Originally Posted by
PeteHski
Interesting point. I'm starting to think I've been incredibly lucky with bicycle wheels/tyres for all these years. I've never given ANY of this stuff a second thought (actually not even a first thought) and had zero issues with wheel "roundness", balancing etc. Maybe it's only a problem if you actually think about it?
Not really lucky, just completely normal. As I said, its been more of a past problem with tubulars making the whole system out of round by small amounts but even that hasn't been a problem for years. Any real high end wheel is going to show up perfectly round and even cheaper ones will be barely enough to be noticeable. Wheels are made a lot better on the average bike then they were 25 years ago or earlier.
As to balance, never been an issue that I've ever seen and I've ridden my own wheels at 45-55mph down hills and mountains hundreds of times racing against others riding stock and custom wheels and the wheels being out of balance wasn't an issue.