A customer brought in a Racing Zero for me to work on.
After a crash that caused both wheels to go out of true,
they took it to a nearby shop for truing.
The shop said "the rear wheel has some runout that can't be completely fixed" and sent it back,
but the customer felt uneasy because the wheel still seemed out of true,
so they wanted me to take a look.
When spinning the wheel by itself, the runout might not be obvious,
but once it's mounted on the frame, you can definitely see it in the gap with the brake shoes,
and of course the truing stand shows it clearly—
there was enough lateral runout that it couldn't be missed.
In other words, they didn't even get the lateral runout corrected.
The customer had tied a green ribbon on what they suspected was a bent spoke on the freewheel side,
and it was definitely bent.
With this much bend, it's impossible to correct both radial and lateral runout without replacing the spoke,
yet they couldn't even manage to properly correct just the lateral runout while ignoring radial.
They apparently didn't even suggest spoke replacement to the customer.
This customer is from quite far away,
but I've learned that shops in regional areas can make a living doing work at this level.
I won't name the shop, but I'd say the pro cycling team they sponsor is more famous than they are.
The corresponding spoke in the final crossing of the one in the porcupine direction also has impact marks.
This one probably needs replacing too...
At a phase ninety degrees perpendicular to the spoke that needs replacing,
the centering runout was this much off.
It's fixed now.
In the end, I replaced one pair of spokes at the final crossing.
The neighboring shop clearly tried to deal with the radial runout,
and heavily worked on the two non-freewheel side spokes on either side of the two freewheel side spokes they'd replaced.
If they were a bit more skillful, they could have made a shoddy repair
that would discourage the customer from sending work to us.
At least I could do that. I could, but
I would never fail to suggest replacing a spoke that's bent as badly as that one was.
The center's out too, yeah.
↑ replaced spoke
The spoke the customer pointed out
It's clearly bent so actually easier to spot,
but it does have impact marks.
The spoke I decided to replace
Without those impact marks, I might not have noticed it was bent.
Next, the front wheel.
There's a section where the brake shoe wear mark is interrupted,
and the bead hook is slightly dented,
but not badly enough to need replacement.
If I put the truing stand gauge here, it would detect false lateral runout,
so I measured the runout at the inner edge of the brake zone instead,
and found several spots with more runout than this one
at unrelated phases,
and there's more centering runout than a Fulcrum wheel hanging in the stand.
Fixed it.
The front wheel had "unnecessary steps" too,
but I have to give them credit for turning all the nipples without cross-threading
the ones that were on the verge of seizing.
But I suspect that whoever did this work
probably couldn't build a decent wheel from unassembled Racing Zero parts
(so they probably can't do rim replacements properly either).
After a crash that caused both wheels to go out of true,
they took it to a nearby shop for truing.
The shop said "the rear wheel has some runout that can't be completely fixed" and sent it back,
but the customer felt uneasy because the wheel still seemed out of true,
so they wanted me to take a look.
When spinning the wheel by itself, the runout might not be obvious,
but once it's mounted on the frame, you can definitely see it in the gap with the brake shoes,
and of course the truing stand shows it clearly—
there was enough lateral runout that it couldn't be missed.
In other words, they didn't even get the lateral runout corrected.
The customer had tied a green ribbon on what they suspected was a bent spoke on the freewheel side,
and it was definitely bent.
With this much bend, it's impossible to correct both radial and lateral runout without replacing the spoke,
yet they couldn't even manage to properly correct just the lateral runout while ignoring radial.
They apparently didn't even suggest spoke replacement to the customer.
This customer is from quite far away,
but I've learned that shops in regional areas can make a living doing work at this level.
I won't name the shop, but I'd say the pro cycling team they sponsor is more famous than they are.
The corresponding spoke in the final crossing of the one in the porcupine direction also has impact marks.
This one probably needs replacing too...
At a phase ninety degrees perpendicular to the spoke that needs replacing,
the centering runout was this much off.
It's fixed now.
In the end, I replaced one pair of spokes at the final crossing.
The neighboring shop clearly tried to deal with the radial runout,
and heavily worked on the two non-freewheel side spokes on either side of the two freewheel side spokes they'd replaced.
If they were a bit more skillful, they could have made a shoddy repair
that would discourage the customer from sending work to us.
At least I could do that. I could, but
I would never fail to suggest replacing a spoke that's bent as badly as that one was.
The center's out too, yeah.
↑ replaced spoke
The spoke the customer pointed out
It's clearly bent so actually easier to spot,
but it does have impact marks.
The spoke I decided to replace
Without those impact marks, I might not have noticed it was bent.
Next, the front wheel.
There's a section where the brake shoe wear mark is interrupted,
and the bead hook is slightly dented,
but not badly enough to need replacement.
If I put the truing stand gauge here, it would detect false lateral runout,
so I measured the runout at the inner edge of the brake zone instead,
and found several spots with more runout than this one
at unrelated phases,
and there's more centering runout than a Fulcrum wheel hanging in the stand.
Fixed it.
The front wheel had "unnecessary steps" too,
but I have to give them credit for turning all the nipples without cross-threading
the ones that were on the verge of seizing.
But I suspect that whoever did this work
probably couldn't build a decent wheel from unassembled Racing Zero parts
(so they probably can't do rim replacements properly either).