Bought an orbea 24 for the lad yesterday, lovely bike, but there’s a significant judder from the front wheel when braking, on inspection the rim has a ‘ seam’ for want of a better word where, presumably! The two ends have been joined to make a wheel, I’ve never experienced anything like this with rim brakes before, I’ll be mentioning it to the shop, but will it bed in in time?

Do you mean the joint in the rim? Very common on non-machined rims.

It would appear to be the joint njee.

All rims have a join, should only cause an issue if the joint is seriously out of alignment.

Could be badly set up pads, try a bit of toe in first.

With a moniker like that Neil, I’ll take your word, and try some toe in, cheers!

It’s been largely eliminated as a problem in most bikes because sidewalls are machined after production, to give a seamless join (you can see it clearly on most rims between the spoke holes though), you can take it back, but it’s not an uncommon problem at all.

Toe in may help, but you’ll likely still get a ‘ticking’ as the pads cross the join.

OP, you mention judder, which unless you are dragging the brakes at high speed, the rim join will cause more of a ticking.

So, which is it?

If it is a judder (high frequency) it may be a loose headset or an over flexy fork.

As the break clamps the rim the wheel pulls in towards the frame a short distance (made worse with a flexy fork or a loose headset), if the brake is nice and strong the tyre can loose friction with the road (rather than slip through the brake) and spring back, landing on the road again and starting the process over, causing the ‘judder’.

Get it back to the shop if it is new.

can also be caused by the main pivot on the v brake being sloppy and allowing the brake to move back and forth under braking.

The joint on the rim shouldn’t cause brake ‘judder’ anyway. Have you checked everything’s tight, brakes, pads, headset, wheel skewer?

I get something similar on a budget non-suspension fork with v-brakes. I’ve noticed that one of the brake studs on the fork legs must have been a tight fit, so some muppet must have filed it down when the bike was first built. Now the brake stud is a sort of tapered hexagonal shape with plenty of slop. When I get round to fitting a disc I’ll get to find out if that was the problem.

It’s definitely more of a judder, I think mat’s spot on, I’ll be taking it back for an inspection, fork shouldn’t be flexy, doesn’t seem like headset, thanks for feedback folks!

The join in the rim can be smoothed out with a bit of emery paper. As above could be lose headset .