A customer dropped off the front wheel of an Alpinist CLX with me.
They were stopped at a red light at night with their front light on,
when a bicycle with no lights cut across and hit them from the side,
and the wheel developed runout after that.
↑There's a spoke bent in the front-to-back direction.
At first I thought it was just this one spoke,
but looking at the image, to the right of the bent spoke,
on the counterclockwise side, the adjacent spoke was also bent left-to-right.
And that one has a scratch on the side of the hub body too.
It looks dark due to shadow in the image above,
but it's actually showing the bare aluminum color.
It's fixed.
↑The tape marks where I replaced the spoke,
and you can also see in this image how the hub body is gouged
at the base of the spoke on the right side.
I also trued the wheel per the customer's request.
Like the CL50 from the previous post, it would be better to do a complete spoke replacement
on the fewer-spoke side with adjusted spoke ratios,
but that would mean keeping it longer, so I just did the truing.
↑The spoke I replaced
This is the spoke that was clearly bent in the front-to-back direction.
As I've mentioned before from time to time,
something like this was hit with an enormous instantaneous force.
It would be difficult to hit this section unhesitatingly with a hammer
to create the same deformation on a wheel with spoke tension applied,
and even if you grabbed a spoke with two pairs of pliers and tried to bend it
the same way with static load,
you could make a sharp V-bend at one point,
but if you're asked to bend it in a smooth, curved way at two points—
that's difficult too.
The other spoke was mostly just deformed left-to-right,
so if I straightened it, it might just barely be reusable,
But it was bent at the #14 size section, so I replaced it instead.
Even with this much damage, the spoke deformation was causing noticeable runout.
They were stopped at a red light at night with their front light on,
when a bicycle with no lights cut across and hit them from the side,
and the wheel developed runout after that.
↑There's a spoke bent in the front-to-back direction.
At first I thought it was just this one spoke,
but looking at the image, to the right of the bent spoke,
on the counterclockwise side, the adjacent spoke was also bent left-to-right.
And that one has a scratch on the side of the hub body too.
It looks dark due to shadow in the image above,
but it's actually showing the bare aluminum color.
It's fixed.
↑The tape marks where I replaced the spoke,
and you can also see in this image how the hub body is gouged
at the base of the spoke on the right side.
I also trued the wheel per the customer's request.
Like the CL50 from the previous post, it would be better to do a complete spoke replacement
on the fewer-spoke side with adjusted spoke ratios,
but that would mean keeping it longer, so I just did the truing.
↑The spoke I replaced
This is the spoke that was clearly bent in the front-to-back direction.
As I've mentioned before from time to time,
something like this was hit with an enormous instantaneous force.
It would be difficult to hit this section unhesitatingly with a hammer
to create the same deformation on a wheel with spoke tension applied,
and even if you grabbed a spoke with two pairs of pliers and tried to bend it
the same way with static load,
you could make a sharp V-bend at one point,
but if you're asked to bend it in a smooth, curved way at two points—
that's difficult too.
The other spoke was mostly just deformed left-to-right,
so if I straightened it, it might just barely be reusable,
But it was bent at the #14 size section, so I replaced it instead.
Even with this much damage, the spoke deformation was causing noticeable runout.