A customer brought in a rear wheel from a Racing Zero (high-end carbon road wheel) for service.
Someone attempted to true the wheel, but the spokes got twisted and now it's completely beyond repair, or so they thought.
The person who brought it in wasn't the one who actually did the damage.
What on earth is this?
The spokes are definitely twisted, but it's not that the nipples are seized or anything like that—actually, they turn quite smoothly.
The nipples were loosened while the spokes retained their twisted shape.
You hear it all the time—amateurs and even bike shop staff saying "I can't build wheels, but I can true them"—but wheel building and truing are the same skill.
If you can't build a wheel, you can't true one either.
And in this case, the rim has shifted significantly to the left, with substantial radial runout as well, so even if the spokes weren't twisted at all, it would be nearly impossible to get this back to true.
Someone skilled enough to fix this situation would never have gotten it into this state in the first place.
I replaced all the twisted spokes.
In this phase area, I found 7 spokes with concentrated issues on both sides,
and another 2 on the non-drive side,
for a total of 9 spokes replaced.
The non-drive side spokes were all over-tightened regardless of whether they were twisted,
which is why, as I mentioned earlier, the rim had shifted significantly toward the non-drive side.
↑Replaced spokes
Among them, there was one spoke that was bent in the fore-aft direction.
This bend didn't happen during the truing attempts.
Actually, you can't bend a spoke under tension with just hand strength to this degree.
There must have been lateral runout caused by this spoke's deformation, and in trying to fix that, they dug themselves into a hole.
The other 8 spokes were straight, so originally only this one spoke actually needed replacement.
Someone attempted to true the wheel, but the spokes got twisted and now it's completely beyond repair, or so they thought.
The person who brought it in wasn't the one who actually did the damage.
What on earth is this?
The spokes are definitely twisted, but it's not that the nipples are seized or anything like that—actually, they turn quite smoothly.
The nipples were loosened while the spokes retained their twisted shape.
You hear it all the time—amateurs and even bike shop staff saying "I can't build wheels, but I can true them"—but wheel building and truing are the same skill.
If you can't build a wheel, you can't true one either.
And in this case, the rim has shifted significantly to the left, with substantial radial runout as well, so even if the spokes weren't twisted at all, it would be nearly impossible to get this back to true.
Someone skilled enough to fix this situation would never have gotten it into this state in the first place.
I replaced all the twisted spokes.
In this phase area, I found 7 spokes with concentrated issues on both sides,
and another 2 on the non-drive side,
for a total of 9 spokes replaced.
The non-drive side spokes were all over-tightened regardless of whether they were twisted,
which is why, as I mentioned earlier, the rim had shifted significantly toward the non-drive side.
↑Replaced spokes
Among them, there was one spoke that was bent in the fore-aft direction.
This bend didn't happen during the truing attempts.
Actually, you can't bend a spoke under tension with just hand strength to this degree.
There must have been lateral runout caused by this spoke's deformation, and in trying to fix that, they dug themselves into a hole.
The other 8 spokes were straight, so originally only this one spoke actually needed replacement.