somegeek

I was truing up a friend's wheel and noticed all of the nipples looked partially destroyed...



Is this part of some wheel assembly practices? Curious how all of the nipples on his wheel were this beat up. Wheel was brand new and he's not worked on it before so I am assuming this is from the factory.

Appreciate any input.

somegeek

Panthers007

It looks like the machine was set for "WAY TO TIGHT." Find yourself a spoke-tension gauge and check the tension on the wheel. Something tells me it's over 200 Kgf. This would cause the damage you have on the spoke-nipples. And this will translate to: Build another wheel.

If you can take a photo of the hub, that will be great. You'd be looking for stress, or tension, cracks. And check all the eyelets on the rim. They could have cracks from WAY TO TIGHT.

somegeek

I don't see any cracking or bulging at the nipple openings. When I first got the wheel, I checked tensions and they read anywhere from 15-18 with 16ish being the average. I tensioned all spokes to 17 on my Park TM-1.









My friend had a collision with another cyclist (pedal smacked a few of his spokes) so I replaced two spokes and then trued the wheel up on my stand... on that note, getting a wheel true and evenly tensioned around the rim joint is a PITA.

Thanks for the reply.

jccaclimber

I've seen that on a lot of machine built wheels. I have not noted the spokes as being especially tight on any of them so I suspect it is an issue of a cheap machine. Generally speaking, the bikes I get them on don't belong to people who especially care what condition they are in (Box store, $150 when new recumbent on ebay, etc). Replacing them is an option, but using a standard spoke wrench has worked for me so far.

somegeek

My friend got this bike off pricepoint for around $1000.

How the hell does the machine get the wheel straight with this method of tightening?

LWaB

Most wheel building/truing machines (not usually the same thing) use a screwdriver-style engagement. It helps to have electric motors or hydraulics rather than sinews for that method. Faster/cheaper machines don't always properly engage with the nipple before turning.

JohnDThompson 

The Holland Mechanics wheel building machines use a screwdriver bit with a pin that automatically disengages the bit when the pin contacts the end of the spoke. It would appear that whatever built those wheels lacked this feature.