A customer brought in a Racing Zero Carbon (carbon fiber racing bike) for service.
The spokes are twisted in various places, apparently.
↑Both front and rear wheels show twisted spokes scattered throughout.
If you hold them firmly with the wide-grip plastic OEM tool,
this normally wouldn't happen.
Not directly related, but the front hub's right end was stripped.
Just looking at this, I can't definitively say "an amateur definitely botched this"—
that's the rotten part of this industry.
I replaced the spokes.
On both wheels, I corrected minor twists with tools,
and only replaced the spokes I judged necessary to replace.
In the end, that came to 2 spokes per wheel, 4 total.
If they were just twisted, that would be one thing, but they've been messed with everywhere,
so it's taking time to set it all right.
The worst problem on the front wheel was radial runout (vertical wobble).
At the phase directly below the 2 replaced spokes and 3 spokes in between,
the rim was deflecting outward—
the rim was bouncing noticeably even without a truing stand.
To fix that, I'd need to tighten the nipples at these 3 locations,
but they apparently couldn't manage it and twisted the spokes instead.
Next, the rear wheel.
The image above is after spoke replacement, but the lateral offset before work was
this bad. Ridiculous.
The non-freewheel side nipples turn more smoothly than the freewheel side,
so this is probably the result of repeatedly truing primarily from the non-freewheel side.
And they didn't even chase down the lateral runout that much;
there's also some radial runout, though not as bad as the front.
In short, they just messed it up.
The customer's frame has direct-mount brakes,
so the rear wheel wouldn't fit in this condition.
Fixed.
Since I replaced spokes as well,
doing a full radial runout correction is
nearly the same work as building a wheel from scratch.
Combined for both wheels, it took about as much time as
building one rear wheel at Nomu Lab Wheels.
↑The replaced spokes
The twisting is slightly less bad because I corrected it with tools
during the removal process.
As for the one broken spoke, I had the sense it would probably break,
so I told the customer before it broke: "It'll probably snap."
The spokes are twisted in various places, apparently.
↑Both front and rear wheels show twisted spokes scattered throughout.
If you hold them firmly with the wide-grip plastic OEM tool,
this normally wouldn't happen.
Not directly related, but the front hub's right end was stripped.
Just looking at this, I can't definitively say "an amateur definitely botched this"—
that's the rotten part of this industry.
I replaced the spokes.
On both wheels, I corrected minor twists with tools,
and only replaced the spokes I judged necessary to replace.
In the end, that came to 2 spokes per wheel, 4 total.
If they were just twisted, that would be one thing, but they've been messed with everywhere,
so it's taking time to set it all right.
The worst problem on the front wheel was radial runout (vertical wobble).
At the phase directly below the 2 replaced spokes and 3 spokes in between,
the rim was deflecting outward—
the rim was bouncing noticeably even without a truing stand.
To fix that, I'd need to tighten the nipples at these 3 locations,
but they apparently couldn't manage it and twisted the spokes instead.
Next, the rear wheel.
The image above is after spoke replacement, but the lateral offset before work was
this bad. Ridiculous.
The non-freewheel side nipples turn more smoothly than the freewheel side,
so this is probably the result of repeatedly truing primarily from the non-freewheel side.
And they didn't even chase down the lateral runout that much;
there's also some radial runout, though not as bad as the front.
In short, they just messed it up.
The customer's frame has direct-mount brakes,
so the rear wheel wouldn't fit in this condition.
Fixed.
Since I replaced spokes as well,
doing a full radial runout correction is
nearly the same work as building a wheel from scratch.
Combined for both wheels, it took about as much time as
building one rear wheel at Nomu Lab Wheels.
↑The replaced spokes
The twisting is slightly less bad because I corrected it with tools
during the removal process.
As for the one broken spoke, I had the sense it would probably break,
so I told the customer before it broke: "It'll probably snap."