A customer dropped off a Racing 3 rear wheel with us.
To be precise, I inspected a total of four wheels—the front and rear Eurus wheels that had been in regular use until now,
and the front and rear Racing 3 wheels just acquired at auction—
but this one was in particularly bad shape, so I decided to write about it.
Wheels obtained through auctions rather than from acquaintances
sometimes harbor hidden defects with malicious intent,
and most of them tend to be rear wheels.
There was barely any lateral runout,
but one spoke on the non-freewheel side was bent.
With a bend this obvious, there's no way it wouldn't show runout,
so someone covered it up by truing while the spoke remained bent.
As a result, where the lateral runout was corrected,
there was slight radial runout.
The ratchet feel on the freewheel body felt off,
so I removed the spring and found it was deformed.
On a new one, including the overlapping sections,
it forms a clean circle.
The ratchet area was filled with non-OEM grease
in places where grease serves no purpose,
and given how frequently the freewheel body was apparently removed,
I suspect the spring deformation isn't unrelated to all that excessive assembly and disassembly.
Since I had OEM spokes in stock,
I replaced the spoke and trued the wheel,
and when I finally applied the centering gauge,
it was spot on.
All fixed.
↑The replaced spoke
The deformation came from force applied almost purely sideways rather than from front-to-back,
and it bent right at the boundary of the flattened butted section,
so if we went with a quick fix,
we could probably straighten it out and reuse it,
but...
On wheels like Zonda, Bora, and Racing 3,
the radial spokes on the front left/right and rear left
have a flattened section below the nipple
to prevent the spoke from rotating.
↑The thinner side of that flattened section
is bent with a crimp,
so straightening it out for reuse
is something best avoided except in genuinely unavoidable circumstances.
To be precise, I inspected a total of four wheels—the front and rear Eurus wheels that had been in regular use until now,
and the front and rear Racing 3 wheels just acquired at auction—
but this one was in particularly bad shape, so I decided to write about it.
Wheels obtained through auctions rather than from acquaintances
sometimes harbor hidden defects with malicious intent,
and most of them tend to be rear wheels.
There was barely any lateral runout,
but one spoke on the non-freewheel side was bent.
With a bend this obvious, there's no way it wouldn't show runout,
so someone covered it up by truing while the spoke remained bent.
As a result, where the lateral runout was corrected,
there was slight radial runout.
The ratchet feel on the freewheel body felt off,
so I removed the spring and found it was deformed.
On a new one, including the overlapping sections,
it forms a clean circle.
The ratchet area was filled with non-OEM grease
in places where grease serves no purpose,
and given how frequently the freewheel body was apparently removed,
I suspect the spring deformation isn't unrelated to all that excessive assembly and disassembly.
Since I had OEM spokes in stock,
I replaced the spoke and trued the wheel,
and when I finally applied the centering gauge,
it was spot on.
All fixed.
↑The replaced spoke
The deformation came from force applied almost purely sideways rather than from front-to-back,
and it bent right at the boundary of the flattened butted section,
so if we went with a quick fix,
we could probably straighten it out and reuse it,
but...
On wheels like Zonda, Bora, and Racing 3,
the radial spokes on the front left/right and rear left
have a flattened section below the nipple
to prevent the spoke from rotating.
↑The thinner side of that flattened section
is bent with a crimp,
so straightening it out for reuse
is something best avoided except in genuinely unavoidable circumstances.