New wheels out of true
 

anyone ever bought brand new wheel set and both wheels out of true? Before I even rode on them both were out. I let it go and trued them up myself but now a second set from the same company is out of true before riding them. I won't give the name because I have not asked them to make good. I am sure they would. Figure shipping would be a hastle and I can trim them up but I was annoyed. I had a friend who owns a Trek store build me a set from scratch once and they were absolute perfection.

Some are, some aren't. How badly is out of true?

Generally speaking for prebuilt new wheels, even if they're out of true, I'll let them be for the first several hundred miles. Then true them. After that, they seem to be 'set' for a long time. Truing straight out of the box can be redundant and sometimes creates more strain than necessary, since you may find they probably go out of true anyways once you start riding them.

thanks for reply. I rode roughly a thousand miles before truing them. I did not measure the run out but it was enough to be annoying. I was just wondering if this was common.

Inexpensive machine built wheels are commonly neither very true or properly tensioned. You save money but have to do the final touchup yourself or the shop you bought them from does it for you.

My experience with prebuilt wheels is with two sets from Colorado Cyclist, one pair from Wheelsmith and one set of Shimano WH-R560 wheels. These all came perfectly true, properly tensioned and needed no attention for thousands and thousands of miles. However, none of these were cheap.

I have worked on a couple of sets of inexpensive prebuilt wheels for others and most of them needed some truing and tension adjustment.

Lower end wheels (machine built) are ready to put on the truing stand for truing, tensioning and stress relieving. They are not ready to put on a bike.

Assuming you have a suitable wheel for your weight and riding conditions, they don't go out of true if the spokes are properly tensioned.
If the spoke tensions are all over the place, the wheel is trying to become "untrue".

Properly built wheels stay true from mile 0 until the the brake tracks wear out or the spokes reach their fatigue life after many 1,000's of miles.
Putting X miles on them before truing is simply a waste of time. Properly tension & true them when you get them and you won't have to mess with them in the future.

I hand check new wheels and make them true before selling them to the bike or wheel buyer.

At one time, before the advent of mail order and the now on line ordering of stuff, the LBS wrench was the final check in the QC chain. Whether it was pre built wheels, bike assembly or ending up with compatible parts for your own repairs. But now this last check and balance is rapidly missing from the chain of events. Every high end "component" wheel that I know of has a human step at least at the end of the building process. The more the company feels that their reputation is at stake with each wheel the more this last step is made possible. But with the reduced feedback with the lack of eye to eye contact during the purchase of these days the more this last step is lessened or removed completely.

As the saying goes. You get what you pay for. If what you pay for is anonymity then what you get is often with out this last step. Andy.

+1 for Colorado Cyclist and Wheelsmith.

IME whether budget wheels are rode right away or not, they're going to need some human intervention. Might as well take care of everything before riding.

Brad