Managed to crack a carbon rim a Bike Park Wales yesterday, I've bought a new rim to replace it, but was wondering if I could save this one as a spare and if anyone had had success with repair?
If so who did you use, cost etc?
Any composite is repairable but do you really want to rely on a repaired rim (even as a backup)?
Especially when you consider a repair is probably going to cost more than a basic Aluminium rim, you might as well just get an alloy rim for your spare wheel.
Just seems silly to bin it....
I've got away with a dab of superglue on the rim /bead bit but as always, depends on the location/size of your crack, obvs...
Plan B would be a sticker.
Might seem silly to bin it but, not as silly as you'll feel when it goes again and lands you stuck in the middle of nowhere or worse.
Did you buy it brand new, as there may be some form of crash replacement or warranty scheme available.
Keeping broken or work out stuff for spares ..does any of it ever not get dumped in the end?
How badly cracked? I rode one which had cracked for ages because I was too lazy to strip and rebuild the wheel (in a few places it turned out once I finally got round to swapping it over)
Depends how bad and where its cracked.
I've repaired a couple off rims for friends and they have been fine.
There might be a repair specialist near you that you could take it too.
The carbon repair folks often avoid rims for understandable reasons. I’ve repaired a few myself where there’s been a chunk out the bead - Easy Composites carbon repair compound - but a crack is a different proposition as you really need a full wrap of composite reinforcement
Guess it'll depend tons on the crack? First one I broke was pretty much nonstructural, I happily rode on it for hundreds of miles with a tube in. That one I reckon I'd maybe have tried to fix, if it weren't also really pretty old. Second one cracked right into the rim bed and went straight in the bin, it'd obviously lost most of its strength.
I've repaired a pulled through spoke hole (where the nipple came right through the rim) on a carbon rim using carbon weave and epoxy that came from a fishing rod repair kit. Has lasted around 2 years of peak District riding on a hardtail. I think a proper crack might be hard to do successfully.