Last Thursday, May 29th, customers kept coming in one after another—not all at once, but as soon as I'd finish one, another would show up. I ended up truing four wheels that day, but
The first job was replacing a spoke on the rear wheel of an original Racing 1. I only replaced the one broken spoke shown in the image above, but to remove the anti-porcupine direction spoke, I had to temporarily remove the porcupine direction spoke that overlapped it at the hub flange side. In total, I completely removed three spokes. I marked the temporarily removed spokes with tape, and then just by adjusting the nipples at those three locations, I tried to see how well I could get it perfectly centered with no radial or lateral runout. As I tightened them, the wheel came true with barely any adjustment to the other nipples (only two places needed a very slight turn). This was because the wheel was originally built properly.
Next up, though the timeline jumps around, job number four. A Racing Speed XLR:
The final crossing pair of two spokes on the freewheel side were badly deformed and causing runout, so I replaced them. Whether it was from the derailleur getting pulled in or a chain drop, I don't know the cause.
I lined up the hub ends of the two replaced spokes in parallel (at this point the spokes in the image already show severe deformation, but)
When I arranged them pointing away from each other, it looked like this.
Next is job number three. The customer had this wheel trued at a nearby shop and it got completely messed up. Funny enough, the customer from job number two (which I haven't written about yet) had a similar situation, HAHAHAHA. When I say "messed up," I mean the aero spokes are oriented sideways or twisted in multiple places, and according to the shop that screwed it up, they said they couldn't fix it.
First, the twisted spokes—these were twisted about 90 degrees or so from the hub to the rim, but they hadn't undergone plastic deformation (permanent deformation), so I used a tool to grab the flat section of the spoke and twisted them back to normal. That was fine, but there were spokes scattered throughout that weren't twisted, yet their flat sections were oriented a full 90 degrees sideways. When I tried to rotate these the same way by grabbing the flat section, they wouldn't budge at all. The feel was clearly wrong, and if I forced it, I'd risk creating permanent twisting, so I completely loosened the nipples and investigated:
There were anti-rotation ribs below the head at four locations, spaced 90 degrees apart—these were custom spokes, and the hub-side shape was machined to match.
↑ Like this
Completely removed.
From here, turn it slightly and
It's like this. When the spoke neck is just barely pressing against the hub flange with light tension, if you grab the flat section and rotate it, there's a safe-dial-like clicking feel every quarter turn—it rotates with little scraping sounds. But once the nipple is tightened and tension increased, it won't rotate no matter what. I didn't even try because I was scared the hub flange would get damaged. The nearby shop probably had the spoke rotate CRACK! at some point and couldn't get it back. Sure, they did manage to take out the lateral runout, but returning a wheel to the customer with twisted spokes and sideways-oriented spokes all over the place seems pretty crazy to me. For all the sideways spokes, I completely released the tension first, then re-tightened the nipples while keeping them in the correct orientation.
Finally, job number two. A customer brought me the front and rear wheels of a CLX50. They'd had them trued at the nearest Cycle Base Asahi, where apparently one of the staff (※) told them "We can true wheels without removing them from the frame," and whether or not they actually used a truing stand or just did some pretend truing (charged, of course), I can't say for sure, but
※ A note to the customer's guardians: the staff member may actually be "stuff"—or more specifically the slang meaning "junk" or "garbage"
There were marks from grabbing the inner edge in multiple places, and the rim tape was still the original, so it's certain they never removed the tire to work the outer edge. By the way, Rovar CLX aluminum nipples have a nicely-formed 3.2mm wrench-flat square on the inner side, so I'm confident that even if I only grab the inner side when building a wheel or truing with a nipple that has sand packed in the periodontal pocket, I won't leave any marks. So anyone who screws up with these nipples would screw up the same way with DT generic nipples too.
The rear wheel is off-center as you can see, and the front wheel—I didn't get a photo, but had axial runout at a level the customer complained about. The amount of axial runout wouldn't naturally occur from riding, so it's certain this also came from the pretend truing. I had the customer inspect both wheels after I finished, so I didn't take a final photo.
Just to be clear, I don't have anywhere near the skill level of Cycle Base Asahi, so shamefully enough, I did use a truing stand and center gauge.
As for which Cycle Base Asahi location did this, the customer did tell me, but I agreed not to mention it here, so I can't write it. That said, I did get permission to tell them if Cycle Base Asahi asks me directly.
The first job was replacing a spoke on the rear wheel of an original Racing 1. I only replaced the one broken spoke shown in the image above, but to remove the anti-porcupine direction spoke, I had to temporarily remove the porcupine direction spoke that overlapped it at the hub flange side. In total, I completely removed three spokes. I marked the temporarily removed spokes with tape, and then just by adjusting the nipples at those three locations, I tried to see how well I could get it perfectly centered with no radial or lateral runout. As I tightened them, the wheel came true with barely any adjustment to the other nipples (only two places needed a very slight turn). This was because the wheel was originally built properly.
Next up, though the timeline jumps around, job number four. A Racing Speed XLR:
The final crossing pair of two spokes on the freewheel side were badly deformed and causing runout, so I replaced them. Whether it was from the derailleur getting pulled in or a chain drop, I don't know the cause.
I lined up the hub ends of the two replaced spokes in parallel (at this point the spokes in the image already show severe deformation, but)
When I arranged them pointing away from each other, it looked like this.
Next is job number three. The customer had this wheel trued at a nearby shop and it got completely messed up. Funny enough, the customer from job number two (which I haven't written about yet) had a similar situation, HAHAHAHA. When I say "messed up," I mean the aero spokes are oriented sideways or twisted in multiple places, and according to the shop that screwed it up, they said they couldn't fix it.
First, the twisted spokes—these were twisted about 90 degrees or so from the hub to the rim, but they hadn't undergone plastic deformation (permanent deformation), so I used a tool to grab the flat section of the spoke and twisted them back to normal. That was fine, but there were spokes scattered throughout that weren't twisted, yet their flat sections were oriented a full 90 degrees sideways. When I tried to rotate these the same way by grabbing the flat section, they wouldn't budge at all. The feel was clearly wrong, and if I forced it, I'd risk creating permanent twisting, so I completely loosened the nipples and investigated:
There were anti-rotation ribs below the head at four locations, spaced 90 degrees apart—these were custom spokes, and the hub-side shape was machined to match.
↑ Like this
Completely removed.
From here, turn it slightly and
It's like this. When the spoke neck is just barely pressing against the hub flange with light tension, if you grab the flat section and rotate it, there's a safe-dial-like clicking feel every quarter turn—it rotates with little scraping sounds. But once the nipple is tightened and tension increased, it won't rotate no matter what. I didn't even try because I was scared the hub flange would get damaged. The nearby shop probably had the spoke rotate CRACK! at some point and couldn't get it back. Sure, they did manage to take out the lateral runout, but returning a wheel to the customer with twisted spokes and sideways-oriented spokes all over the place seems pretty crazy to me. For all the sideways spokes, I completely released the tension first, then re-tightened the nipples while keeping them in the correct orientation.
Finally, job number two. A customer brought me the front and rear wheels of a CLX50. They'd had them trued at the nearest Cycle Base Asahi, where apparently one of the staff (※) told them "We can true wheels without removing them from the frame," and whether or not they actually used a truing stand or just did some pretend truing (charged, of course), I can't say for sure, but
※ A note to the customer's guardians: the staff member may actually be "stuff"—or more specifically the slang meaning "junk" or "garbage"
There were marks from grabbing the inner edge in multiple places, and the rim tape was still the original, so it's certain they never removed the tire to work the outer edge. By the way, Rovar CLX aluminum nipples have a nicely-formed 3.2mm wrench-flat square on the inner side, so I'm confident that even if I only grab the inner side when building a wheel or truing with a nipple that has sand packed in the periodontal pocket, I won't leave any marks. So anyone who screws up with these nipples would screw up the same way with DT generic nipples too.
The rear wheel is off-center as you can see, and the front wheel—I didn't get a photo, but had axial runout at a level the customer complained about. The amount of axial runout wouldn't naturally occur from riding, so it's certain this also came from the pretend truing. I had the customer inspect both wheels after I finished, so I didn't take a final photo.
Just to be clear, I don't have anywhere near the skill level of Cycle Base Asahi, so shamefully enough, I did use a truing stand and center gauge.
As for which Cycle Base Asahi location did this, the customer did tell me, but I agreed not to mention it here, so I can't write it. That said, I did get permission to tell them if Cycle Base Asahi asks me directly.