Will getting my factory built wheels hand trued improve them out of the box?

If hand built wheels are supposed to be better, will it improve my factory ones to have somebody good tighten them up?

Yeah the lbs have given a couple of OE wheelsets the once-over they were (and still are) pretty good tbh

Workmanlike but unobtrusive

Depends how good the wheels have been built and whether the lbs wheelbuilder is any good. Ive seen horrendous handbuilt wheels and very good machine built wheels (hope are machine built).
Or in STW tradition buy a book and become an expert overnight.

My Shimano RS11s had a slight buckle on the rear wheel straight out of the box, I just put it down to them having been knocked in transit and will get a shop to true them up at some point.

What rorscharch said. Good factory wheels will be as good as anything, bad handbuilts will be as bad as bad factory wheels.

Or read the sheldon brown guide, buy a truing stand and tension guage and build them yourself. It’s no more difficult than fitting a rear mech and adjusting gears (well, 32 mechs and 32 gears).

I’d certainly check them, but if they were true and all the spokes were nice and tight I’d leave them alone.

Let’s get a couple of things right shall we?

“Tighter” does not mean “better”. Wheel stiffness is NOT affected by spoke tension unless you go massively loose or stupidly tight upon which stiffness decreases rapidly. There are test results to prove this. (For a given rim and hub the only way to make it stiffer is thicker spokes and/or more of them)

What’s necessary is the “correct” tension. Correc tension ensures optimum performance and more importantly, best service life.

By all means get them checked, but make sure whoever is checking them knows their onions – i.e. What the correct tension is and is in possession of a tension meter to check that. Anything else is a waste of time.

Lots of cheap OEM wheels are pretty poor, but something like a basic Mavic or Bontrager wheelset at the £200+ mark will be very, very good straight out of the box.

Only limited experience but aftermarket Shimano road wheels appear to be bombproof out of the box.
Very pleasantly surprised.

very good machine built wheels (hope are machine built).

Hope machine built are shit. I know of many people, including me who had to loosen them off and redo the tension on them.

If you’re talking about getting a set of Mavics then NO, nothing can improve a shoddy part(s) like those where ever you seek help to rebuild.

I would highly recommend you throw them in the bin if Mavic, like right away, don’t find out the hard way. SERIOUSLY!

You don’t half talk some crap hopey.

Only limited experience but aftermarket Shimano road wheels appear to be bombproof out of the box.
Very pleasantly surprised.

Their MTB wheels are pretty good in my experience too.

I’ve got XT’s on the good bike and MT55s on the commuter and I’ve never had to true them.

I would highly recommend you throw them in the bin if Mavic, like right away, don’t find out the hard way. SERIOUSLY!

Care to expand on how you have come to this conclusion on Mavic wheels? Seems a little strong.

Maybe I cba but yes maybe I can, Mavic rims dent and buckle the hand built ones and the factory Deemaxs I had the new model ones the rear hub flange sheared in half rendering a useless wheel meaning off to warranty it went.

The fact that I dealt with Mavic directly on the warranty fix was accidental as they mistakenly thought I was a dealer.
They were good on the whole at a quick turneround mind though.

Plus their sp spokes seem to pop off at any given timing of a ride.
Not to mention the out right outrageous cost of a set.

I in capitals do not rate their products full stop.
There will be others that do of course.

Does that answer the cynicals out there… 🙄

I had a set of Hope Hoops Arch EX wheels trued by a guy I trust and know to be an excellent wheelbuilder after about 10 rides out of the box before I went on a weeks trip to the alps. He said they were pretty close, a few spokes in each wheel needed minor tweaking.

If/when I get another set I’ll do the same, ride for a bit then get checked.

My experience of Mavic Crossmax ST wheels (having owned two sets of 26″ and 2 of sets 29″ ) is that they are very good from new and stay true for a very long time. The main weakness in the older (09) set was the freehub bush, the post 2012 sets have given no problem. I did trash one rim/spoke set on a rear wheeland had to have it rebuilt but that was operator error (mech/spoke interface at 25mph downhill) and even then it stayed together when others would have collapsed in my opinion.

Seeing as I have perfect pitch I’m pleased to find this!
http://sheldonbrown.com/spoke-pitch.html

My Hope Hoops were from Wheelpro so Roger checked them out before sending them. Whether he actually changed them at all, I don’t know. Other quality factory wheels I’ve had- Fulcrum and Roval- were well built, nothing really to be gained.

I’ve a set of Hope wheels on my MTB and I’ve not had to touch them in over 4300Km of riding including alpine downhill trails. Similarly with the wheels on my road bike which were originally Shimano cheapies that lasted about 10000Km but are now Hope (not done alpine trails on those 😆 ).

The only wheel I’ve had any problems with has been an On-One wheel which has a habit of the spokes breaking (this is on a commuter).

There’s only one thing that separates the best machine and hand built wheels, and that’s the application of lateral force to the spokes at their crossing points as they are built.

Otherwise you could (if so desired) set the machine to just as accurate a tolerance as the good handbuilt guys use. Decent handbuilt wheels will be stress relieved and rolled about a bit before a second truing, machine built may not be though some manufacturers do.

As someone that fits and repairs more sets of wheels than most (LBS Mechanic) my opinion is that Mavic make pretty much the best factory wheels available. Even their lower end stuff is beautifully made. The only thing that stops me is that I prefer to build my own wheels, I just like the whole process and find it satisfying. 🙂

Well, I don’t know if this is of any help (as it might pre-date Hopes machine built wheels), but about 4 or 5 years ago I bought a pair of Hope factory build Stans 355 rimmed wheels from 18 Bikes, and one of the lads there checked and tweaked the tension – this pair of wheels were terrific, and indistinguishable from some nice hand built wheels that I’d also got. Following my experience with the Hope/355’s, I bought another pair from 18 with Flow rims. The latter were not tweaked & tensioned by the shop, and even with the Flow rims, the wheels did feel very slightly soft under load, and they went out of true within a couple of months – the guys at 18 bikes then checked and tensioned them, and hey presto, they were better than new!

As far as Mavic wheels go, I’ve been giving a pair of their Crossmax 29ers a good going over for the last year or so in the Dark Peak, and apart from the freehub needing slightly more servicing than something like a DT240, I’ve been very pleased with them. I’ve just returned from the Alps, where I did some very rough red and black DH runs and natural stuff – the bike is just a mid travel 29er trail bike, and I weigh about 13 stone in full gear, so the wheels took a right pounding, but came out completely unscathed (the tyres on the other hand;))

Another option is to do a couple of easy rides on the new wheels then adjust them if needed.

Does that answer the cynicals out there…

It certainly answers the question at the forefront of my mind, though it has nothing to do with wheels.

Was hopeychondriact high on prescription meds when he wrote that?

Where do you live?