typical Cheapwheel?
 

I bought a new rear 27 1/4 rim to install on our sacristan's bike she wanted it up and working. I bought an alloy wheel standard thing $69 worked fine but I check the dish and it was really off by maybe close to 4mm. It was reasonably true as you can get them but I basically re-dished it, is that pretty standard for cheap old school stuff? I did check the tension and it was pretty close on the drive side at 120 ( 25 park tensionmeter) and NDS was running around 16 whatever tension that is suppose to be I don't have the conversion chart handy right now. I did stress relieve the wheel again and it did not need to be trued after this so I think it is fine.

I can not recall seeing too many pre-built wheels that are way out of dish. Perhaps someone swapped spacers around on the axle and never re-dished it?

THose wheels are machine built, and the machines are supposed to separate the good from the bad finished product, but sometimes bad ones do get past quality control... I would guess it is more often human error (taking a wheel from the 'reject' pile by accident) than the machine actually giving a 'pass' mark to a bad wheel.

Basic and replacement machine built wheels are UNFINISHED wheels.

Shops in the old days would finish these wheels as part of the sale and installation...

Nowadays most shops - especially many run by the younger generation - could care less - and either want to be paid extra for finishing - or prefer to just throw it in on the assumption that what you don't know will help them.

=8-)

I don't know if it is a matter of not caring, but of misunderstanding. I have never seen a machine built wheel that comes with instructions on finishing the tensioing or truing. When my boss bought a new wheel building machine ~10 years ago I expressed my skepicism about the quality of the final product, but he assured me it would produced finished wheels that did not need any further work.

Also, my first job in the late '80s was working for an old roadie, and he was adamant about pulling every cable out and greasing it, cutting them to the optimum length, and basically making sure everything was dead perfect even if it took extra time... but he never once said 'take those wheels off and re-tension them - they are not supposed to be ridden like that' : we would remove wheels and true them if they were particularily bad, but that was it.

UNFINISHED

One shop here in San Jose is famous for forcing the distributors to bring in 3-4 times the wheels required - so the owner could inspect them all - then keep only the ones he needed THAT just so happened to be the best of them.

Reason? On record of stating that he did not want to waste his time finishing the wheels cause it supposedly wasn't worth it.

Machine built wheels have always been unfinished wheels - they become "hand finished" when the factory or the shop spends 20 minutes apiece finishing them up after the machine-assembly-process is complete.

=8-)