This last week I clattered a couple of potholes really heavily. Bit annoyed with myself, entirely my fault, but anyway, two spokes on the back wheel now waggly loose and the wheel is a touch out of true. And I can't find my spoke key (should be able to sort this myself). Have hand tightened - but to Edinburgh's roads I simply say.... Grrrr!
CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Commuting
Grrrr! New wheel out of true....
(10 posts)-
Posted 11 years ago #
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That's bad building, I'd say. I think it just shouldn't happen. Happened on my Croix de Fer - one spoke snapped and rest on one side lost tension in first 10 miles - Evans accepted that it was poorly built and retensioned the whole wheel. Free, of course.
Are the loose spokes on the same side? Close to each other?
Posted 11 years ago # -
Bashed my front wheel on Sunday morning while me and a pal emulated the recent TdF pile-up (crashing into a loose barrier at the Joppa end of Portobello prom...but that's another story...).
At first sight there was little damage but about 20 miles into the trip my wheel started emitting a tell-tale 'ting' noise with each revolution. At the halfway stop, closer inspection revealed a sl. buckle in the wheel, and a loose spoke. Got home OK but didn't want to use it in that state any more.
I've since bought another wheel on the grounds that hub, spokes, Q/R quill etc could all come in handy anyway, but as a general query: is it possible to fix a wheel that has buckled (ie. rim wobbles side-to-side, as opposed to not being quite circular, which I guess could be resolved with judicious twiddling of spokes...)?
Posted 11 years ago # -
Depends how bad, you might be able to bend it back then true with the spokes but if its really bad its probably a goner.
Posted 11 years ago # -
It's hard but certainly not impossible to permanently buckle the rim - though most often it's the spokes that are the problem.
Spoke count is everything - I've ridden for hundreds of miles on the beater with two broken spokes on the back and I got away with it - 36 spokes and a 26" wheel are pretty resilient, far more than say an aero road wheel where losing one spoke immediately leads to catastrophic unplanned wheel disassembly.
Also if the spoke key has gone walkabout you can always take the tyre off and use a screwdriver on the tops of the nipples.
Posted 11 years ago # -
As long as a rim's not creased it can be re-trued from wobbly, though if it's wobbly enough that it requires radically different spoke tensions to make it round again then it'll be at greater risk of further deformation and/or spoke-snap.
My first home-built rear stayed round but obviously had something weird going on as one spoke kept gradually loosening to the point of floppiness every few hundred miles, though it was eventually killed by a direct hit from deep pothole when there was a child on the seat at the back, which created a noticeable kink.
Posted 11 years ago # -
It's a cheap and cheerful wheel (Decathlon B'twin thingy) so the replacement wasn't awffy expensive (£25) but sounds like the old wheel might be something I could play with to hone my (currently non-existent) wheel aligning skills...
Posted 11 years ago # -
To be honest I hit one pothole so hard, while sat firmly in the saddle, that I fully expected to hear the tyre hissing away and there to be numerous broken spokes. The two loose ones are about a third of a wheel apart - the 'buckle' is teeny, so should pull back no problem (and it's 36 spoke, so as mentioned above the load is spread a bit better).
The old wheel that came off was a Campagnolo job with 24(?) spokes, in a weird pattern grouping of 3s with big gaps in between. Looked cool. By the time it was replaced two of the spokes had broken, and the rim was so worn on the braking surface that you could see ddaylight through it on two almighty cracks. And it was only at the very very end that the buckle was anything like noticeable.
Front wheel on the Cotic X has lost a spoke, but it's 32 spoke I think, and holding together (long enough for me to get the new hubs and rims I want to build the new set myself under Insto's tutelage).
Posted 11 years ago # -
All wheels I have build now have 36 spokes. I lost two spokes on my cotic on either side of the wheel (nearly opposite each other) and I didn't notice until I was cleaning and degreasing the cassette! I think they are 32 spokes. I have seen aero wheels loose a spoke and gfo the same shape as a pringle crisp! Allebong has some good advice about retitening the spoke from the inside! I didn't know that!
@WC, you can get new bearings for the cotic wheels, if they are the ones Cotic sold you? My rear has just had a new set of bearings from Dave.
Posted 11 years ago # -
It's much harder to fix wheels than build them, counter-intuitively... because you are building with brand new undamaged components they just seem to fall together into a tight true wheel whereas (in my experience) fixing a broken up wheel is just prolonging the inevitable.
I think I've built about a dozen wheels now and none of them ever went out of true. However, can I fix my Carry Freedom trailer wheels? No way!
Someone who can actually fix a duffed up old wheel = all the skills.
Posted 11 years ago #
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