ultraman6970

Bought a set of wheels a few months ago (used), got them trued and i have been using them since, the wheels were maybe 500 miles on them and i have put maybe 100 miles since, really short trips.

Miche box hub 32 spokes laced to a tubular aero 33 mm aluminum rim that who knows what brand is it, looks like miche. 3x cross in both sides.

This is the problem, last monday is started have a noise in the rear wheel like a lose spoke/s, stopped after 15 minutes, tension relieved all the spokes and tighten the Quick release a little bit more. The noise continued like for 5 more minutes and was gone.

Today went to ride again, did the same than monday but didnt work, suddenly the lose spoke/s noise disappeared after maybe 15 minutes. The wheel does feel right, i been with crappy weak wheels and this wheel doesnt have the behavoir of a crappy wheel at all. It continues feeling stiff enough.

Anybody have and idea of what could be going on or why? Tension looks ok in the rear wheel but i'll play with the spokes a little bit to tighten all the heads a little it more just in case. 1st time that happens to me so im pretty much clueless.


Front wheel works fine.

Suggestions?

Thanks

canopus 

What is the tension? Do you have a gauge or what are you using? What size are the spokes? How much weight are they carrying?A re you sure its the wheel?

It really does sound like there isn't enough tension on them.

ultraman6970

Im around 190 so it could be it... no i dont have a tension meter thingy.. straight gauge spokes if im not wrong but havent pay any attention in the thickness.

Actually is the only thing i can think it can be because it is too weird it sounds like when u have a wheel that cant stand your weight but why the front one is perfect? and that one is like 24 spokes radial laced

hmm... wonder if the lockring is doing some stuff and actually is the cassette?

Tunnelrat81

My guess is that with the aluminum "deeper" dish wheels, you're getting some rattling sound from the valve stem...a sound that you won't get from a valve in a shallow rim. I just built up a kinlin XR-300 rear wheel and HAVE to use the stupid valve stem nut to keep it quiet, otherwise it drives me crazy.

-Jeremy

cny-bikeman

What exactly do you mean by "a noise like a loose spoke?"

Al1943

Loose spokes go "ping, ping, ping". It's normal for the non-drive side rear wheel spokes to be looser than the front wheel spokes. This is because of the tension differential necessary from the left side of the rear wheel to the right side. The drive side spokes must have much higher tension due to the flanges being offset to make room for the cassette. In order to add tension and keep the rim centered you have to add tension to both sides.
A loose cassette lock ring can also cause the cogs to make a "jingle" or "clinking" noise.

cny-bikeman

Well, I was asking the OP, as I prefer actual description rather than an interpretation of a sound. I know the ping, ping sound as well as many others caused by loose spokes - I was a mechanic for over 20 years. As you point out there are other sources of that sound (as well as many other sounds).

Al1943

And I was addressing the OP, not you.

ultraman6970

Hi, thanks for the suggestions, actually when u have a wheel with low count spokes like for example velocity spartacus and other brands, even thought the wheels are pretty stiff if you weight too much u can feel when you dance over the pedals that the wheel waves more than usual and sometimes u hear a sound like playing card shuffling when u go from side to side. Or sometimes u can even hear or feel the rims to touch the brake pads.

In this case im seated pedaling and i head the playing cards shuffling sound but it is odd is not like all the time is like for a couple of secs then stops then for the next pedaling starts again, then suddenly stops. Since the noise showed up after a couple of months and the fact that dissipates 100% after 15 mins or so , im really clue less. I don't have any of the symptoms that indicate that the wheel have problems with tension (besides the noise) but it could be.

I doubt it is the valve because the noise disapears but i'll check it out just in case.

Probably gonna have to buy new spokes and relace this M o f o again and this time use washers. Somebody mentioned about car valves washers or something? anybody knows?

Thanks

ultraman6970

When u wait too much and you dance over the pedals in a super low spoke count wheel u can hear like a playing car shuffling noise time that is actually all the spokes moving around, i hear like that but in my case is pedaling seated, comes and goes with every pedaling like half of the wheel had problems, then the noise is like gone is like all the spokes got in the right position again and stops 100%.

ultraman6970

Agree...

fietsbob

leave an extra spoke nipple rattling around in there?

ultraman6970

I'll check out tonite, but so far no nipples lose and the wheels are true. Keep you posted guys

Thanks.

DannoXYZ 

Could be the freehub body is going bad. Or gunked up with dried oil & grease. Might want to take the freehub off and rinse it well with solvents. Then drip heavy-oil through.

ultraman6970

Will do thanks. good suggestion.

Jeff Wills

+1. Had that happen on a newly-built wheel. I checked for loose spokes several times in the space of a 30 mile ride without finding anything. Finished the ride, found the valve nut was a tad loose, tightened it, and it's been quiet ever since.

ultraman6970

Ok... took the wheel appart basically, freehub body was cleaned, and tighten all the darn spokes, looks like they where lose? All the stuff is pretty tight now so lets see how it behaves. Darn have to glue the tubular again hehehe

Thanks

lord_athlon

WHy reglue the tubular?

blamp28

When you say tighten all the darn spokes, where they all loose? What tension are you using. It really sounds like you need to get these done properly either by a professional or yourself with the proppoer tools. I can tell you from experience just like yours when I was starting out - if you continue to wing it, you keep open the possibility of repeatedly trying to correct the problem but never quite getting it. You also weaken the spokes at the elbows when you ride a wheel that is severely under tensioned. This will drastically shorten the lifespan of the spokes and you will go through this all again.

cny-bikeman

OK that helps. I can think of one possibility that I have seen before. If a wheel is ridden with low tension for some time a rough area can develop at the cross from the flexing back and forth. When the spokes are retensioned the edge of that rough area can end up right under the cross, causing noise with even the normal slight flexing, and would be more prominent with more weight on the wheel, such as when seated. Feel the spokes where they cross to see if there is roughness. On stainless spokes sometimes you can just smooth it out to fix the problem.

blamp28

Be careful though any "roughness" essentially creates stress risers and will be an area of failure eventually. A properly built and maintained wheel will not make noises and will last a very long time even when carrying a bit of weight. I weigh 235 and all of my bikes ride on wheels that I have built. These include off road wheels that get ridden pretty hard as well as road and tandem wheels all with thousands of miles on them. The proper way is more expensive in the short term and cheaper in the long run.

cny-bikeman

Theoretically or "eventually" that is true, if nothing else fails first. But I cannot recall seeing a spoke break at the cross, and I had my hands on thousands upon thousands of wheels in my career. The key here is that we don't know that the wheel was properly built and maintained before the OP acquired it.

blamp28

cny,

You have had far more experience than I with wheels so I defer to you on that but I have seen this happen on off road wheels wherever there are stress risers from previous damage etc. This primarily happens on the drive side if the chain has been over-shifted and impacted a few spokes but I have seen a couple break at the cross when a rider re-used old spokes that had "witness marks" or "roughness" from previous use. Granted these are wheels that get a rather extreme usage but that has been my experience. I'm a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to wheels because of this and leave nothing to chance.

ultraman6970

Thanks guys, the wheel was used by team over here in the area, since miche was a sponsor, the resps sent the wheels, and this pair in specific is not in the catalogs at all, so it is made, they grabbed a miche aero tubular rims and unmatched hubs (24 front x 32 back) and laced them. I believe they sed them like twice then they moved to sram as sponsor so miche went bye bye. I do believe the wheels were almost new because even the freehub body has no marks no nothing, even the glue in the rims had almost no glue, decals ok. anodizing in the rims is flawless and shiny also, the only thing is that were a little bit off true, both.

I retrue them both and sadly i don't have tensiometer so basically I'm doing it using "the eye" technique and the "touching spokes technique", yes i do have a dishing tool, u cant live w/o it.

I havent built wheels professionally but i have built some of my wheels since I was 15, but i always listen with wheelbuilding because u have too many factors and yes i should buy a tensiometer, but i have never had problems with broken spokes and weird stuff until i got this pair. I changed like 2 nipples and i didnt notice any goo or compound so probably the darn spokes have been getting lose all together and thats the weird thing, u never get all the spokes loosing tension all together because usually is one or two.

I love to have wheels perfect but i know the fact that u can get as perfect as the rim is, this rim is not as bad either i have seen worse, right now im ok with the tension, what i do think is that i thought i was ok with the tension before and i was not. !st time using this miche hub and rim so looks like the building needed more tension but i wont know until tomorrow.

Regarding roughness in the crossing, no i dont have that at all. I had a set of eastons that came like that from factory, the darn tension in those ones were way up there, but that was ok after all where like 24 spokes in the back getting by fat a$$ everywhere, never broke a single spoke with those ones neither the kid i sold the wheels to.

DannoXYZ 

So the spokes ARE loosening after some riding? It could be a case of worn-out nipple-threads from repeated truing. Without knowing before and after tensions, it's really hard to pinpoint. If you're able to hear spokes rattle when they loosened, I'd assert that they were too loose when tensioned up.

I've seen numerous wheels that did this even with proper tension at the high-end of the range for the particular rim. In some cases, replacing the nipple helped. In even more rare cases, it required replacing the nipple and using a threadlocker like SpokePrep. It simply wasn't possible to increase tension any higher (they were already at 95% +/- 5%). Double-butted spokes also tend to hold tension better and not go out of true as easily.