A customer brought in a Bora (wheel) for me to work on.
The complaint was almost certainly that the center was off.
The tubular tire was glued on with rim cement,
but since it had internal nipples I removed it.
Since time had passed since it was originally glued on,
it came off way too easily — but I figure re-gluing the tire
after my work is done will at least be worthwhile.
It's pretty standard for the right end nut on the rear hub to loosen by hand,
but this time it was the left end nut that came loose. Why on earth?
The right side was fine, by the way.
Both front and rear tires have sealant in them,
but while the front wheel let air out pretty smoothly,
the rear wheel had sealant buildup clogging the valve,
so the air barely came out.
I removed the valve core,
and it just hissed slightly, taking a long time
before the tire deflated enough to actually remove it.
Now, the critical issue of the center being off:
↑front
↑rear
What the heck is this?
It's abnormally off-center.
This is definitely the result of someone obsessively working on lateral trueing
on just one side.
There's no way it could ship from the factory this far off.
The customer isn't the original owner of this wheel, so they don't know the repair history,
but with this much offset, it would be harder NOT to notice when installing it on a fork or frame.
The front wheel is easy — I just need to tighten it back to center,
but the rear wheel is tricky because the rim has shifted toward the anti-freewheel side.
With G3 spoke pattern, tightening on the anti-freewheel side is easier,
so someone probably got carried away doing that.
I thought bringing it back with only freewheel-side tightening would be tough,
but since the rear wheel's overall tension was on the low side,
I was able to fix both the trueing and centering
with almost exclusively freewheel-side tightening.
As a reference for how tight to tension:
I was lucky that a Bora One and Ultra Two
happened to be in the shop.
This Ultra Two — though I haven't written about it —
is a wheel I tensioned quite firmly in the past for certain reasons,
so I can confidently say "this tension is safe."
That said, I didn't tension this wheel quite as much as that Ultra Two's "safe limit."
The complaint was almost certainly that the center was off.
The tubular tire was glued on with rim cement,
but since it had internal nipples I removed it.
Since time had passed since it was originally glued on,
it came off way too easily — but I figure re-gluing the tire
after my work is done will at least be worthwhile.
It's pretty standard for the right end nut on the rear hub to loosen by hand,
but this time it was the left end nut that came loose. Why on earth?
The right side was fine, by the way.
Both front and rear tires have sealant in them,
but while the front wheel let air out pretty smoothly,
the rear wheel had sealant buildup clogging the valve,
so the air barely came out.
I removed the valve core,
and it just hissed slightly, taking a long time
before the tire deflated enough to actually remove it.
Now, the critical issue of the center being off:
↑front
↑rear
What the heck is this?
It's abnormally off-center.
This is definitely the result of someone obsessively working on lateral trueing
on just one side.
There's no way it could ship from the factory this far off.
The customer isn't the original owner of this wheel, so they don't know the repair history,
but with this much offset, it would be harder NOT to notice when installing it on a fork or frame.
The front wheel is easy — I just need to tighten it back to center,
but the rear wheel is tricky because the rim has shifted toward the anti-freewheel side.
With G3 spoke pattern, tightening on the anti-freewheel side is easier,
so someone probably got carried away doing that.
I thought bringing it back with only freewheel-side tightening would be tough,
but since the rear wheel's overall tension was on the low side,
I was able to fix both the trueing and centering
with almost exclusively freewheel-side tightening.
As a reference for how tight to tension:
I was lucky that a Bora One and Ultra Two
happened to be in the shop.
This Ultra Two — though I haven't written about it —
is a wheel I tensioned quite firmly in the past for certain reasons,
so I can confidently say "this tension is safe."
That said, I didn't tension this wheel quite as much as that Ultra Two's "safe limit."