Originally Posted by
torquewrenchles
If I buy a lower-end bike from an LBS (a quality brand, but their rock bottom model), should I expect that at some point between the assembly line and me rolling out the door, the wheels have gone on a truing stand with tension meter for precision adjustment?
Or in reality do distributors ship semi-trued wheels to the LBS, the LBS assemblers "tighten things up" a bit during assembly, and technical truing only happens later during maintenance "if there's a problem"?
Unless you paid over 1K, the latter case.
Once got a stern talking to from the boss for wasting time/money truing wheels on the low end bikes; policy is just make sure the rim doesnt rub the brakes. Really, for most users of the low end bikes, that is actually good enough; probly90% do not even think about trueness unless there is some other symptom. besides, if the rims reieved tensionmeter treatment, the bike would have to cost more to break even for the shop.