straightening dinged rims
 

my Dawes Echelon came with original equipment Rigida AL 1320 rims on the Maillard hubs. when i got it, the rear wheel was way out of true, and i asked my local LBS guy to true it up. after he got it, he called me up to say he wouldn't recommend re-using that rim, as it had too many lip dings and bends. so we built a new wheel on the old hubs, but it kept bothering me that i had this nice looking AL 1320, which i now realized is really hard to find a replacement for.

i started looking at the dings on the old rim and realized that i could probably put it back true by using a big adjustable wrench to gently pry them out. which i did with really good looking results.

you can see my question coming, right? is this an acceptable practice? can a sound new wheel be built on this rim?

cuda's 'cold set' query post got me to thinking about this....

I have bent rim dings back into shape many a time, with mostly fine results.
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BUT... thats for wheels that were already built up, that I wanted to keep rolling. I think if I was going to the trouble of building new wheels I might want to avoid pre-damaged rims. I dunno.
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Why is it that EVERY AL-1320 have edge dings? It's as if they came with them from the factory like that - all of 'em.

-Kurt

got the logic there, for sure. but the AL 1320 is a neat rim, and hard to find....kind of a C & V thing....

have you straightened and re-used them, cuda?

I'm sure you can build a sound wheel, just don't expect it to be a new wheel.

Tom posted recently that you can use a compass to draw a circle on a perfectly flat floor, then lay the rim on it to find dips and bends and such, and bend as necessary. Makes me wish I had a perfectly flat floor somewhere!

It's going to be labor intensive, so not worth your mechanic's time, but if you value the vintage rim I believe it is worth your time. Bear in mind that repeated bending is not good for aluminum, so it's best to get it right on the first bend. I'm pretty sure you can get a round and true wheel with reasonably even spoke tension. On account of the dents and such, I suspect you will feel some unevenness in braking, though.

the wheel's circle is true, its the rim dings that he felt were not acceptable.

My re-bent rim edges typically gave me years more of riding.... but often I could still feel the ding in the braking. Never got it perfect.
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1+ on that. It is weird that so many of mine have bends and dings. Well a few won't be mine for long. Going to Bike not Bombs recycle pile.

There is a tool, relativly easy to find on ebay, that may help. This one is by Bicycle Research, but I know others, including VAR, also made them. In a pinch, Park makes a relatively useless tool for seating tires that can be modified to do the same thing. In my experience, it rarely gets the rims back to perfect, pre-ding, but with practice you can usually get them close enough.

http://i136.photobucket.com/albums/q...s/DSCN0165.jpg

Well, they look cool, and they're pretty light, but the metal is so soft they dent if you look at 'em funny. VO has a rim that looks pretty similar, and not too pricy:
http://www.velo-orange.com/vopari.html

SP
Bend, OR

I have 3 1320 that are fine except the are not true axially (sp?). I have had some success if they were not too far out, but these are difficult. A flat floor is just the beginning of the challenge. Even AL has some elasticity and to get it right enough to use spoke tension to get it straight is a very difficult challenge. But..... I will continue to try 'cause the prices of rims is tooooooo much. I will likely break down and get the VO rims. They do have a taller sidewall and are different. I suspect they are less delicate as the 1320 are very soft.

I agree that the Rigida 1320 rims are quite soft when building a wheel. But last fall, I was doing something stupid, carrying a basket that was just hanging off my handlebars. Before I knew it, the basket struts went into my front wheel, locked it up, and sent me over the handlebars to crash land and do a face plant. I was nicely scraped up, but the Rigida 1320 rim didn't even come close to going out of true.

Neal

all my C&V bikes have Rigida rims on them. I used to prefer Super Champion, but for some reason my boss didn't feel like ordering them. I have some of the 1320 rims that I have ridden for 30 years and they are still in good true. Finally broke a spoke last year, but the wheel just trued right up again. I would like to retire them from daily use, but I haven't gotten around to replacing the wheels yet

I don't think that I would ride one that had been straightened though. Maybe around town.

If a rim has a ding on it, it means it was ridden with low pressure in the tires or hit something really hard. I hardly expect any rims from the '70s to hold up to that sort of thing.

They are, but Mavic MA-2's are worse in the truing department. That's the thing with the Rigidas - they're soft, but they make for a very sturdy wheel once trued.

-Kurt

I have cold set both steel and aluminum rims with great success. Of course, if the damage is too severe, repair can be impossible to implement safely when an alloy rim is in question.

Anyway, go for it. Go slow, try different techniques and see what works. What have you got to loose?