A customer brought in a Racing 3 for repair.
Just the front wheel.
A nipple came loose and fell into the rim,
but apparently there were other issues involved, and it became bothersome to fix,
so it's been sitting for about six months to a year.
I thought all I needed to do was fish out the nipple with a magnet and fix it...
that's what I assumed.
In cases where you're replacing just one part due to spoke breakage or nipple breakage (though not in this case),
you tighten only that section and tension it until there's no lateral runout,
and the repair is pretty much done with just fine-tuning left.
But when I actually tried that,
the worst runout was in a completely different spot from where I'd replaced the nipple.
Plus there were fine lateral runouts scattered everywhere.
And when I spun the wheel, there was significant radial runout—
a wavelike bouncing motion.
This customer had apparently taken it to another shop once for runout correction work,
separate from this nipple issue,
and that shop supposedly said "this radial runout can't be fixed."
The "other circumstances" I mentioned at the start refers to this—
apparently there was already runout before the nipple fell into the rim.
If you know what you're looking at, you can tell that this radial runout isn't from rim deformation due to buckling
but rather came from absolutely botching the lateral runout correction,
it's radial runout that resulted from attempting lateral runout correction.
To mess it up yourself and then say "it can't be fixed"—
honestly, people like that shouldn't be touching wheels at all.
And the way they said "can't be fixed" instead of "couldn't fix it" really gets to me.
Before starting the work, I showed the customer how much radial runout there was—
measured by eye against the gauge on the truing stand—
and then showed them how clean it came out after the work.
Since the radial runout was caused by nipple adjustment, nipple adjustment fixes it.
Since there was no rim deformation, I was able to achieve really excellent precision.
I'd say it's even better than the new out-of-the-box spec on this model.
If this were a rear wheel with 2:1 spoking, I don't think I could dial it in this far.
Done.
Just the front wheel.
A nipple came loose and fell into the rim,
but apparently there were other issues involved, and it became bothersome to fix,
so it's been sitting for about six months to a year.
I thought all I needed to do was fish out the nipple with a magnet and fix it...
that's what I assumed.
In cases where you're replacing just one part due to spoke breakage or nipple breakage (though not in this case),
you tighten only that section and tension it until there's no lateral runout,
and the repair is pretty much done with just fine-tuning left.
But when I actually tried that,
the worst runout was in a completely different spot from where I'd replaced the nipple.
Plus there were fine lateral runouts scattered everywhere.
And when I spun the wheel, there was significant radial runout—
a wavelike bouncing motion.
This customer had apparently taken it to another shop once for runout correction work,
separate from this nipple issue,
and that shop supposedly said "this radial runout can't be fixed."
The "other circumstances" I mentioned at the start refers to this—
apparently there was already runout before the nipple fell into the rim.
If you know what you're looking at, you can tell that this radial runout isn't from rim deformation due to buckling
but rather came from absolutely botching the lateral runout correction,
it's radial runout that resulted from attempting lateral runout correction.
To mess it up yourself and then say "it can't be fixed"—
honestly, people like that shouldn't be touching wheels at all.
And the way they said "can't be fixed" instead of "couldn't fix it" really gets to me.
Before starting the work, I showed the customer how much radial runout there was—
measured by eye against the gauge on the truing stand—
and then showed them how clean it came out after the work.
Since the radial runout was caused by nipple adjustment, nipple adjustment fixes it.
Since there was no rim deformation, I was able to achieve really excellent precision.
I'd say it's even better than the new out-of-the-box spec on this model.
If this were a rear wheel with 2:1 spoking, I don't think I could dial it in this far.
Done.