A customer brought in a Ksyrium Elite (Shimano wheelset) for work.
The ride feels noticeably off, they said,
and it vibrates excessively on descents in particular.
Not the customer themselves, but
an amateur had trued the wheel, and frankly, that's what caused the problem.
If a shop had charged money for this work,
I'd be furious, but given the circumstances, it's fine.
I showed the customer the condition before work,
and first off, even the lateral truing wasn't done properly.
The spoke nipples on the freewheel side were tightened way too much,
so the rim was pulled hard toward the freewheel side.
Since there's lateral runout, the amount of offset varies depending on where I place the centering gauge,
but the overall trend is consistent.
And there was severe radial runout.
Just so you know, the gauge position is the same in the image above.
You could see the rotating rim wobbling dramatically
without even bringing the truing stand gauge close.
First I ignored the radial runout and fixed the lateral truing properly,
then tried to fix the radial runout while minimizing lateral runout,
but the radial runout was too severe so lateral runout inevitably developed.
Then I'd fix that lateral runout while trying not to introduce radial runout,
and go back to radial truing again... repeating this cycle to gradually chase down the radial runout.
The freewheel side was over-tightened, so I actually loosened it on the first pass,
but through the truing work I tightened the non-freewheel side even more,
so the overall tension after work increased slightly.
I was relieved the rim was shifted toward the freewheel side.
I could do the lateral truing with an emphasis on tightening the non-freewheel side
to reduce the centering offset while fixing the runout.
When both radial and lateral runout were basically gone,
the centering offset from before work was reduced by about half, so
I did the centering from there by tightening the non-freewheel side.
At the phase opposite the valve hole,
only at the rim joint does the inner edge dip inward,
but this is not radial runout.
At the rim spoke holes adjacent to the rim joint,
the gauge touches,
but only at the rim joint, there's this much clearance.
It took about as long as building one front wheel,
but most of that time was like solving a scrambled Rubik's cube
by finding the shortest path back to solved state.
I'm not angry since an amateur did it, though.
The ride feels noticeably off, they said,
and it vibrates excessively on descents in particular.
Not the customer themselves, but
an amateur had trued the wheel, and frankly, that's what caused the problem.
If a shop had charged money for this work,
I'd be furious, but given the circumstances, it's fine.
I showed the customer the condition before work,
and first off, even the lateral truing wasn't done properly.
The spoke nipples on the freewheel side were tightened way too much,
so the rim was pulled hard toward the freewheel side.
Since there's lateral runout, the amount of offset varies depending on where I place the centering gauge,
but the overall trend is consistent.
And there was severe radial runout.
Just so you know, the gauge position is the same in the image above.
You could see the rotating rim wobbling dramatically
without even bringing the truing stand gauge close.
First I ignored the radial runout and fixed the lateral truing properly,
then tried to fix the radial runout while minimizing lateral runout,
but the radial runout was too severe so lateral runout inevitably developed.
Then I'd fix that lateral runout while trying not to introduce radial runout,
and go back to radial truing again... repeating this cycle to gradually chase down the radial runout.
The freewheel side was over-tightened, so I actually loosened it on the first pass,
but through the truing work I tightened the non-freewheel side even more,
so the overall tension after work increased slightly.
I was relieved the rim was shifted toward the freewheel side.
I could do the lateral truing with an emphasis on tightening the non-freewheel side
to reduce the centering offset while fixing the runout.
When both radial and lateral runout were basically gone,
the centering offset from before work was reduced by about half, so
I did the centering from there by tightening the non-freewheel side.
At the phase opposite the valve hole,
only at the rim joint does the inner edge dip inward,
but this is not radial runout.
At the rim spoke holes adjacent to the rim joint,
the gauge touches,
but only at the rim joint, there's this much clearance.
It took about as long as building one front wheel,
but most of that time was like solving a scrambled Rubik's cube
by finding the shortest path back to solved state.
I'm not angry since an amateur did it, though.