A customer brought in front and rear wheels built with a brand whose name must not be spoken.
Let me start with the rear wheel.
Oh no—even being diplomatic about this doesn't cut it.
But I do want credit for trying.
The chain fell inboard of the low gear on the rear wheel,
so the customer is asking for spoke replacement.
Maybe they should've asked the shop's distributor about this (playing dumb).
That said, this wheel was built with a Tni Evolite hub,
and the shop's name sticker was plastered
shamelessly on the rear hub shell,
so I'm pretty sure this brand's rim was assembled by the shop.
To cut to the chase: the workmanship was sloppy enough that I almost
asked the customer whether they'd built this wheel themselves.
I won't write down which prefecture the shop and customer are in,
but it's not on Honshu.
And by a strange coincidence, there's also a shop with the same name
in Osaka, or rather within Osaka City proper—not a chain.
It's like how Chinese restaurants have generic names like "Beijing,"
but the prefix part (what would be like "bicycle workshop" for us)
was at least different, like "Chinese Cuisine Hall" versus "Chinese Wine House."
But here's another coincidence: their technical skill is just as terrible.
The inpoke spokes on the freewheel side have scratches and deformation from the chain strike.
Since this is a 24-hole wheel, there are 6 inpoke spokes on the freewheel side.
The spoke clearly bent in the middle of the image above
took the initial impact from the fallen chain.
↑The second and third impacts.
↑It looks like the rider stomped down when the chain jammed,
and around the fourth impact point, there's even damage to the hub flange.
The fifth and sixth spokes show scuff marks,
but they don't look like they need replacement.
The freewheel side was fairly well tensioned,
but the non-freewheel side is all wobbly despite being built with
the same diameter and spoke count on both sides.
The rim isn't an offset rim.
There's some lateral runout from the spoke deformation,
but there's no wildly obvious wobbling phase.
When I checked the centering, the rim was shifted way
toward the non-freewheel side.
If you mounted this on a frame, the spacing with the seat stays
would be visibly off to the naked eye.
I took the measurement from the right side and applied it to the left,
and both phases came out nearly the same—
But when I tried different phases on the left side,
the result stayed about the same.
There's no lateral runout that would fill in this center offset;
no matter where you measure, it comes out roughly the same.
This is a pretty complicated situation. If I center this wheel
by loosening only the non-freewheel side,
the non-freewheel side tension would fall below the minimum viable threshold for a wheel.
The freewheel side could still be tightened more, but
tightening only the freewheel side wouldn't be enough
to close this center offset.
In other words, I'd have to blend both:
tightening the freewheel side and loosening the non-freewheel side in the right proportion.
To investigate, I fully loosened the nipples on the fifth and sixth inpoke spokes
(the ones I thought had no chain damage),
and I accidentally dropped a nipple inside the rim at one spot.
I fished the nipple out through the valve hole first,
then used a magnet to draw it back to the rim hole—
the same method as with Zonda or Racing 3 rims.
When the customer brought the wheel in,
it had a Stan's rim tape, and hardened sealant was caked
in the dimples of the rim holes.
I wanted to work without peeling that tape, so
I took this roundabout approach to get the nipple back.
But then I realized later that the customer had also asked for
the rim tape to be replaced with fresh tape (we use Stan's too)
and for new sealant (Muc-Off brand, I think) and tire remounting.
So my careful approach was wasted effort.
↑Time jump ahead, but here's the rim tape after I replaced it.
The customer also asked about replacing bearings if there was any hub damage,
but there wasn't anything wrong.
↑This is from when I'd dropped the nipple in the rim,
The tubeless valve had bottomed out on the nut's threads—
it was right at the edge—so they'd extended it with a threadless coupling-style extension valve.
The problem with this setup is that if you get a flat roadside,
you can't remove the tubeless valve without removing the extension first.
I removed it to recover the nipple.
Since the customer wanted a fresh rim tape anyway,
removal was inevitable.
This is a front wheel image, jumping ahead in the timeline,
but that coupling-style extension is tightened pretty firmly,
so you can't loosen it by hand. Please carry appropriate tools.
I fully loosened the nipples on the fifth and sixth inpoke spokes.
I taped them down to keep the nipples from falling into the rim.
No deformation.
So I'll reuse these two.
My standard here at the shop is:
"Would I replace it if this were my own bike?"
A lot of shops have this attitude of "grab whatever money you can,"
but then make a point of pressuring customers into full replacement
under the guise of "safety considerations."
It's frustrating, and I think that's a major reason
why people don't trust bike shops in general.
That said, if the customer had wanted full replacement,
I'd have done it in this case too.
I'm just delegating my judgment here—if I decided not to replace,
it's because that's what made sense.
↑These four spokes were deformed.
From top to bottom in the image: impacts 1 through 4.
There was something like a wrap-around tape seal
on the spoke threads, the kind you peel away.
But it barely does anything.
Once I cracked the nipple loose with a tool,
I could spin it by hand afterwards, so the threadlocker
essentially wasn't doing its job.
At best, it might prevent sand from getting packed
in the nipple's root, but that's about it.
I put marker tape on the six replaced or removed inpoke spokes.
First, I'll try to chase down the runout touching only the nipples
of the taped spokes and see how far I can get.
I put white tape on the rim side
where I saw obvious radial runout.
When I spun the wheel, there was a visible pulsing—
radial runout (lifting away from the rim)—that you could spot at a glance.
The phase directly below the taped inpoke spoke is
still under-tightened, so the rim lifts outward there,
but there's even more radial runout at other phases.
By adjusting only the six taped inpoke spokes,
I chased down the lateral runout roughly.
The rim is more offset than the original centering check
because the spokes are undertensioned.
In fact, at this point the inpoke and outpoke tension
on the freewheel side are clearly different.
Once I bring the inpoke tension up to match the outpoke,
keeping just the lateral runout tight—
—it roughly matches the original center offset I measured.
This represents the state just before the chain fell inboard of the sprocket
(though the lateral runout should be a bit less).
In a properly built wheel, from here you'd just need fine tweaks,
but this one is severely offset toward the non-freewheel side
and has noticeable radial runout,
so this isn't spoke replacement or runout correction—
this is actual wheel building.
If you ask me, before I fixed both these wheels,
there was never a moment when they were actual wheels.
They're just parts glued together in wheel-shaped form.
This precision level wouldn't even pass JIS standards
for a single-speed bike wheel.
If the shop does wheel building at this resolution,
I bet their competence level on things like component installation
or disc brake bleeding is pretty low too.
I mixed freewheel-side tightening with non-freewheel-side loosening
in roughly a 7:3 ratio (not 5:5, which would loosen the non-freewheel side too much)
and chased the radial and lateral runout down. I thought I had the center,
so I checked with a centering gauge. That's the top image.
If you account for tubeless use and intentionally offset the rim toward
the non-freewheel side, the amount shown might make sense,
but the original state was clearly abnormal.
Getting from here to proper center with just freewheel-side tightening
would be extremely difficult, so—
—I centered with non-freewheel-side loosening instead.
The freewheel side is rock-solid in tension while
the non-freewheel side feels a bit soft... which is normal for
an equal-diameter, equal-spoke-count wheel build.
The original assembly was well below normal precision,
and it's laughable that they could plaster their shop sticker on the hub
without shame—but I fixed it.
If this were just four spokes on a properly built wheel,
the job would take about a third the time I spent on this rear wheel.
The tires are Schwalbe tubeless, but like all aged tubeless tires,
the bead seal gets worse over time.
The rear wheel wouldn't seat with the shop compressor,
so I used a CO₂ cartridge instead.
You can see a thin frost on the valve stem.
It melted right away, though.
Fixed.
↑The fourth-impact spot plus the hub flange damage.
↑The fifth and sixth spokes I didn't replace.
You can see "Tni" marked on the hub body in this image,
but I angled the previous shot to avoid catching
the shop-name sticker in the photo.
Now for the front wheel.
The customer probably thought of this as an afterthought to the rear,
but it was also completely messed up.
There's a center offset.
With Mavic and others, rear wheel rims are sometimes
slightly offset to the non-freewheel side, and I've wondered
if there's some design philosophy behind it.
But when I see a front rim brake wheel that clearly lacks proper center,
I'm reminded: nope, this shop just doesn't have the precision
to build wheels properly.
For the radial runout, I found the one phase
around the whole rim where the gauge barely touches
and took a photo, but—
—almost everywhere else,
there's this much gap from the gauge.
This is pretty significant radial runout,
but the rear wheel had even more.
I chased the radial and lateral runout and centered it.
Sealant had hardened on the inner edge of the
Let me start with the rear wheel.
Oh no—even being diplomatic about this doesn't cut it.
But I do want credit for trying.
The chain fell inboard of the low gear on the rear wheel,
so the customer is asking for spoke replacement.
Maybe they should've asked the shop's distributor about this (playing dumb).
That said, this wheel was built with a Tni Evolite hub,
and the shop's name sticker was plastered
shamelessly on the rear hub shell,
so I'm pretty sure this brand's rim was assembled by the shop.
To cut to the chase: the workmanship was sloppy enough that I almost
asked the customer whether they'd built this wheel themselves.
I won't write down which prefecture the shop and customer are in,
but it's not on Honshu.
And by a strange coincidence, there's also a shop with the same name
in Osaka, or rather within Osaka City proper—not a chain.
It's like how Chinese restaurants have generic names like "Beijing,"
but the prefix part (what would be like "bicycle workshop" for us)
was at least different, like "Chinese Cuisine Hall" versus "Chinese Wine House."
But here's another coincidence: their technical skill is just as terrible.
The inpoke spokes on the freewheel side have scratches and deformation from the chain strike.
Since this is a 24-hole wheel, there are 6 inpoke spokes on the freewheel side.
The spoke clearly bent in the middle of the image above
took the initial impact from the fallen chain.
↑The second and third impacts.
↑It looks like the rider stomped down when the chain jammed,
and around the fourth impact point, there's even damage to the hub flange.
The fifth and sixth spokes show scuff marks,
but they don't look like they need replacement.
The freewheel side was fairly well tensioned,
but the non-freewheel side is all wobbly despite being built with
the same diameter and spoke count on both sides.
The rim isn't an offset rim.
There's some lateral runout from the spoke deformation,
but there's no wildly obvious wobbling phase.
When I checked the centering, the rim was shifted way
toward the non-freewheel side.
If you mounted this on a frame, the spacing with the seat stays
would be visibly off to the naked eye.
I took the measurement from the right side and applied it to the left,
and both phases came out nearly the same—
But when I tried different phases on the left side,
the result stayed about the same.
There's no lateral runout that would fill in this center offset;
no matter where you measure, it comes out roughly the same.
This is a pretty complicated situation. If I center this wheel
by loosening only the non-freewheel side,
the non-freewheel side tension would fall below the minimum viable threshold for a wheel.
The freewheel side could still be tightened more, but
tightening only the freewheel side wouldn't be enough
to close this center offset.
In other words, I'd have to blend both:
tightening the freewheel side and loosening the non-freewheel side in the right proportion.
To investigate, I fully loosened the nipples on the fifth and sixth inpoke spokes
(the ones I thought had no chain damage),
and I accidentally dropped a nipple inside the rim at one spot.
I fished the nipple out through the valve hole first,
then used a magnet to draw it back to the rim hole—
the same method as with Zonda or Racing 3 rims.
When the customer brought the wheel in,
it had a Stan's rim tape, and hardened sealant was caked
in the dimples of the rim holes.
I wanted to work without peeling that tape, so
I took this roundabout approach to get the nipple back.
But then I realized later that the customer had also asked for
the rim tape to be replaced with fresh tape (we use Stan's too)
and for new sealant (Muc-Off brand, I think) and tire remounting.
So my careful approach was wasted effort.
↑Time jump ahead, but here's the rim tape after I replaced it.
The customer also asked about replacing bearings if there was any hub damage,
but there wasn't anything wrong.
↑This is from when I'd dropped the nipple in the rim,
The tubeless valve had bottomed out on the nut's threads—
it was right at the edge—so they'd extended it with a threadless coupling-style extension valve.
The problem with this setup is that if you get a flat roadside,
you can't remove the tubeless valve without removing the extension first.
I removed it to recover the nipple.
Since the customer wanted a fresh rim tape anyway,
removal was inevitable.
This is a front wheel image, jumping ahead in the timeline,
but that coupling-style extension is tightened pretty firmly,
so you can't loosen it by hand. Please carry appropriate tools.
I fully loosened the nipples on the fifth and sixth inpoke spokes.
I taped them down to keep the nipples from falling into the rim.
No deformation.
So I'll reuse these two.
My standard here at the shop is:
"Would I replace it if this were my own bike?"
A lot of shops have this attitude of "grab whatever money you can,"
but then make a point of pressuring customers into full replacement
under the guise of "safety considerations."
It's frustrating, and I think that's a major reason
why people don't trust bike shops in general.
That said, if the customer had wanted full replacement,
I'd have done it in this case too.
I'm just delegating my judgment here—if I decided not to replace,
it's because that's what made sense.
↑These four spokes were deformed.
From top to bottom in the image: impacts 1 through 4.
There was something like a wrap-around tape seal
on the spoke threads, the kind you peel away.
But it barely does anything.
Once I cracked the nipple loose with a tool,
I could spin it by hand afterwards, so the threadlocker
essentially wasn't doing its job.
At best, it might prevent sand from getting packed
in the nipple's root, but that's about it.
I put marker tape on the six replaced or removed inpoke spokes.
First, I'll try to chase down the runout touching only the nipples
of the taped spokes and see how far I can get.
I put white tape on the rim side
where I saw obvious radial runout.
When I spun the wheel, there was a visible pulsing—
radial runout (lifting away from the rim)—that you could spot at a glance.
The phase directly below the taped inpoke spoke is
still under-tightened, so the rim lifts outward there,
but there's even more radial runout at other phases.
By adjusting only the six taped inpoke spokes,
I chased down the lateral runout roughly.
The rim is more offset than the original centering check
because the spokes are undertensioned.
In fact, at this point the inpoke and outpoke tension
on the freewheel side are clearly different.
Once I bring the inpoke tension up to match the outpoke,
keeping just the lateral runout tight—
—it roughly matches the original center offset I measured.
This represents the state just before the chain fell inboard of the sprocket
(though the lateral runout should be a bit less).
In a properly built wheel, from here you'd just need fine tweaks,
but this one is severely offset toward the non-freewheel side
and has noticeable radial runout,
so this isn't spoke replacement or runout correction—
this is actual wheel building.
If you ask me, before I fixed both these wheels,
there was never a moment when they were actual wheels.
They're just parts glued together in wheel-shaped form.
This precision level wouldn't even pass JIS standards
for a single-speed bike wheel.
If the shop does wheel building at this resolution,
I bet their competence level on things like component installation
or disc brake bleeding is pretty low too.
I mixed freewheel-side tightening with non-freewheel-side loosening
in roughly a 7:3 ratio (not 5:5, which would loosen the non-freewheel side too much)
and chased the radial and lateral runout down. I thought I had the center,
so I checked with a centering gauge. That's the top image.
If you account for tubeless use and intentionally offset the rim toward
the non-freewheel side, the amount shown might make sense,
but the original state was clearly abnormal.
Getting from here to proper center with just freewheel-side tightening
would be extremely difficult, so—
—I centered with non-freewheel-side loosening instead.
The freewheel side is rock-solid in tension while
the non-freewheel side feels a bit soft... which is normal for
an equal-diameter, equal-spoke-count wheel build.
The original assembly was well below normal precision,
and it's laughable that they could plaster their shop sticker on the hub
without shame—but I fixed it.
If this were just four spokes on a properly built wheel,
the job would take about a third the time I spent on this rear wheel.
The tires are Schwalbe tubeless, but like all aged tubeless tires,
the bead seal gets worse over time.
The rear wheel wouldn't seat with the shop compressor,
so I used a CO₂ cartridge instead.
You can see a thin frost on the valve stem.
It melted right away, though.
Fixed.
↑The fourth-impact spot plus the hub flange damage.
↑The fifth and sixth spokes I didn't replace.
You can see "Tni" marked on the hub body in this image,
but I angled the previous shot to avoid catching
the shop-name sticker in the photo.
Now for the front wheel.
The customer probably thought of this as an afterthought to the rear,
but it was also completely messed up.
There's a center offset.
With Mavic and others, rear wheel rims are sometimes
slightly offset to the non-freewheel side, and I've wondered
if there's some design philosophy behind it.
But when I see a front rim brake wheel that clearly lacks proper center,
I'm reminded: nope, this shop just doesn't have the precision
to build wheels properly.
For the radial runout, I found the one phase
around the whole rim where the gauge barely touches
and took a photo, but—
—almost everywhere else,
there's this much gap from the gauge.
This is pretty significant radial runout,
but the rear wheel had even more.
I chased the radial and lateral runout and centered it.
Sealant had hardened on the inner edge of the
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Original Japanese post: のむラボ日記 #6872