Soody

What do you guys reckon about this?

veganbikes

Time for a new rim or a new wheel entirely. I wouldn't ride on that personally.

dedhed

Check spoke tension, put a tire on, inflate, and see if it closes up

KCT1986

And check the wheel for roundness. Could be a flat spot and a hop somewhere. Or a damaged wheel that was repaired with very uneven spoke tension to straighten a bend.

Schweinhund

Do you understand how that wheel is joined? That particular wheel is pinned at the seam rather than welded.
A wheel is an endless arch with stress in one quadrant transferred to the rest of the wheel. except when you've got a pinned joint and it's at a 90° to the impact that caused some momentary distortion of the arch. When that distortion occured, it looks to me that the two pins holding your wheel together, bent.
You could create another impact and try to bend the pins back, or you could do the reasonable thing and realize that your wheel is probably not long for this world. Every time you roll on that joint it's going to flex those pins and the holes they are in until it fails.

FBinNY 

100% OK. this was the condition all along, and based on appearances, has been this way for a looooong time. No reason to think anything is going to change now.

Consider, the rim is being held together by the spoke induced compression, and kept from shifting sideways by the internal pin, and the force of the beads pressing on the sides. Where and how can anything move?

FWIW - the problem is that the extrusion was cut square, so there was a bit of a missing pie wedge when it was formed into a circle. This wasn't at all rare BITD, and has never caused issues, except for obsessive, paranoid, super finicky, forum reading cyclists.

Soody

No luck.
It was pretty out of true/round and the spoke tension wasn't great. I thought I had got it ok with some trueing and one spot on the rim that needed crescent wrench bending. Then I noticed this...


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Soody

I did not. This is interesting to me. So... the seam is not welded, and the brake track and hook of the rim are just held in place by a pin below and tension? That seems crazy.

Soody

Good timing i was about 5 minutes away from cutting all the spokes. So you reckon there were -new- wheels with this gap? These wheels were on a Daimondback Apex mtb with Mountain LX. Not a super cheap bike by any means.
The failure I was imagining in my head would be the pressure of the tire forcing the hooks out at both those points and the tire blowing off the rim.

Soody

Could probably get it a bit better. It's ok though. I also rebuilt the hub with good cones & balls

FBinNY 

Time for practical confirmation.

Get 2 glasses, fill them with water to add some weight, and put them side by side, not quite touching, on the table. That's the rim at the joint.

Now get something flat, like the edge of a cutting board to represent the tire bead wire spanning the gap.

Bring it up to the glasses till it touches both. Keeping it square, try pushing one glass more than the other.

The tire can't and won't either.

BTW if you start this with the glasses uneven, you'll see that you end up bringing them to perfect alignment. So, not only won't the tire misalign the joint, it would help align it if needed.

Schweinhund

May I be honest? My feelings for the wheel is due in no small part to my distain of pinned wheels.
All wheels flex when loaded and rolling. Some wheels flex more than others. Welded wheels tend to be stiffer/stronger than pinned wheels.
I will bet you that those wheels did not come on that bike, good wheels tend to stay with the flipper if they're anything decent

Schweinhund

What is that wheel anyway? I have wheels, some are orphan. If one of those will work for you, you are welcome to it.

dedhed

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dedhed

Yeah, that brake track is about toast.

​​​​​​Rim Brakes Wearing Out Rims

Soody

This bike was not flipped so much as abandoned lol. I am the flipper. I really don't like selling bikes with pitted cones or worn out brake tracks so sussing wheels is the trickiest thing by far. I need to learn to build them.

Soody

You reckon? They aren't concave at all or really any lower where the pads have been hitting. I think they look quite good.

Soody

I am not 100% sure those wheels are the ones from the Daimondback and not identical wheels from an Emmelle with the same spec I got ages ago

Soody

Thanks man but I have a bunch myself and shipping to NZ would be insane anyways

They're Alesas with shimano hubs.

FBinNY 

I haven't seen so much smoke since the Chicago Fire. I don't know why, but it seems (seams?) that everyone wants you to trash perfectly good, though old wheels, and imagining all sorts of issues.

Whether you're keeping or flipping, these wheels will likely last until something like a crash knocks them off.

soyabean

Agreed.

It's how the rim is manufactured when they roll the metal. The seam is always there, just hard to see in a new rim.

soyabean

Oh do please ship all those wheels over to me.

I find a lot of vintage crap like that tossed to the curb on garbage day.

Majority of them end up as donors, when I need parts for the other much prettier "like new" big box bikes I flip.

The only time I decide to sacrifice any time to work on vintage crap is when I have completed all my other bikes, resale ready with live ads.

My rule of thumb is that it can't get new parts other than grease and lube.

When the buyer is paying the price of a 50-piece sushi combo platter, they don't care. They are grateful that it's a complete bike down to valve caps, and everything actually works.

That means patched tubes, tyvek home wrap lining tyres, rescued bent derailleurs, used cables and housing, shot brake pads that should get at least 100 miles off them, getting bad rims true to 2-4mm (that's pretty good standard in my town). I even re-crimp used wire ends. I'm really good at taking them off carefully so I can re-use them.

Rusty crown bearings in the headset get cleaned and grease. Same with the bottom bracket and cones. Damaged/missing bearings are replaced with good used ones. Now the fork, crank, and hubs no longer have any play and don't grind. Big upgrade.

The math of the hours put into and what I retail it for, comes out to about minimum wage. I do it because I find wrenching very clinically relaxing for me. And it culls the herd of that donor pile of crap bikes.

Reduce. Reuse. Recycle.

urbanknight

Yep, I remember back in the early 90's seeing this and being told by a wheelbuilder that it was pinned and not a concern. Even though it creeped me out, the wheel held firm for years. I felt better when machined braking surfaces covered up some of that, but that's also the only kind of rim that ever failed on me.

JohnDThompson 

That's a pinned rim, not welded. Once the wheel is built up, spoke tension will prevent the pinned ends from separating.

Crankycrank

I like to get every last foot of riding out of my bike parts but that crack in the photo from post #7 could end up with the tire blowing the brake track apart if it's worn thin enough. At the very least check the brake track thickness to see if it could potentially break at any time and even if it has a fair amount of aluminum left replace that rim sooner than later. I would also give a good inspection of those rusty handlebars. Could be just surface rust or maybe worse where the bars will snap during a ride.