A customer brought in a Bullet (バレット) for me to work on.
The rear wheel was rubbing against the brake shoe when riding.
Even though the spacing between brake and rim wasn't set extra tight,
a nearby shop said "the wheel probably wasn't seated straight,"
and just sent it back without doing anything.
The customer tried adjusting it a bit themselves,
but couldn't get it sorted, so they brought it to me.
Sure enough, there were traces of nipple work on the rear wheel only.
Looking at it closely, I found the spoke tension was abnormally low.
Looser than my first homemade wheel (のむラボホイール１号), clearly something's wrong.
But I don't think the customer loosened it themselves.
The reason being—they only touched it because of the brake rub in the first place,
which suggests the wheel was already loose from the start.
Also, the tool that came with the wheel doesn't grip the nipples properly,
and it wouldn't make sense to deliberately loosen spokes when trying to tighten them.
Before adjusting, I had the customer squeeze the final spoke cross to get a feel for the tension,
so they could compare it to how it would feel after adjustment.
Before adjustment, the rim was about one piece of paper closer to the freewheel side,
but once I did some tightening on the freewheel side only,
it had shifted outward by about the thickness of a 500 yen coin.
I showed the customer that, then said
"Now I'm going to center it with one-sided tightening on the non-freewheel side,"
and nailed it dead center while they watched.
The adjustment made the wheel significantly stiffer,
so I think they'll notice the difference when they ride.
I can't guarantee the brake rub won't come back,
but if it's an issue that spoke tension can fix, this should do it.
The front wheel had about one piece of paper worth of lateral offset too,
but since the direction of the noticeable side-to-side wobble and the direction needed for centering aligned,
it cleared up with just one-sided tightening.
With the front wheel, the customer probably won't notice any change in ride feel from the tightening.
In terms of nipple rotation, it was only a tiny bit.
The rear wheel was rubbing against the brake shoe when riding.
Even though the spacing between brake and rim wasn't set extra tight,
a nearby shop said "the wheel probably wasn't seated straight,"
and just sent it back without doing anything.
The customer tried adjusting it a bit themselves,
but couldn't get it sorted, so they brought it to me.
Sure enough, there were traces of nipple work on the rear wheel only.
Looking at it closely, I found the spoke tension was abnormally low.
Looser than my first homemade wheel (のむラボホイール１号), clearly something's wrong.
But I don't think the customer loosened it themselves.
The reason being—they only touched it because of the brake rub in the first place,
which suggests the wheel was already loose from the start.
Also, the tool that came with the wheel doesn't grip the nipples properly,
and it wouldn't make sense to deliberately loosen spokes when trying to tighten them.
Before adjusting, I had the customer squeeze the final spoke cross to get a feel for the tension,
so they could compare it to how it would feel after adjustment.
Before adjustment, the rim was about one piece of paper closer to the freewheel side,
but once I did some tightening on the freewheel side only,
it had shifted outward by about the thickness of a 500 yen coin.
I showed the customer that, then said
"Now I'm going to center it with one-sided tightening on the non-freewheel side,"
and nailed it dead center while they watched.
The adjustment made the wheel significantly stiffer,
so I think they'll notice the difference when they ride.
I can't guarantee the brake rub won't come back,
but if it's an issue that spoke tension can fix, this should do it.
The front wheel had about one piece of paper worth of lateral offset too,
but since the direction of the noticeable side-to-side wobble and the direction needed for centering aligned,
it cleared up with just one-sided tightening.
With the front wheel, the customer probably won't notice any change in ride feel from the tightening.
In terms of nipple rotation, it was only a tiny bit.