I need opinions on a recent repair from an LBS. I had my rear rim fail on a ride a few weeks back. The Mavic MA-40 wheel set was at least 10 -15 years old, rock solid, and quiet as a mouse (an important fact here to remember later). The rear wheel was not true and I attempted to adjust the spokes, but probably over-tightened some of them, resulting in a spoke pulling through the rim on a very rough descent.
Since my bike is an early 90's Cannondale that I bought new, the rear hub is 126mm. With pre-built wheels non-available for this size, a rebuild was my only option. I took both wheels to a LBS (didn't want to look at a mismatched wheel set for years since I tend to hang-on to things for a while! - see year of bike) and had DT Swiss RR511 rims built, as one of the suggestions from the LBS, with new spokes. Somewhat of a splurge, but I love my ride. Given my age and riding habits, I wasn't going for light weight, aero, etc with this rebuild but wanted something solid that would last like the MA40s. I got the wheels back (which looked nice), but noticed that I kept hearing slight popping / clicking sounds coming from the wheels on the first ride. I could get off the pick either wheel up, spin them but had no sounds. With the wheels weight loaded, the clicking would re-occur. Since I took only the hubs to the LBS, I concluded that the wheels could not be properly weight-loaded during the build so gave the wheels a few more rides to see if they would "settle" in. Alas, no success and I took the entire bike back to the LBS to see if some of the spokes were not tensioned evenly and thus produced the noise, aka a loose spoke here or there. The LBS called back and said that the spokes were fine but thought the bearings were producing the noise and suggested to have the original hubs re-worked. I was a little skeptical given the timing that the "bearings" decided to act up but since it had been a long time since the hubs had been gone over, I agreed. I got a call back that the hub/races/bearings were all good (much to my relief) and they only had to re-grease the hubs. They indicated that this stopped the clicking sound.
I took the bike out that next weekend and the clicking immediately started upon exiting the driveway and hitting the aggregate road surface. I noticed that the clicking would lessen on smooth pavement, but got worse on rougher road surfaces. In addition, turning the bike would also cause an increase in the popping, regardless of the road surface.
So, my questions are:
- Does anyone have experience with DT Swiss RR511s? It's not a box style rim like the MA40s so I am wondering if there is any flex in the rims that are causing the sound.
- Could the noise be resulting from any other source?
- Suggestions on the next step with the LBS?
Thanks in advance for the feedback!