A customer dropped off a Shamal Ultra with me.
The image is the front wheel.
The rear wheel had the USB bearing on the right side of the hub body completely worn down, so
I replaced the whole thing (we sell individual sides separately at our shop)
and also replaced the outer bearing on the freewheel body,
but I didn't take photos of that.
So about that front wheel in the image above — when a certain shop did spoke truing on it,
the spokes came back twisted, or so the customer was told.
I can't write the name of that shop here due to an agreement with the customer.
I've been thinking for a while that I need to have a serious conversation with that place,
but today wasn't the right moment to open that floodgate, I suppose.
I found out about the spoke twist before the customer even noticed it—
when the wheel was returned with an excuse about "the nipples were seized, so..."
The shop made the confession themselves first,
but the issue is: knowing you screwed up and then not replacing the spokes is just wrong.
There are three spokes with tape on them,
but two of them have only the slightest deformation, so they're fine as-is.
↑This is the most twisted spoke.
↑From a different angle
The real value of this post is testing whether the nipples were actually seized to the point that twisting spokes was unavoidable.
When I loosened the nipples, white powder came pouring out of the recesses,
but this is more like a precursor to a precursor of seizing—
nowhere near the level of seizure that would cause spoke twisting.
By the way, the lateral runout wasn't really corrected either.
So it was just going through the motions of truing.
When I replaced spokes on a Racing Zero in the previous post,
no white powder came out,
so this Shamal Ultra is definitely trickier to adjust than a brand new one,
but with proper technique and the right tools,
the nipple seizure isn't nearly tight enough to twist spokes.
I was able to remove the spoke while keeping the twist exactly as-is.
With this, I wanted to prove that talk about nipple seizure was nothing but
nonsense born from that certain shop's lack of skill.
I told the customer that even if we untwist this spoke (it won't be perfectly straight)
or keep it as-is, there shouldn't be any strength issues,
but the customer chose to replace it with a new one anyway.
The image is the front wheel.
The rear wheel had the USB bearing on the right side of the hub body completely worn down, so
I replaced the whole thing (we sell individual sides separately at our shop)
and also replaced the outer bearing on the freewheel body,
but I didn't take photos of that.
So about that front wheel in the image above — when a certain shop did spoke truing on it,
the spokes came back twisted, or so the customer was told.
I can't write the name of that shop here due to an agreement with the customer.
but today wasn't the right moment to open that floodgate, I suppose.
I found out about the spoke twist before the customer even noticed it—
when the wheel was returned with an excuse about "the nipples were seized, so..."
The shop made the confession themselves first,
but the issue is: knowing you screwed up and then not replacing the spokes is just wrong.
There are three spokes with tape on them,
but two of them have only the slightest deformation, so they're fine as-is.
↑This is the most twisted spoke.
↑From a different angle
The real value of this post is testing whether the nipples were actually seized to the point that twisting spokes was unavoidable.
When I loosened the nipples, white powder came pouring out of the recesses,
but this is more like a precursor to a precursor of seizing—
nowhere near the level of seizure that would cause spoke twisting.
By the way, the lateral runout wasn't really corrected either.
So it was just going through the motions of truing.
When I replaced spokes on a Racing Zero in the previous post,
no white powder came out,
so this Shamal Ultra is definitely trickier to adjust than a brand new one,
but with proper technique and the right tools,
the nipple seizure isn't nearly tight enough to twist spokes.
I was able to remove the spoke while keeping the twist exactly as-is.
With this, I wanted to prove that talk about nipple seizure was nothing but
nonsense born from that certain shop's lack of skill.
I told the customer that even if we untwist this spoke (it won't be perfectly straight)
or keep it as-is, there shouldn't be any strength issues,
but the customer chose to replace it with a new one anyway.