A customer brought in a Shimano C24 rear wheel for us to work on.
They came from quite far away (outside the Kansai region), and said that if we couldn't fix it here, they'd give up.
After an overhaul at a nearby shop, they've been hearing strange noises.
Even when they had it looked at again, the cause remained unidentified.
When I tried to rotate the hub axle by hand, it turns forward with some effort,
but backward rotation is abnormally stiff.
If bearing cone adjustment were over-tightened,
you wouldn't get this kind of difference in resistance between forward and backward rotation,
so I suspected it was related to freebody drift and disassembled it...
The seal was installed backwards.
I identified this so quickly because I've seen this exact same problem before (→here).
In other words, this shop—a complete disaster—
took apart the wheel, couldn't put it back together properly, assembled it wrong, and gave it to the customer.
The customer felt something was wrong and brought it back in,
yet this incompetent shop couldn't identify the cause of its own failure and just sent it back.Unbelievable.
It should have been obvious from how the hub axle felt that something wasn't normal.
They didn't even understand how to do bearing cone adjustment with a digital ratchet wrench,
so they forced it tight without aligning the notches, which resulted in
the holes getting crushed with burrs protruding.
I filed them down to realign the notches properly.
The bearing cone adjustment can be done with hand strength alone,
yet there were marks from someone grabbing and turning it with plier-type tools.
I confirmed with the customer, but they didn't touch it themselves.
The wheel had slight runout and center misalignment.
I'm not sure whether the overhaul didn't include truing, or whether it was just another thing this trash shop couldn't do,
but I've done both the truing and center alignment.
The customer was thinking about scrapping the wheel over this,
but the wheel itself isn't broken. It was just sabotaged by incompetence.
They came from quite far away (outside the Kansai region), and said that if we couldn't fix it here, they'd give up.
After an overhaul at a nearby shop, they've been hearing strange noises.
Even when they had it looked at again, the cause remained unidentified.
When I tried to rotate the hub axle by hand, it turns forward with some effort,
but backward rotation is abnormally stiff.
If bearing cone adjustment were over-tightened,
you wouldn't get this kind of difference in resistance between forward and backward rotation,
so I suspected it was related to freebody drift and disassembled it...
The seal was installed backwards.
I identified this so quickly because I've seen this exact same problem before (→here).
In other words, this shop—a complete disaster—
took apart the wheel, couldn't put it back together properly, assembled it wrong, and gave it to the customer.
The customer felt something was wrong and brought it back in,
yet this incompetent shop couldn't identify the cause of its own failure and just sent it back.
It should have been obvious from how the hub axle felt that something wasn't normal.
They didn't even understand how to do bearing cone adjustment with a digital ratchet wrench,
so they forced it tight without aligning the notches, which resulted in
the holes getting crushed with burrs protruding.
I filed them down to realign the notches properly.
The bearing cone adjustment can be done with hand strength alone,
yet there were marks from someone grabbing and turning it with plier-type tools.
I confirmed with the customer, but they didn't touch it themselves.
The wheel had slight runout and center misalignment.
I'm not sure whether the overhaul didn't include truing, or whether it was just another thing this trash shop couldn't do,
but I've done both the truing and center alignment.
The customer was thinking about scrapping the wheel over this,
but the wheel itself isn't broken. It was just sabotaged by incompetence.