JunkYardBike

I recently purchased a set of Mavic Open Pros/Ultegra hubs from performancebike. As suggested on BF in multiple threads, I decided to have an LBS retension the wheels. So, I spent $40 at a very reputable LBS to have them retensioned (this was done by the proprietor who has extensive experience).

After a few rides, the wheels were slightly out of true laterally. So, I tightened a few spokes and got it back to true. Now, after a few more rides, they are slightly out of true again.

For reference, they are 32 spoke wheels, I am 185 lbs, and I have ridden exclusively on pavement. I avoid rough pavement if I can, but I've hit some rough spots a few times on this wheelset.

Question: when people claim they have been riding for years on retensioned machine built wheels without having them go out of true (and these claims come from cyldes as well as lightweights riding on all types of surfaces, some clydes on 32 spoke wheels), are they exaggerating, or did my LBS not truly retension them? Will any wheelset go slightly out of true? Are these people talking about major "out of true" issues?

I did ask the LBS proprietor if he had retensioned them, and he responded that he tightened everything up. A little ambiguous perhaps, as I was expecting a complete detension then retension.

When I approached another reputable LBS with an experienced head mechanic, he suggested that he (and most shops) simply don't have the time required to detension and retension wheels. I'm sure if I offered $100 a wheel, they might find the time, but I'm not exactly prepared to do that.

Thoughts?

HillRider

My experience with machine build wheels purchased from Colorado Cyclist, Wheelsmith, Nashbar and my LBS has been to ride them as received. I've never had a bad experience and they've all given good service and remained true for thousands of miles. Any truing I had to do was minor and only after a lot of miles.

Machine built wheels have an undeserved reputation for being second rate. This was certainly true in the past but modern wheelbuilding machines are extremely sophisticated and they are fully the equal or better than most LBS mechanics. Colorado Cyclists claims their wheels are each hand trued and tensioned but I'll bet their technicians have very little to do these days.

TO11MTM

A little more information on the build would be helpful. Rim? Number of Crosses?

That said I've had some retentionned machine wheels work out better than some built wheels from scratch. Unfortunately a lot of it boils down to, whether he has 5 years or 5 months of experience, how picky he is about details.

My above example, would be in reference to a machinebuilt set where I preset the spokes and retensioned, and the handbuilt I just tensioned once because I was lazy. The Machinebuilt set worked out better, because the spokes were already set into place.

JunkYardBike

Well, the truing I did was minor as well, but after not so many miles. The rims weren't rubbing the brake pads, which are set very close to the rim, but there was a visible lateral movement. Perhaps I'm being too picky?

3 cross on Mavic Open Pro rims, double butted spokes. I should also add that the bike was only carrying my weight...no cargo.

HillRider

The point of my previous post was that your LBS mechanic may have made your wheels worse, not better. My experience with modern machine-built wheels is that they are very well made, trued and tight as you buy them and the LBS mechanic may only complicate the situation, not improve it.

JunkYardBike

Possibly, but this guy has been doing this for 30 years or so. He's built frames. He know how to build and true wheels. I'm planning on bringing them in again for him to look at, but he's a NSLBS (Not So Local Bike Shop).

well biked

My experience with machine built wheels has varied widely, and I've bought quite a few pre-built wheelsets simply because of the price. I've developed my own "quality control check" that I do as soon as I get the wheels out of the box. I check for trueness, roundness, dish, and tension. I don't know if I've ever bought machine built wheels that didn't at least need a touch-up truing job. I've gone so far as to completely re-tension the wheels (for all practical purposes re-build them) if things are badly off. I've seen wheels that were over-tensioned, and I've seen some that were under-tensioned (more common I believe), right out of the box. The most recent set of pre-built wheels I bought are supposed to have been handbuilt, and they're not cheapos. Mavic A719 rims laced to Shimano XT hubs w/36 straight gauge DT spokes. The only significant thing I found wrong at all with the wheels, right out of the box, was that the rear wheel was slightly undertensioned. I increased spoke tension on that wheel (without de-tensioning first), did a touch up truing, and I've ridden the wheels about 150 miles; so far everything is still perfectly true.

The one thing that hasn't been mentioned in all this is stress relieving the spokes. If the spokes aren't stress relieved, even if the wheel's true on the truing stand, it will usually become out of true in a short while. I always stress relieve pre-built wheels before riding them. It seems that your mechanic should have done this, but who knows. Here's a link to Sheldon's site on stress relieving spokes:

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

rm -rf

I got this truing stand and this Park tension meter on sale a few years ago, when I bought a second set of cheap mountain bike wheels.

It's a lot easier to adjust out of true wheels with this setup. And you can fix any small out of true conditions that are bugging you.

HillRider

Current good wheel building machines even stress relieve the spokes prior to final tensioning and truing. I've seen a video of one of these machines in action and it's really amazing how sophisticated and capable they are.

This thread has, so far, only talked about wheels built with commonly availaiable standard hubs, rims and spokes.

Remember that almost all of the ultra-expensive boutique wheelsets from Mavic, Campagnolo, Shimano, Fulcrum, Zipp, etc. are also machine built with little to no hand work and these seem to make their (now significantly poorer) owners very happy.

well biked

I don't disagree, even with "regular" wheels (not boutique) there are machine built wheels that are okay right out of the box (except, in my case at least, I've never seen any that didn't at least need a touch-up truing). I do think the "better" wheels (wheels with higher end hubs, rims, spokes,) do tend to get, generally speaking, a better quality build by the builder (better machine, more time, I don't know). My point is that build quality does vary widely with pre-built wheels. I bought some wheels from Nashbar a couple years ago that were machine built, the hubs and rims were lower end, and it was comical how badly out of true they were. Stress relieved? No way were these stress relieved, the spokes weren't even seated properly in the flanges. I basically rebuilt the wheels by de-tensioning them, and they turned out to be nice wheels, I've only replaced them recently because I slammed into a pothole and bent the rear rim.

Personally, I enjoy the "quality control check" that I do when I receive pre-built wheels, and even if the wheels need complete re-tensioning I don't mind, because I'm buying the wheels because the wheel parts are so inexpensive that way.

But as for Junkyardbike's situation, I think since the wheels spin true and then go out of true in a short time after riding, the possiblilty that they haven't been stress relieved is likely (but it's the mechanic in this case that should have done it).........did you notice any popping or pinging noises from the wheels, JYB, when you first rode the wheels? If so, that's a definite sign the spokes weren't stress relieved-

Waldo

I can't speak to the other brands, but all Zipp and Flash Point wheels are 100% hand built.

As for the O.P.'s question, when I was working in shops we would detension as necessary in the process of truing the wheel and achieving proper spoke tension. It was not a complete detensioning and re-tensioning.

Retro Grouch 

What it boils down to is what did he actually do.

halfspeed

The last wheel I bought from Performance (Record/Wheelsmith/Open Pro) was perfectly true, but as soon as I hand-applied lateral stress, spokes started pinging and it came way out of true. It seems that the butted spokes were seriously wound. I did a detension and retension and haven't trued it in the thousand miles since.

JunkYardBike

Yes, a bit of pinging after the LBS had trued them, so they weren't properly stress relieved. But does riding on them stress relieve them, or do they need major work to ensure that they stay true longer than 100 miles?

I have another set of low end machine built wheels (Alivio Hubs, CR18 rims, 3 cross, 14G spokes) that I did nothing to. First time riding, there was LOTS of pinging. I've done minor truing adjustments several times over a few hundred miles. Now that I'm swapping them to a touring frame, I thought I'd try to get them right - since again they were slightly out of true. The rear was worse than the front, so I went around tightening every spoke by 1/2 turn a couple times. As I remember, the spokes on the non-drive side were very loose. At any rate, I was able to get it trued laterally, but it looks like I put some flat spots on the rim as it's not very round.

These are the rims I brought to a different, but trusted LBS, and was told by the head mechanic that they don't have time to completely detension and retension wheels (understandable given the work load this time of year). I was also told that the rim may have "set" already, meaning it will forever be out of round. Not sure if I should believe this.

San Rensho 

Doesn't sound like the LBS did anything really wrong except he probably didn't stress the wheel enough before he gave it to you. When I buy machine made wheels, the first thing I do is put them on the ground, stand on one end and balancing myself on a chair, I carefully push against the opposite side of the rim with my other foot until I just feel the rim start to give. Turn the wheel 90 degrees repeat, then flip the wheel over and do the other side.

Then I true the wheel and repeat above. I repeat the stress/true routine until I can stress the wheel and it doesn't go out of true. Once I get it to that point, I can go for years without re-truing, as long as I don't hit anything hard.

By the way, were not talking about staying in true to within .089mm true as measured with a micrometer here. Approximately 1 mm tolerance as measured by eyeball.

halfspeed

Pinging comes from spokes that are twisted or "wound" from the truing process. When lateral stresses are applied to the wheel, they loosen and unwind and come out of true. The only cure is to force the spokes to unwind by applying lateral stresses and then retruing, being careful not to wind the spokes again. I do this by holding the wheel like a school bus steering wheel, bracing it against my belly and pushing down with my fore arms.

Keep doing this until the wheel can stay in true under lateral stresses. It takes some time to get this right and is harder with butted spokes than straight guage. You will also need to relieve stresses by squeezing opposing pairs of spokes.

There is time and skill involved and a busy bike shop might not get it right.

JunkYardBike

I freely admit that I may be suffering the consequences of eating fruit from the tree of knowledge. I'm a relatively novice cyclist, but I've ridden off and on my entire life, never competitively, and I've always made due with what I had. It's not until I began becoming more serious and building my own bikes that this has become an issue to me.

That being said, I'd say the Mavic wheelset is getting closer to true, and it is probably within the 1 mm range of trueness, though there is a bit of hop in the rear wheel (probably less that 1 mm again?). I don't feel the hop when I ride, but I can see it on the truing stand.

The CR18 wheelset, on the other hand, has been untrue by more than 1mm several times. I've left the wheelset at the aforementioned LBS, though they may decide to do nothing with them. However, I believe I may have really fudged the rear wheel by tensioning the spokes.

Thanks for the advice about stress relief. I'll try it on the Mavic rims and see what results.

greyghost_6

I aggree and dis aggree with halfspeed. I think that after all this spoke tensioning knowone is addressing spoke torsion! Whenever I get a wheel to true, and need to tighten, you have to over tighten at least a quarter turn then go back that quarter turn to make sure there are no torsion waves in the spokes or they will "unscrew" themselves. This way you dont have to BEND the rim to get them to PING and relieve torsion, then tighten again, bend, ping etc. This way the spoke has no twist in it in the first place. Try it with a spoke with a reflector on it (if you havent removed) and you will see how much the spoke stays twisted after you tighten it. If you have bladed spokes, even better because you can see the amount of torsion that has to be relieved. Well thats my 2 cents.

halfspeed

The overtensioning and backing off works moderately well, but on wheels with butted spokes, I still get a fair amount of twist that needs to be released by applying lateral stresses.

DMF 

How do you judge tension? Tension-o-meter? Pitch?

Should tension be dependent on rider weight?

Wil Davis

Tension meter :



For more details see here. Some folk claim they can tension spokes accurately by listening to the pitch. I prefer to use a TM-1.

The trick is to get as much tension in the wheel as possible without exceeding the rim manufacturer's specified limits; that way, even when a wheel is subjected to the most violent shock (brick/stump/kerb/pot-hole etc), the spokes at the bottom of the wheel won't be detensioned enough to allow the nipples to turn, which is what causes the wheel eventually to go out of true.

I've only bought one set of pre-made wheels; they were from eBay and they were "hand-built". Well, that's as maybe, but just doing a cursory squeeze on the spokes told me they had only about half the tension I would have expected, so I retensioned (and stress-relieved) them, and have had no problems with them (so far).

- Wil

JunkYardBike

Thanks for all the help. I've decided the Mavic Open Pros only have a very minor trueness issue, so I'm leaving them be for now. I've been on a few rides since, and they've held their trueness. Most likely was a stress relief issue.

The CR18's were returned from the LBS untouched. The only mechanic with wheelbuilding experience simply couldn't get to it in a timely fashion. So I spent umpteen hours tightening the spokes, causing the rim to go out of round, then loosening spokes. At any rate, I think I have them pretty well tensioned. I used the stress relief tricks mentioned here, and they seemed to have done the job. I also discovered the rear wheel was improperly dished, so I was able to correct that.

Still don't have the bike completely finished, so time will tell how badly I did! I did have a chance to sit and roll on the wheels for a short distance, and there was no pinging. Just waiting to hit that first rough patch of pavement....

miamijim

I think what greyghost means is to twist the nipple backwards after tightening to remove the twist. If you do this without the nipple moving on the threads you'll take most of the twist out of the spokes. Its very difficult to judge how moch to do this but if done properly there'll be amost no pinging when the wheel is stressed. This technique does not involve 'over tensioning'.

And yes, you can destress a wheel by riding it.

Al1943

When tensioning and/or truing I hold each spoke with pliars. That way they don't wind up or unwind.

Al

urbanknight

Here's what I would do at this point if I were you (granted, I would have rode them out of the box and left well enough alone until I had a problem, but we're past that now): Grab EVERY pair of parallel spokes and squeeze them towards each other by hand. Yes, your hand should ache after 16 pair. The retension and retrue. Repeat on the other wheel. If you (or this top notch LBS guy you speak of) do this correctly, you won't have to touch the wheels for 5+ years... or until you hit a large pothole.