I received a WH9000 C24 wheel from a customer for service.
They wanted an inspection.
They mentioned the front wheel judders when braking,
but I couldn't find any obvious cause on the wheel side.
There's a center offset about the thickness of a sheet of paper, and one noticeable lateral runout,
but nothing severe enough to affect braking feel. No hub play either.
The rear wheel has more runout than the front, with significant center offset.
↑About this much
The rim is offset toward the non-drive side, but even Shimano wouldn't ship a wheel with this much offset.
Also, the direction of the offset isn't what you'd see from normal aging and use,
so I can safely conclude the rim shifted as a result of aggressive spoke tension adjustment.
The nipples show signs of being stripped.
With my tools and technique, I wouldn't damage them this badly.
I don't know whether the customer or a local shop worked on them,
so I'll skip dwelling on that.
I addressed most of the lateral runout by tightening on the drive side.
The center offset hasn't improved much.
Since the drive side was already fairly tight,
I can't fix this much offset by just tightening the drive side alone.
But I tried anyway.
The drive-side nipples can't be tightened further without sacrificing adjustment margin for fine-tuning later.
So I had to loosen the non-drive side a bit.
Though really, I was just backing off the excessive tension that was added before.
If I had centered the wheel without increasing drive-side tension,
I would have needed to loosen it more.
Overall, the tension should be higher than when it was brought in.
I also cleaned up the hub while I was at it.
They wanted an inspection.
They mentioned the front wheel judders when braking,
but I couldn't find any obvious cause on the wheel side.
There's a center offset about the thickness of a sheet of paper, and one noticeable lateral runout,
but nothing severe enough to affect braking feel. No hub play either.
The rear wheel has more runout than the front, with significant center offset.
↑About this much
The rim is offset toward the non-drive side, but even Shimano wouldn't ship a wheel with this much offset.
Also, the direction of the offset isn't what you'd see from normal aging and use,
so I can safely conclude the rim shifted as a result of aggressive spoke tension adjustment.
The nipples show signs of being stripped.
With my tools and technique, I wouldn't damage them this badly.
I don't know whether the customer or a local shop worked on them,
so I'll skip dwelling on that.
I addressed most of the lateral runout by tightening on the drive side.
The center offset hasn't improved much.
Since the drive side was already fairly tight,
I can't fix this much offset by just tightening the drive side alone.
But I tried anyway.
The drive-side nipples can't be tightened further without sacrificing adjustment margin for fine-tuning later.
So I had to loosen the non-drive side a bit.
Though really, I was just backing off the excessive tension that was added before.
If I had centered the wheel without increasing drive-side tension,
I would have needed to loosen it more.
Overall, the tension should be higher than when it was brought in.
I also cleaned up the hub while I was at it.