A customer brought in front and rear wheels built with rims from a brand whose name shall not be spoken.
Let me start with the rear wheel.
Yeah, no amount of discretion can cover this one up.
I appreciate the effort, though.
The chain fell inside the low gear on the rear wheel, so
the customer is asking to have spokes replaced.
You know, they could've just asked the distributor for this brand (playing dumb here).
That said, this wheel is built with
a Tni evo lite hub, and
the shop's name sticker is plastered on the hub body
without the slightest hint of shame, so
I'm guessing this brand's rim was assembled at a shop.
To cut to the chase, the customer asked me
if this was a wheel they assembled themselves—that's how
slipshod the work was.
I won't write down the prefectures of the shop and customer's address,
but it's not on Honshu.
And coincidentally, there's also a shop with the same name
within Osaka—specifically Osaka City—though it's not a chain.
It's like how "Beijing" is a common name for Chinese restaurants,
but the shop name itself—what would be like "Bicycle Workshop" for us—
was different, something like "Chinese Restaurant" or "Chinese Bar."
But here's another coincidence: their technical ability is equally terrible.
The chain drop damaged and deformed the spokes on the freewheel side.
Since it's a 24H wheel, there are 6 spokes on the freewheel side.
The clearly bent spoke near the center of the image above
was the first impact from the dropped chain.
↑This is the second and third impacts.
↑It looks like they pedaled into it when the chain jammed,
and the hub flange is also scratched around the fourth impact.
Spokes five and six show signs of rubbing but
don't appear to need replacement.
The freewheel side was reasonably tensioned, but
the non-freewheel side was all loose and floppy
despite being equal diameter, equal spoke count lacing.
The rim isn't an offset rim.
There's some lateral runout from spoke deformation,
but there's no big phase where it wobbles dramatically.
For a temporary center reference, the rim was offset abnormally toward the non-freewheel side.
If this were installed on the frame, you could see at a glance from the gap with the seat stays that
it was off-center.
I measured on the right side and checked on the left, and
both sides showed roughly the same phase.
I tried changing the phase where I measured the left side,
but the result was essentially the same.
There's no lateral runout that would fill this center offset—
no matter where I check, it's roughly the same story.
This is a pretty complicated situation. If I corrected the center
by only loosening the non-freewheel side,
the non-freewheel side tension would drop below the minimum for a functional wheel.
The freewheel side could still be tensioned more,
but increasing tension on the freewheel side alone
wouldn't be enough to fix this center offset.
In other words, I needed to carefully balance
tightening the freewheel side with loosening the non-freewheel side.
While investigating, I fully loosened the nipples on spokes five and six,
which appeared undamaged by the chain drop, and
accidentally dropped one nipple inside the rim.
I fished the nipple out through the valve hole once,
then used the same method as with Zonda and Racing 3—
I retrieved it from the rim hole with a magnet.
When I first received the wheel,
it had Stan's rim tape, and
hardened sealant had accumulated in the rim hole depressions.
I wanted to work without removing it,
so I used the complicated method to retrieve the nipple.
But the customer also asked for new rim tape
(we use Stan's too, regardless of brand)
and sealant application and tire re-installation,
which I discovered later, making this whole careful approach
a wasted step.
↑Here's the rim tape I replaced afterward (jumping ahead chronologically).
As for the hub, if there were any issues, the customer wanted bearings replaced too,
but there was nothing wrong with it.
↑This is from when I dropped the nipple in the rim,
but the tubeless valve was at the absolute limit of what could be tightened with a nut,
and they'd extended it with a threaded coupler adapter
that doesn't have threads on the main body itself.
The problem with this is, if you get a flat on the road
and can't remove the coupler adapter, you can't remove the tubeless valve either.
I removed it to retrieve the nipple.
Since the customer wanted new rim tape anyway,
I was going to remove it regardless.
This is jumping around chronologically, but it's a front wheel image—
the coupler adapter is tightened fairly firmly,
so it won't loosen by hand. Please carry appropriate tools.
I fully loosened the nipples on spokes five and six,
securing them with tape so they wouldn't drop inside the rim.
No deformation.
So I'll reuse these two spokes.
My decision-making for cases like this is:
"Would I replace them if they were my own bike?"
There are a lot of crappy shops out there that think
"might as well get paid for everything we can"
and pressure customers into full replacement under the pretense of
"to be safe, out of an abundance of caution..."
I think a lot of the general distrust toward shops
comes from exactly that attitude.
Now, if the customer had wanted a full replacement,
I would've done it in this case too.
But since I'm being asked to make the judgment call,
in this instance it was "don't replace."
↑These are the four deformed spokes.
From top to bottom: impacts one through four.
There was something like thread-locking tape wrapped around the spoke threads—
the kind you can peel off like unwrapping a bandage—
but it's basically useless.
I loosened the nipple with a tool, and after that
it turned by hand, so it's barely doing its job
as a thread-locker.
It might have some value in preventing sand from getting into the
nipple threads, but that's about it.
I put tape markers on the six spokes that were
replaced or removed.
First, I tried to chase down the runout
by only touching the nipples on the spokes with tape.
The white tape on the rim side marks where there was obvious radial runout.
When I spun the wheel, there was a visible, pulsing radial runout
(deflection outward along the rim circumference) that you could easily see.
The radial deflection directly below the taped spoke
is "still needs tightening," meaning the rim deflects outward there,
but there's even greater radial runout at other phases,
completely unrelated to the spoke below the tape.
By adjusting only the six taped spokes,
I roughly removed the lateral runout.
It's offset beyond the original temporary center
because it's undertensioned.
In fact, at this point the freewheel spokes and non-freewheel spokes
had noticeably different tensions.
When I raise the spoke tension to match the non-freewheel side
and chase down just the lateral runout,
it ends up roughly the same center offset as
the original temporary reference.
This is equivalent to the state one second before
the chain drop into the low gear
(though the lateral runout should be slightly less).
If the original wheel had been decent,
I'd be done with just fine adjustments from here.
But the center is severely offset toward the non-freewheel side
and there's significant radial runout, so
this isn't spoke replacement and runout chasing—
this is wheel building.
If you ask me, these front and rear wheels never existed as actual wheels
until I fixed them.
They were just counterfeit wheel-shaped objects with parts glued together.
This level of precision wouldn't even pass the JIS standard inspection
for general-use (mama-chari) wheel building.
If wheel building has this low a level of detail,
I have to wonder about the precision on component installation to the frame,
brake bleeding, and other tasks—they're probably equally sloppy.
I increased tension on the freewheel side and loosened the non-freewheel side
at about a 7:3 ratio (definitely not 5:5, which would over-loosen the non-freewheel side)
to chase the radial and lateral runout, and when I thought the center was roughly correct,
I checked with a centering gauge, as shown above.
Considering this is going to be used tubeless, intentionally offsetting the rim
toward the non-freewheel side might have some merit,
but the original state was clearly abnormal.
Fixing the center from there purely by increasing freewheel side tension
would have been extremely difficult, so
I corrected the center by loosening the non-freewheel side.
The freewheel side is pretty taut, while
the non-freewheel side is a bit loose—but that's just
the normal situation with equal-diameter, equal-spoke-count lacing.
The original build precision was below standard
(I can't believe they got paid for it,
yet they had the nerve to slap a shop sticker on the hub—hilarious),
but I fixed it anyway.
Replacing just four spokes on a decent wheel
would take about a third of the time I spent on this rear wheel.
The tubeless tire is Schwalbe, and like all aged tubeless tires,
the pressure resistance (tire lift under inflation) deteriorates,
but the rear wheel wouldn't seat even with our compressor,
so I used a CO₂ cartridge instead.
The valve surface is lightly frosted.
It thawed right away.
Fixed.
↑The fourth impact area plus the flange scratch
↑Spokes five and six, which I didn't replace.
You can see the Tni marking on the hub body in this image,
and I shot the previous image at an angle that downplays the hub body
to avoid the shop name sticker showing in frame.
Now the front wheel.
The customer probably thought it was just a side job from the rear wheel,
but it was equally outrageous.
There's a center offset.
With Mavics and such, rear wheel rims are sometimes
very slightly offset toward the left (non-freewheel side),
making you think there's some deliberate philosophy behind it.
But when you see a rim brake front wheel that's clearly not centered,
you reconsider and think: nope, this guy just can't build wheels to decent specs.
For the radial runout, I found the one spot
around the rim circumference where the gauge barely touches
and shot the picture,
but in almost every other phase,
there's this much gap from the gauge.
This is pretty substantial radial runout,
though the rear wheel had even more.
I did radial and lateral runout chasing, plus centering.
Let me start with the rear wheel.
Yeah, no amount of discretion can cover this one up.
I appreciate the effort, though.
The chain fell inside the low gear on the rear wheel, so
the customer is asking to have spokes replaced.
You know, they could've just asked the distributor for this brand (playing dumb here).
That said, this wheel is built with
a Tni evo lite hub, and
the shop's name sticker is plastered on the hub body
without the slightest hint of shame, so
I'm guessing this brand's rim was assembled at a shop.
To cut to the chase, the customer asked me
if this was a wheel they assembled themselves—that's how
slipshod the work was.
I won't write down the prefectures of the shop and customer's address,
but it's not on Honshu.
And coincidentally, there's also a shop with the same name
within Osaka—specifically Osaka City—though it's not a chain.
It's like how "Beijing" is a common name for Chinese restaurants,
but the shop name itself—what would be like "Bicycle Workshop" for us—
was different, something like "Chinese Restaurant" or "Chinese Bar."
But here's another coincidence: their technical ability is equally terrible.
The chain drop damaged and deformed the spokes on the freewheel side.
Since it's a 24H wheel, there are 6 spokes on the freewheel side.
The clearly bent spoke near the center of the image above
was the first impact from the dropped chain.
↑This is the second and third impacts.
↑It looks like they pedaled into it when the chain jammed,
and the hub flange is also scratched around the fourth impact.
Spokes five and six show signs of rubbing but
don't appear to need replacement.
The freewheel side was reasonably tensioned, but
the non-freewheel side was all loose and floppy
despite being equal diameter, equal spoke count lacing.
The rim isn't an offset rim.
There's some lateral runout from spoke deformation,
but there's no big phase where it wobbles dramatically.
For a temporary center reference, the rim was offset abnormally toward the non-freewheel side.
If this were installed on the frame, you could see at a glance from the gap with the seat stays that
it was off-center.
I measured on the right side and checked on the left, and
both sides showed roughly the same phase.
I tried changing the phase where I measured the left side,
but the result was essentially the same.
There's no lateral runout that would fill this center offset—
no matter where I check, it's roughly the same story.
This is a pretty complicated situation. If I corrected the center
by only loosening the non-freewheel side,
the non-freewheel side tension would drop below the minimum for a functional wheel.
The freewheel side could still be tensioned more,
but increasing tension on the freewheel side alone
wouldn't be enough to fix this center offset.
In other words, I needed to carefully balance
tightening the freewheel side with loosening the non-freewheel side.
While investigating, I fully loosened the nipples on spokes five and six,
which appeared undamaged by the chain drop, and
accidentally dropped one nipple inside the rim.
I fished the nipple out through the valve hole once,
then used the same method as with Zonda and Racing 3—
I retrieved it from the rim hole with a magnet.
When I first received the wheel,
it had Stan's rim tape, and
hardened sealant had accumulated in the rim hole depressions.
I wanted to work without removing it,
so I used the complicated method to retrieve the nipple.
But the customer also asked for new rim tape
(we use Stan's too, regardless of brand)
and sealant application and tire re-installation,
which I discovered later, making this whole careful approach
a wasted step.
↑Here's the rim tape I replaced afterward (jumping ahead chronologically).
As for the hub, if there were any issues, the customer wanted bearings replaced too,
but there was nothing wrong with it.
↑This is from when I dropped the nipple in the rim,
but the tubeless valve was at the absolute limit of what could be tightened with a nut,
and they'd extended it with a threaded coupler adapter
that doesn't have threads on the main body itself.
The problem with this is, if you get a flat on the road
and can't remove the coupler adapter, you can't remove the tubeless valve either.
I removed it to retrieve the nipple.
Since the customer wanted new rim tape anyway,
I was going to remove it regardless.
This is jumping around chronologically, but it's a front wheel image—
the coupler adapter is tightened fairly firmly,
so it won't loosen by hand. Please carry appropriate tools.
I fully loosened the nipples on spokes five and six,
securing them with tape so they wouldn't drop inside the rim.
No deformation.
So I'll reuse these two spokes.
My decision-making for cases like this is:
"Would I replace them if they were my own bike?"
There are a lot of crappy shops out there that think
"might as well get paid for everything we can"
and pressure customers into full replacement under the pretense of
"to be safe, out of an abundance of caution..."
I think a lot of the general distrust toward shops
comes from exactly that attitude.
Now, if the customer had wanted a full replacement,
I would've done it in this case too.
But since I'm being asked to make the judgment call,
in this instance it was "don't replace."
↑These are the four deformed spokes.
From top to bottom: impacts one through four.
There was something like thread-locking tape wrapped around the spoke threads—
the kind you can peel off like unwrapping a bandage—
but it's basically useless.
I loosened the nipple with a tool, and after that
it turned by hand, so it's barely doing its job
as a thread-locker.
It might have some value in preventing sand from getting into the
nipple threads, but that's about it.
I put tape markers on the six spokes that were
replaced or removed.
First, I tried to chase down the runout
by only touching the nipples on the spokes with tape.
The white tape on the rim side marks where there was obvious radial runout.
When I spun the wheel, there was a visible, pulsing radial runout
(deflection outward along the rim circumference) that you could easily see.
The radial deflection directly below the taped spoke
is "still needs tightening," meaning the rim deflects outward there,
but there's even greater radial runout at other phases,
completely unrelated to the spoke below the tape.
By adjusting only the six taped spokes,
I roughly removed the lateral runout.
It's offset beyond the original temporary center
because it's undertensioned.
In fact, at this point the freewheel spokes and non-freewheel spokes
had noticeably different tensions.
When I raise the spoke tension to match the non-freewheel side
and chase down just the lateral runout,
it ends up roughly the same center offset as
the original temporary reference.
This is equivalent to the state one second before
the chain drop into the low gear
(though the lateral runout should be slightly less).
If the original wheel had been decent,
I'd be done with just fine adjustments from here.
But the center is severely offset toward the non-freewheel side
and there's significant radial runout, so
this isn't spoke replacement and runout chasing—
this is wheel building.
If you ask me, these front and rear wheels never existed as actual wheels
until I fixed them.
They were just counterfeit wheel-shaped objects with parts glued together.
This level of precision wouldn't even pass the JIS standard inspection
for general-use (mama-chari) wheel building.
If wheel building has this low a level of detail,
I have to wonder about the precision on component installation to the frame,
brake bleeding, and other tasks—they're probably equally sloppy.
I increased tension on the freewheel side and loosened the non-freewheel side
at about a 7:3 ratio (definitely not 5:5, which would over-loosen the non-freewheel side)
to chase the radial and lateral runout, and when I thought the center was roughly correct,
I checked with a centering gauge, as shown above.
Considering this is going to be used tubeless, intentionally offsetting the rim
toward the non-freewheel side might have some merit,
but the original state was clearly abnormal.
Fixing the center from there purely by increasing freewheel side tension
would have been extremely difficult, so
I corrected the center by loosening the non-freewheel side.
The freewheel side is pretty taut, while
the non-freewheel side is a bit loose—but that's just
the normal situation with equal-diameter, equal-spoke-count lacing.
The original build precision was below standard
(I can't believe they got paid for it,
yet they had the nerve to slap a shop sticker on the hub—hilarious),
but I fixed it anyway.
Replacing just four spokes on a decent wheel
would take about a third of the time I spent on this rear wheel.
The tubeless tire is Schwalbe, and like all aged tubeless tires,
the pressure resistance (tire lift under inflation) deteriorates,
but the rear wheel wouldn't seat even with our compressor,
so I used a CO₂ cartridge instead.
The valve surface is lightly frosted.
It thawed right away.
Fixed.
↑The fourth impact area plus the flange scratch
↑Spokes five and six, which I didn't replace.
You can see the Tni marking on the hub body in this image,
and I shot the previous image at an angle that downplays the hub body
to avoid the shop name sticker showing in frame.
Now the front wheel.
The customer probably thought it was just a side job from the rear wheel,
but it was equally outrageous.
There's a center offset.
With Mavics and such, rear wheel rims are sometimes
very slightly offset toward the left (non-freewheel side),
making you think there's some deliberate philosophy behind it.
But when you see a rim brake front wheel that's clearly not centered,
you reconsider and think: nope, this guy just can't build wheels to decent specs.
For the radial runout, I found the one spot
around the rim circumference where the gauge barely touches
and shot the picture,
but in almost every other phase,
there's this much gap from the gauge.
This is pretty substantial radial runout,
though the rear wheel had even more.
I did radial and lateral runout chasing, plus centering.
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