Russ Roth

Your wheel has issues. If the DS can be up to 135 which seems a little high to me, then you shouldn't have anything below 100, your numbers suggest 105, and I'd actually shoot for 120 just to have some wiggle room either way. If you don't have a truing stand this will be a tough job but can be done with the frame to a decent degree with some careful effort.
If I was dealing with this I would use a light lube on ever spoke nipple at the rim to make them turn easier, get that to soak in a bit, then bring every drive side spoke to 85 (+/- 2 not knowing how accurate your tool is) since that's a nice middle number. Once done I would bring all the NDS to about 45, same reason. Dish and straight wouldn't matter in this process. Once done give the DS a double check to make sure you didn't send any too far out of wack and get them back to that 85. Now true the wheel using a proper tighten/loosen technique, for each you tighten you loosen one the same or 2 half the amount which you'll need to do more with the half the number of NDS spokes. Once the wheel is straight move it to center. Do a quarter turn, the first time, if more is needed do a 1/4 tight and 1/4 loosen of the other side. Your tension should be low enough still to not worry too much. Once you have the wheel close to final dish recheck true and then make it round. Once round double check the spoke tension and tighten all the spokes around the wheel till the DS is 120, if this keeps the NDS below the recommended rate go to 125 or even the 130 but don't go crazy on this as nipples can get hard to turn. Now stress the wheel. I usually place the wheel on the floor and lightly push on the rim moving around in a circle, flip it and do it again. Re-true and do it one last time. The goal is to add a little pressure on the rim so the spokes can reset themselves not to warp the rim. When pushing on the NDS I would have my hands at the spokes. You can do the same by grabbing sets of spokes and squeezing them by hand but I find it doesn't work quite as well.

rovis

I've forgot to mention that the measurements above were taken with the tire on!

Amt0571

Sorry, I understood the wheel was dished to the DS but perfectly round otherwise. If that's the case, you can move it towards the NDS by tightening the NDS spokes by the same amount. NDS spokes will have less tension than the DS ones anyway, so you're not going to break anything if you're careful.

If there are loose spokes, it's a more difficult job. In any case, I can confirm that a decent wheel can be built from scratch without a truing stand, but it's not an easy or quick job.

And yes, loose spokes can cause clicking as when the wheel is weighted they get totally loose and move inside the rim. If you leave them that way they're also likely to break from fatigue.

luns

Your tension numbers feel very off for what I'd expect for a 16/8 lacing. For a conventional rear wheel, the left to right side spoke tensions are roughly in a 1:2 ratio, which is about what your readings indicate. However, with half as many spokes on the left, each remaining spoke would carry twice the tension, so left and right spokes for you should be comparable.

I would certainly want to correct the dish. The more dish your wheel has, the weaker it is. I don't know what wheel you have and what its dimensions are, but for the numbers for a 9 speed Dura-Ace hub in spocalc, having the rim 2mm to the right of where it's supposed to be makes the wheel about 10% weaker laterally.

You don't really need a truing stand. It certainly makes things more convenient, but just watching the how the rim moves relative to your brake pads is good enough.

Given your wheel is already true, you can just go ahead and tighten all the left spokes by 1/8 turn as has been suggested, and if you're lucky, it'll stay true. If not, true it up afterwards: anywhere the rim seems like its locally different from where most of the rest of the wheel is, pluck a couple spokes on both sides to see if any are particularly tight or loose relative to its same side neighbours. If you find an outlier, see whether it's contributing to being out of true. e.g. if the rim is to the left, if you have a particularly tight spoke on the left, or loose ones on the right. If so, flag that spoke, and use it to bring the rim back to true. If the outlier looks like it's already doing what you want to true the wheel (e.g. it's out of true despite that spoke rather than because of it), then use one of its neighbours to do the truing instead.

After the 1/8 turn tightening of all the left spokes, any out-of-true you have will probably be correctable with just a few 1/8 turn corrections. Then see where you are with the dish, and whether you might another round of tightening all the left spokes by another 1/8.

I like to keep a roll of masking tape at hand, and any time I adjust a particular spoke, flag it so I can spin the wheel around a few times to see if it had the effect I wanted, and go back to the same spoke for further trimming if warranted. When I'm happy with what I see, then I take the flag off.

Another thing to watch out for is that when you tighten a spoke nipple, the spoke will twist to some extent rather than just screw into the nipple. This is more of an issue for tighter spokes, and the solution is to turn the spoke nipple an extra 1/8 to 1/4 turn, then back off to where you wanted to be.

I think as long as you limit yourself to making (many) small adjustments and keep an eye on things as you go, you'll do just fine.

luns

That's fine, assuming you intend to ride the wheel with the tire on.

rovis

I wanted to update this thread, for others to consider in similar cases.
Unfortunately my first attempt to fix the wheel failed!

I was following Russ Roth approach which made practical sense to me.
First I've equalized the DS tension to 22/85.8Kgf and that went fine. When trying to bring the NDS side to 15/45Kgf, one spoke broke! It came out of the axle hook and now it appears that only some spot welding or something else would keep it in place. I've managed to put it back in place by lowering the tension on that spoke, but once I tried to tension it even a little, came out again.

In hindsight, I'm thinking that maybe I should've lowered the tension more on the DS side before increasing the tension on the NDS!? The initial difference between the two sides was pretty significant, especially with 2-3 very soft spokes on NDS. The breakage happened after I managed to bring the NDS spokes to same tension (or at least that what I was seeing going spoke to spoke). On the second round of measuring, I've noticed some spokes which were already tightened to 15/45Kgf. were now showing 'off' by minus 3-5 points on the scale (10-20Kgf aprox).

Now i'll probably buy a set of new wheels. Any recommendations? I have some ideas, but don't want to spend more than $400. The current wheels are Fulcrum Racing Sport, circa 2014. Entry level wheels, but for my needs, were fine.

Moisture

Youre over thinking this.

You just need a new spoke and thread it through the same as the other ones.

Its obviously too much tension.

If the wheel is more or less straight but some of the spokes are too loose, you'll eventually need a new wheel.

or just Tension the loose spokes a quarter turn or less until snug and don't worry about it.

rovis

Yeah, probably a simple tightening of the loose spokes would've been enough! But, it's a learning experience.
The spoke is fine, it's not broken, Just that it broke out of the hook on the axle and that seems to be more difficult to fix.

luns

Sorry to hear that. Some thoughts:

Don't beat yourself over what you maybe ought to have done differently to prevent this. IMO, a wheel should be robust enough to easily survive anything you do to it within reason, and nothing that you described doing is unreasonable. You may have a normal failure which should be easily fixable, but if it really failed irreparably so easily, it wasn't a very good wheel to begin with.

When you say the spoke broke, did some part of the spoke actually snap, or did it simply pop out without actual breakage? Your saying you put the spoke back in at reduced tension suggests the latter, but maybe there was a partial break of the spoke head or hub flange that's allowing you to have things together again.

If it's just the spoke and not the hub flange, you may be able to find a replacement, either from Fulcrum or elsewhere. These appear to be plain straight-pull spokes, so you may be able to get a replacement at a good bike shop for a buck or two. It's up to you how far you want to go in trying to save the wheel, but were it me, even if I did get a replacement wheel, I'd still try replacing the failed spoke and see if I could get a spare wheel out of it.

If it's the hub flange that failed, then it was a marginal design to begin with. It should be able to easily handle as much tension as you have on the right side, yet it failed at roughly half that. It did you a favour by failing now rather than on the road.

As for wheel recommendations, I'll just say that I've generally stuck with traditional 32 and even 36 hole wheels, laced 3 cross, and appreciate the peace of mind. I've never had a hub flange failure, and only the occasional spoke breakage, with the spokes being readily replaced. I've also had a few axle failures on freewheel hubs, but even with those the wheel remained rideable. Some riding buddies used to regularly nag me to get newer equipment more like theirs, but the only justification offered boils down to vanity and the assumption that newer is better. Others have gone to wheels similar to mine after having failures with wheels similar to yours. Choose your own cup of tea.

rovis

luns you can see here how it looks compared to the good spokes left/right. Doesn't look like a fixable hook.

luns

I see. Yes, that's a hub flange failure, and I agree it's the end of the road for this wheel. This hub flange design may have been workable for a 16/16 spoke hub, with the left spokes having about half the tension of the right, but when they reduced the number left spokes to 8, they didn't take into account the extra tension the remaining spokes bear. The right side uses regular J-bend spokes which easily take the high tension. If only they'd done the same on the left, the wheel would still be just fine. But they decided on form over function, going for the cleaner look of the straight pull spoke attachment over the tried and true bent spoke through the hub flange.

I'm curious, did you buy this wheel new, or was it used? If the latter, I have a hunch a previous owner already saw signs of trouble (the uneven spoke tension), and the dished the wheel to the right to stabilize the wheel before unloading the problem onto the next owner.

I suppose in theory you could salvage the rim and maybe the right side spokes, and rebuild on a conventional 32h hub, but I would only do this if the end goal is just to prove its possible. I presume your end goal is to have a usable wheel, in which case sadly its new wheel time.

Bill Kapaun

Rim is 24 holes and is probably? drilled where even a 24 hole "conventional" hub wouldn't work without some kind of "bodge" on spoke lengths/entry angles.
I think I'd go for a new wheel and maybe try to sell the old with the caveat that the hub is no good. Maybe someone with the proper hub and a bent rim......

Moisture

You should be able to check for a bent hub on the truing stand when spinning the wheel.,

rovis

Thanks for all your replies and advise!
I'm pretty much set at this point to get new wheels. The only question would be what brand to go with?
I've seen positive reviews on Quality Wheels, H Plus Son and Velocity. Basically a Shimano 105 (or equivalent) hub and good spokes/nipples would fit the bill.

Do these ready made wheels need additional work besides attaching the rear cassette?

luns

A 24 hole conventional hub would most likely not work for the reasons you state, but a 32 hole one likely would. The right flange is 16 holes, the same as the existing hub. It's hard to tell if the right side spoke holes are uniformly spaced, but even if they aren't, they look to be within 1mm worth of spoke length of being uniform, which may be within the adjustment range available on the spoke threads. The flange diameter and offset look to be pretty typical and have a relatively weak effect on spoke length anyway. The left spokes of the original hub spaced in between pairs of the right spokes, as are all the left spokes of a 32 hole hub, so picking the appropriate 8 holes out of the 16 available would put those spokes in the right place.

But as I said, this is something I would only do for the sake of proving it possible. Finding somebody with a bent rim would be great, but I wouldn't hold my breath. I'd expect the forces that could bend a rim would pull out the left spokes of the wheel too. That said, crashes do have a way damaging things in ways you'd never imagine, so maybe there is a match out there.

Moisture

You can find lots of good used wheelsets on classifieds for cheap

Bill Kapaun

The quality is in the workmanship. BTW, don't confuse just the rim with an entire wheel.
I've only bought 1 CHEAP ($30-35 Wheel Master) front wheel online.
The spokes were 2mm short of the screw driver slot. Not good.
1/2 the tensions were pretty good and 1/2 were about 70% IIRC. It's been about 8 years?
Running a caliper around the entire bead circumference, it had about 1/32" deviation from high to low. An adjustable wrench can be used to get an idea if a rim has problems in that area.
The max/min deviations were not opposite each other, but each brake track had its' own individual "wave" around the periphery. This was checked on my PARK TS 2.2. And for the naysayers, once I downloaded the instructions from PARK and followed them, my stand is as centered as it's going to get. No centering tool needed, I just used a near perfect wheel that I'd built.
Around the same era, I bought a $50-55 rear 135mm 8-9 speed wheel from the LBS. Cheap Shimano FH-RM30 hub. Pretty much the same quality level as the front.
I don't recall any red flags about spoke length and the tensions were "more acceptable". Plenty good for a $50 wheel. Possibly, one of the "wrenches" did a quick touch up true/tension?
Both adjusted a bit too tight and very minimal grease.
Some online wheel builders have a good to excellent reputations/good to high prices.

Russ Roth

Based on your numbers and the picture you posted, that hub was just waiting to fail. Proper tension of a wheel is often in the area of 120kgf, my last wheel build was 125kgf drive side and 85kgf on the non-drive, symmetrical front wheels or rears built with off-center rims will build out with 110-125kgf on both sides. If the hub failed at 45kgf, it was a potential accident.

Usually a decent one won't need any extra work with some caveats. I often find shimano hubs aren't adjusted optimally, though they're not alone in this and some hub adjustment might be needed. Sometimes the postal service isn't the most careful and in that case atouch up might be needed, something drastic is often a send back due to shipping damage or shipper pays for a truing.
Quality makes all levers of wheels, if you get one with a 105 hub or better it will be a decent wheel. I've dealt with 100s of their wheels over the years as basic repair replacements and never had an issue with any of them. Velocity makes some nice rims, hubs are fine and probably about a tiagra/105 level. Only heard good things about H Son, never dealt with them. Wheelmaster is another replacement brand, if you get a nicer wheel it always showed up fine.

fishboat

I've picked up 4 sets of wheels in the last 5 years(backside cost of n+1 bike buying..). Two sets of HPlus Sons from Velomine and two sets of Blackset Race from Bicycle Wheel Warehouse, all had 105 hubs. The BWW wheels were last winter with a hefty discount from a promotion they ran. Very happy with all four sets. BWW has a clearance area and a coupon page on their site(google them)..worth a look.

rovis

I've ordered these wheels: https://www.velomine.com/index.php?m...b5c249u9v0nqd1

rovis

I've got the new wheels and below are the measurements out-of-the-box (20% variance).
Both front and rear are trued and dished.

rovis

First ride out, wheels ran nicely, but the rear hub is very noisy when freewheeling! Compared with previous Fulcrum hub which was supper quiet.