourself, its building a wheel which your then going to have fun with, not rocket science.

Just true it up yourself.

Spoke key, unturned bike and some zip ties.

Good skill to have and easy to do if you have the patience. Generally its something i do on a monthly basis, as normal riding will bend the rim/spokes and loosen them slightly anyway.

Got quoted similar price so all seems good, bar the fact every single pound spent on riding related things is met with a stoney stare from the financial director (wife)! 😉
And one other thing are those alex rims not up to much then, I take it rhd doesn't stand for " rapid hill descent"

I cant beleive the tension in this thread no need to get bent out of shape about it all!!! 🙂

Wrightyson, See how the rims hold up once they have been trued up. They should be up to the job, it will just be a tensioning thing not really the rims fault.

they're fine, alex make good rims and rubbish rims just like mavic do, although not quite up to the top end, and they make a fair few more budget rims than mavic. I've no idea where yours fit in.

I'd learn to true them yourself, maybe ask the LBS if you can watch? Or read the internet, its an easy enough skill to learn. Just takes a lot of paitience the first few times.

Wheels last 2-3 years of average off road use before the rim becomes so out of shape no ammount of trueing will save it and spokes begin to snap.
XC rims last barely a season IME if used regulalry on rocky terrain. which is why I use mavic en321 rims, a little more weight and a lot more strength. Only ever needed loving after a crash that put me in hospital.

As for getting 8k km out of road wheels without trueing, i got that out of some crappy cannondale built ones before a crash put the front one out. I bought some s/h shimano r-550's, bit of love needed to the rear, but another 5k km and they were still true. Like I said, wheelbuilding aint rocket science.

I've never built with a tension meter, just by eye, tried it once and the resulting wheel whils with perfectly even tension, was all over the place

What you do is take the spokes up to tension (or almost), then alter it to get the rim straight. If you're very lucky, at tension is pretty close to true (I've had this with a couple of mavic rims), but often you have to mess a fair bit at the end, but you supposedly end up with a much better wheel.

Personally I don't own a tension meter, I use pitch to get the tension. There is a web page that tells you pitches for spoke lengths, and I either sit next to the piano and bring the wheel up to pitch, or take my ukulele out to the shed with one of the strings tuned to the right note!

Joe

I hope you're joking, but I worry that you're not!

njee is that at joes ukelale - or most of what tinas has said ?

Joe and his 'tuning'!

Wheels last 2-3 years of average off road use before the rim becomes so out of shape no ammount of trueing will save it and spokes begin to snap.

YMMV, just a thought.

I've never used a tension-meter nor played piano, my wheels are fine.

Wheels last 2-3 years of average off road use before the rim becomes so out of shape no ammount of trueing will save it and spokes begin to snap.

sorry, thats not true at all - poorly built/looked after wheels maybe!

you need to check spoke tension occasionally, but theres no reason for a wheel to have that short a lifespan unless you are using wheels that are understrength (e.g. xc wheels for hard hits/ridden by someone 'heavily-built')

tim i concur i do find it interesting the guy who advocates doing all your own wheel maintainances wheels dont last long at all ....

of course hes gonna come along and say he rides somewhere rockier than i do ..... of course im a complete wimp of a rider who would never dream of doing downhill races

Unless you have some kind of magical abilities, everything has a fatigue life, after 3 years my 717's were so floppy you could feel them deforming in corners and spokes just snapped when any further tension was applied.

The alex ones I used before that lasted 2 and a bit years before they reached the same stage.

The spokes on my lighter set of 6speed wheels are getting to a similar state although the rims are still true. God only knows how old they are though. Will probably just put new spokes in those.

As for the tension meter, i built the wheel to the required tension just on the meter, then looked at it, realised it was horribly out of kilter and did it by eye, then thought, whats the point, I may as well have done it by eye in the first place.

edit:
3 years/8000miles off road is plenty long enough IMO
I live in gnarl-core-shore-rad-maxx Berkshire, although havn't trashed a rim on anything other than the BMX since I lived in Sheffield.

I'm not denying its possible/easy to build wheels badly, I'm saying its perfectly possible to build/true your own as well as anyone else with some practice.

What ukelele strings for truing wheels?

ok - away back to the bubble

ill continue to ride on my "should be well ****ed by now" handbuilt propperly by me wheels

I'd not bothered to read TINAS's spoutings, but I will also dispute all of what you've said!

Rims don't last a season? What? Perhaps you are simply an oaf?

Joe and his 'tuning'!

I have a good sense of pitch, and no tension meter, it makes sense. It wasn't my idea, I got it from here:-

http://www.bikexprt.com/bicycle/tension.htm

I guess I could use some less ludicrous source of pitch than a ukulele, like a mobile phone app that plays a pitch, but I the uke is cheap, reliable, usually somewhere to hand and I don't worry too much about getting it dirty, as it cost a tenth as much as my phone did (and a lot less than a tension meter), and the noise it makes is quite nice, not like some kind of annoying beeper. It is probably slightly less accurate than a tension meter, but very quick just to twang the uke, twang the spoke.

Joe

after 3 years fatigued aluminium becomes floppy?

not sure about the facts behind that one...

I'd not bothered to read TINAS's spoutings, but I will also dispute all of what you've said!

Rims don't last a season? What? Perhaps you are simply an oaf?

you probably should,

When did i say they dont last a season?

I said 3 years! That 3 'seasons' plus three springs battering under the chrristmass excess, plus three autumns, and three winters.

All I've said that appears so contriversial is..........

Occasionlay wheel's need some attention, usualy after the first month or so, and are then ok for years.

This was then disputed by someone saying good wheels never need touching.

The same person then claimed I'm someing of oaf riding arround on rocks with lightweight rims and never maintaing them. Despite his earlier statement that they never need touching.

Then I had the audacity to claim that maybe after 8000miles in the peak district my lightweight XC wheels were probably at the end of their usable life, which is why I replaced them with en321's.

You tension your spokes by ukelele(sp?), I'd rather just ride my bike.

steel spokes + several million cycles = increasing brittleness, decreacing modulous

decreaced modulous = floppy feeling as for the same tension applied when trueing them the spokes have less extension, so as the wheel deforms spokes are actualy becoming unloaded sooner.

increasing brittlness = snap sooner

I'm not a materials scientist but I beleive that broadly fits.

XC rims last barely a season IME if used regulalry on rocky terrain

Unless you're using ZTR Races for DH or sommat it points to oafish riding/bad building.

You tension your spokes by ukelele(sp?), I'd rather just ride my bike.

Ukulele. Saves you loads of time truing them compared to bringing it all up from nothing. Makes a wheel that tends to be evenly tensioned and not to need any extra truing a month later. So more time 'just riding your bike'.

Joe

Still lots of tension in this thread... (in case you missed it first time)

Removing the tyre does of course make it easier to locate high and low spots in the truing jig, we're not just truing in one plane are we?

didnt miss it, just ignored it :-p

That comment was aimed at those alex lightweight rims I used, they lasted a year and a half in south derbyshire without incident, took a batterin on a weekend away at dalby, but couldnt cope with the peaks, so realy they were 2.5 years old, but only laster 1 year in the peaks.

Appologies, a case of using statistics to prove anything. I though 99% of people knew that.

I suspect that the en321's will/would last indefinately in berkshire.

As for tension, we'll agree to dissagree, you use your musical instruments, I'll just do it by squeezing pairs of spokes and pinging them with car keys

depends on the jig your using ant

Yeah, I suppose there are ways around it, but that fine chink of light you can work to with the tyre off can't be beat ime.

TINAS my "talking shite" o meter gas just exploded.

I'm currently less than impressed with my Roval Traversee wheelset that I splashed around 400 notes on.

Not only did they stay true for approximately half a nanosecond, I now have two large dings in my rear rim with a very loose spoke at each dent. Ther first one I put down to bad luck, but now I'm convinced that they are made of cheese.

Before anyone comments on my riding style, I've never dinged a rim to this degree in 15 years on any bike I've ever ridden off road. I very much doubt that they will be repairable judging by the slackness of the spokes. 6 months minimal use for a £400 wheelset is unacceptable. I very much doubt Specialized fantastic warranty service will do me any favours in this instance.

Let's put it down to oafness again then! You also wanna buy yourself a harmonica!

Eh?