thebankman

I bought an 80's road bike and had to have work done on the front 27" wheel. A LBS replaced a broken spoke and trued the wheel. The Araya rim was true when I brought it home but after two hours of riding around and one bunny hop the wheel is severely out of true. It's wobbling back and forth like a drunken sailor and I went pretty easy on it considering the abuse I give my other bikes.

Should I give up on this wheel and just get a new 27" road wheel (does Mavic or other quality brands make this size any more?) or try and get the wheel trued again and risk it going out of alignment again?

Thank you much!

phantomcow2

Sounds like very inconsistent spoke tension. Probably overall very loose tension as well. Take it to another shop, have them tension them properly and CHECK it, and use some type of agent to lock the threads.
IF the rim is in questionable shape, you might consider this an opportunity to replace it.

Al1943

Check for cracks in the rim near the spoke holes. If you have these the rim is toast.

Al

cascade168

I agree that inconsistant tension is a likely cause for it to go out of true so quickly. Truing wheels is easy. Truing them, tensioning properly and then doing correct stress relieving is another story. All of those steps are necessary for a truing job to hold up.

If you paid to get that wheel trued and it did not hold up you should bring it right back to the shop. I'd be surprised if they do not make it right for you. Make sure and ask if they checked to see if the spokes are tensioned properly. This should have been done as a part of the truing.

cazzooo

Cascade168, I want to get into wheel maintainance, tell me what goes into stress relieving? Also could you reccomend a good tension meter-tool?

seely

Bunnyhop? 27" wheel? Ok, so you replaced a spoke on a 30 year old, low end wheel and then you bunnyhop on it? I'm really not surprised its out of true, honestly.

cascade168

A pretty good tensiometer for reasonable money is the Park TM-1, seen here:

https://www.parktool.com/products/det...16&item=TM%2D1

These can be had for <$60 and are a good investment for anyone serious about building wheels. Stress relieving can be done in many ways and you're better off learning from the experts (than me). Your best bet is to read up and figure out what works best for you. Here's a brief description about what's going on from Sheldon Brown:

https://www.sheldonbrown.com/wheelbuild.html#seating

He gives a link to "The Bicycle Wheel" by Jobst Brandt which is an excellent reference and another is "The Art of Wheelbuilding" by Gerd Schraner. Taking the time to read up will give you a much better idea of what the tasks are and what you need for tools. Besides the tensiometer, you will need a spoke wrench, or two, a decent truing stand, a dishing gauge, and, as Sheldon point's out, an old left crank arm is nice to have. If all you want to do is true wheels, you can get away with just a spoke wrench and do it right on the bike. If you want to get serious about wheelbuilding and maintenance, the other tools I mention will make the job a lot easier. But, as many will point out, you can get away with less.

crusty_pedals

the rim it's self is probably bent. when this happens, especially on an old bike, with possibly a old steel rim th rim is bent to the point where proper spoke tension, and a true wheel are not possible as a set. its one or the other with this one. the rim is bent, it is set that way. and on an older bike, it most likely hasn't had good care at some point or another. when its ridden like this, it becomes set this way. so when they trued the wheel, the spoke tension cannot possibly be right, and the rim be straight at the same time. this will happen to newer wheels as well if you don't take care of them (mostly machine built wheels). a new wheel is the only solution. them truing it again wont do anything. but dont be pist at them, they tried to fix it. it's just not fixable, you can't fault people for trying to help out.

toolboy

+1 on that!!

cascade168

Well, there's big bunnyhops and there's little ones. Even with a 27" wheel you should be able to bunnyhop a 6" curb. If you are going down a flight of stairs or hopping on and off a picnic table then that's a different story. The OP never said anything about how traumatic his hop was. Plus, some people can do this very smoothly and some will mash the bejeezus out of the bike when they do it. So you see what I mean? He said he went "pretty easy" on the wheel.

Any decent shop should stand behind their work and the OP would be smart to go for this. At least give them the chance to make it right. What's to lose? I have steel rims that are from the early 80s and are much less rigid than aluminum rims and they have tensioned, trued, and held up just fine. Just because it's old, does not mean is a POS.

operator

Ok, we're done.

phantomcow2

Again, we still don't know how severe a bunny hop this was. The possibility of a bent rim is something I had not thought about, you might want to look at this one:
https://www.nashbar.com/profile.cfm?c...eid=&pagename=

If you are going to be retensioning the entire wheel, it's not that much harder to replace the rim. I've never used that rim, and its not going to be top quality, but better than something bent.

supcom

Possibly another spoke is broken? Usually when one breaks, others are not far behind.

seely

I'm pretty sure that any bunny hop on a crappy 27" 30 year old single wall rim qualifies as severe.

ponchotempest

Rims are cheap, dude. Just get the cheapest double-walled alloy rim that you can find, and it'll feel ten times smoother than the old steel one.

cerewa

ponchotempest- what do you consider to be a cheap doublewall rim, in terms of price? $20, $40?

Would you buy it at a bike shop or online? If online, where?

supcom

Sun CR18 rims are available at aebike.com in 27" size. They are inexpensive and should do nicely. The spokes and build labor (if you pay someone to do it) will exceed the cost of the rims.

rover

I had a similar thing happen to me, minus the bunny hop. Took a set of old wheels to my LBS, got charged $20 and had a broken spoke and untrue wheels in less than 20 miles. I got ticked and decided to true the wheels myself. I quickly discovered that half of the spokes were seized up and couldn't really be adjusted. I got more ticked. I tore the wheels apart, straightened a minor bend in one rim, and rebuilt them. So far no problems. Not the first time I've had better results on my own than by taking the problem to the LBS.

thebankman

Considering the bike was picked up at a thrift store in the condition it was, these wheels probably sat in a garage for ten years before I found them. I'm going to get a whole new front wheel and give up on this one...also last night I went to look at the rim for cracks and noticed the tire was totally flat Boy I didn't think I'd break it in one day but I guess so. Unfortunately it's easier to bunny hop than to take the hit from a pothole around S.F. so my bikes take a beating but this is the first to cry "mercy!" so far. Oh well it should be expected that the maiden voyage of a used bike is going to quickly sort out the problems.

TRaffic Jammer

Araya...nuff said.

ponchotempest

I just built up a rear wheel with that exact same rim. sora hub, 36h, 15ga spokes with brass nipples. In under $100 and now I have a good strong wheel for commuting.

I paid $31 for the cr18, and maybe there are even better prices out there.

rallen

I'm fixing up my old bike and it has araya rims, currently out of true. The plan is to take them to the shop to get them trued; thinking back I remember about 8 years ago getting them trued and they went out of true pretty quickly and the bike shop told me they could not be trued.... this just reminded me Crap!

Richard Cranium

Wow, how much did you take? Are you guys all doing the same stuff?

TRaffic Jammer

*cough cough* Duuuude, what ARE you talking about?