A customer brought in a Shamal Ultra rear wheel for service.
They attempted to true it themselves
and ended up snapping a spoke.
They mentioned there might be several seized nipples as well...
↑This one
The Mega G3's right hub flange
has spokes on the drive side coming through the outside of the flange,
and spokes on the non-drive side coming through the inside,
but this rear hub is from an earlier G3 generation,
so both sets of spokes pass through the outside of the flange.
This means when replacing non-drive side spokes like this time,
you have to temporarily remove
the drive-side spokes sitting on top.
The broken spoke shows marks from being gripped with pliers,
but even here the nipple rotation wasn't particularly stiff.
While there were some nipples with strong threadlock compound,
there were no seized or pre-seized nipples at all.
I should note upfront that I significantly tightened all the non-drive-side nipples
and adjusted most of the drive-side nipples during truing.
The valve bushing was missing.
As I've written before, standard clincher rims
have nipples inserted from the outside of the rim,
but with tubeless-compatible 2WAY-FIT,
doing that would make the hole too large to install a tubeless valve,
so 2WAY-FIT rims have nipples inserted from the inside instead,
and a valve bushing fills the dimensional gap with the valve.
This valve bushing isn't just a "nice-to-have" part—
it's a functional component necessary to avoid trouble on the road.
I installed the valve bushing.
Once the valve is threaded through, it won't come out,
so you won't lose it unless you flick it out when installing the valve.
You just need to be careful when changing the tire or tube.
After replacing the spoke and doing a quick initial true, which took about 5 minutes,
the lateral runout at that point was as shown above.
The amount of runout is far beyond what you'd see from a stock Campagnolo wheel,
and while it's in the direction wear would cause,
it would never shift this much from normal use.
I try not to lecture customers too much,
but this is definitely the result of excessive fiddling.
Correcting this took many times longer
than the standard work would have.
First round of non-drive-side tightening
Second round of non-drive-side tightening
The centering came out.
Could the rim being pulled toward the drive side
have been caused by tightening the drive side? That's not possible.
It would be nearly impossible to cause that much deviation
by tightening the drive side on a finished Shamal Ultra,
and if someone could do that, the drive side would be extremely taut,
which it wasn't. Plus, if someone had that level of skill,
they wouldn't snap spokes in the first place.
Fixed.
The two spokes marked with tape are
the ones I temporarily removed,
and the replaced spoke is
↑just this one spoke.
They attempted to true it themselves
and ended up snapping a spoke.
They mentioned there might be several seized nipples as well...
↑This one
The Mega G3's right hub flange
has spokes on the drive side coming through the outside of the flange,
and spokes on the non-drive side coming through the inside,
but this rear hub is from an earlier G3 generation,
so both sets of spokes pass through the outside of the flange.
This means when replacing non-drive side spokes like this time,
you have to temporarily remove
the drive-side spokes sitting on top.
The broken spoke shows marks from being gripped with pliers,
but even here the nipple rotation wasn't particularly stiff.
While there were some nipples with strong threadlock compound,
there were no seized or pre-seized nipples at all.
I should note upfront that I significantly tightened all the non-drive-side nipples
and adjusted most of the drive-side nipples during truing.
The valve bushing was missing.
As I've written before, standard clincher rims
have nipples inserted from the outside of the rim,
but with tubeless-compatible 2WAY-FIT,
doing that would make the hole too large to install a tubeless valve,
so 2WAY-FIT rims have nipples inserted from the inside instead,
and a valve bushing fills the dimensional gap with the valve.
This valve bushing isn't just a "nice-to-have" part—
it's a functional component necessary to avoid trouble on the road.
I installed the valve bushing.
Once the valve is threaded through, it won't come out,
so you won't lose it unless you flick it out when installing the valve.
You just need to be careful when changing the tire or tube.
After replacing the spoke and doing a quick initial true, which took about 5 minutes,
the lateral runout at that point was as shown above.
The amount of runout is far beyond what you'd see from a stock Campagnolo wheel,
and while it's in the direction wear would cause,
it would never shift this much from normal use.
I try not to lecture customers too much,
but this is definitely the result of excessive fiddling.
Correcting this took many times longer
than the standard work would have.
First round of non-drive-side tightening
Second round of non-drive-side tightening
The centering came out.
Could the rim being pulled toward the drive side
have been caused by tightening the drive side? That's not possible.
It would be nearly impossible to cause that much deviation
by tightening the drive side on a finished Shamal Ultra,
and if someone could do that, the drive side would be extremely taut,
which it wasn't. Plus, if someone had that level of skill,
they wouldn't snap spokes in the first place.
Fixed.
The two spokes marked with tape are
the ones I temporarily removed,
and the replaced spoke is
↑just this one spoke.