A customer dropped off a Racing Zero front wheel with us.
They had a crash near the Goban Tunnel in Yoshino and bent some spokes, but fortunately the damage wasn't severe enough to make the wheel unrideable. What's more, they were alone at the time, which means if there'd been no cell phone signal and they couldn't call a taxi or rescue, especially if it had been winter in the mountains, things could have ended very badly.
↑Three spokes on one side have damage in a row, but
Actually, the damage isn't as deep as it looks, so replacement isn't strictly necessary. If the customer wanted them swapped out anyway for peace of mind, of course we'd do it, but for these ones I got permission and then
covered them with black permanent marker.
The spoke that really needed replacing was this one, directly beneath the unnatural lateral wobble. When you run your finger over it, you can feel the bend.
We replaced it.
It's on the opposite side from those three spokes I mentioned.
↑The replaced spoke
The customer bought the bike with this wheel at a certain brand's concept store, but apparently they can't do much there besides servicing that brand's own bikes, so they refer customers to us for wheel repairs like this. Given that history, I'm sure the customer was worried that someday this wheel might show up in some blog post where they get bad-mouthed by name. But since we didn't mess things up trying to fiddle with something that couldn't be fixed, and we didn't try to upsell them on a new wheel, there's no real bad feeling here. Though I think it would have been better if they'd contacted us beforehand in addition to just referring the customer.
They had a crash near the Goban Tunnel in Yoshino and bent some spokes, but fortunately the damage wasn't severe enough to make the wheel unrideable. What's more, they were alone at the time, which means if there'd been no cell phone signal and they couldn't call a taxi or rescue, especially if it had been winter in the mountains, things could have ended very badly.
↑Three spokes on one side have damage in a row, but
Actually, the damage isn't as deep as it looks, so replacement isn't strictly necessary. If the customer wanted them swapped out anyway for peace of mind, of course we'd do it, but for these ones I got permission and then
covered them with black permanent marker.
The spoke that really needed replacing was this one, directly beneath the unnatural lateral wobble. When you run your finger over it, you can feel the bend.
We replaced it.
It's on the opposite side from those three spokes I mentioned.
↑The replaced spoke
The customer bought the bike with this wheel at a certain brand's concept store, but apparently they can't do much there besides servicing that brand's own bikes, so they refer customers to us for wheel repairs like this. Given that history, I'm sure the customer was worried that someday this wheel might show up in some blog post where they get bad-mouthed by name. But since we didn't mess things up trying to fiddle with something that couldn't be fixed, and we didn't try to upsell them on a new wheel, there's no real bad feeling here. Though I think it would have been better if they'd contacted us beforehand in addition to just referring the customer.