bluefoxicy

My wheel had a rub in one spot a month ago, if I just barely got the brake pad on it it'd brush at one point in the revolution. That was around 200 miles; bike now has 450 miles on it.

Well now it's two points, and during firm braking it makes a swish-swash sound back and forth. I don't feel any ride degradation; but the wheel visibly wobbles, just barely.

I don't think the bike shop I bought it from ever actually trued the wheels; they are in stock condition plus 450 miles of riding. I'm not sure if they're even up to tension. I heard something about musical spokes but I've never been able to get more than a dull thud out of my spokes by flicking or tapping them with fingers or allen wrenches or anything.

Is it normal for a wheel to obviously start to wobble over the course of a month or two? Is it normal for a wheel to go out of true quickly? Even when riding in the city, hitting speed bumps, pot holes, dropping off curbs, hitting areas of road that have never been maintained, etc.

https://www.performancebike.com/bikes...0_20000_400316

This is what I bought and who I bought it from. The tires are Kenda Kwest (not Kiniption as listed), chain rings are 30/42/52 (not 32/42/52 as listed), and the fork is now listed as aluminum (I suspected as much, but it was listed as carbon until very recently). Any questions about the bike itself beyond that are beyond me.


I just got new tires, and I'm considering getting some Schwalbe tubes and Velox cloth rim tape and having the bike shop I now go to put it all on (don't want to screw up with the rim tape). Plus while I'm there, have them true my wheels since this shop seems to have actual competent mechanics (Performance has people who know less about bikes than Geek Squad knows about computers). It'd cost me all of $50 in labor; whereas if I'm going to true my own wheels, I want a wheel truing stand and a bike stand to hold the bike while the wheel's out, plus a spoke tension meter. I have no friends and no idea what I'm doing and need tools that do proper measuring so I can go "Oh, okay, looks like I did it right" instead of guessing it's "probably right." Not ready to make that investment yet...

... probably a good idea? Should I expect to wind up having the wheels re-trued every 3 or 4 months or should they handle the crap roads for a year or so between? $40 every 400 miles would be about 30% less than what I pay for gas in my car, which is expensive..

gyozadude

I weigh a lot - almost 300 lbs! and build my own wheels. 36h double wall mtn bike rims - Ritchey Vantage Comps, Araya RM20s, and Sun CR18s. Typically, I need to touch true my front every 1000 miles, or rear, every 300 miles. My son's bike? He's only 100 lbs. His wheels are still true since the day I built them. So YMMV.

Drew Eckhardt 

Your wheels should need truing only after bending a rim hitting a road obstacle or crashing. Rims heavy and deep enough for a rider's weight tolerate normal pot holes, curbs, speed bumps, etc. and only bend when crashed.

That took 12-14 years for my last front wheel (32 hole Mavic Reflex clincher, alloy nipples, DT 2.0/1.5 Revolution spokes, Campagnolo Chorus front hub) and only happened because I'd broken my leg and ballooned to 200 pounds which isn't a good weight for shallow 400 gram rims.

I last touched the rear wheel I usually ride five years ago after replacing the rim due to a big bend from a crash.

Properly built wheels with sufficiently strong rims don't go out of true until crashed.

Of course most machine manufactured wheels aren't properly built.

If they just make the wheels straight and neglect to correct the underlying tension problems that caused them to go out of true you'll be paying some one to fix the problem again.

That's a good reason to learn to do things yourself. You can get them true enough enough on the bike frame using brake pads for lateral true and perhaps a straight edge held on with rubber bands for radil run-out. Plucking and listening will get tension about as uniform as you can measure on a Park TM-1. The Jobst Brandt method of tensioning and stress relieving until waves develop and then backing off half a turn is also about as accurate provided that you have alloy box section rims with conventional spoke counts. A nice Park spoke wrench costs about $5.

gyozadude

"Ballooned?" :-) Was 255lbs in college and found it hard to find shorts/pants with thighs big enough. Broke my ankle in Tokyo, on a street no less, avoiding a drunk Oyagi coming out of a bar. Torqued the ankle all the way around. Still have 2 pins in there. But that was 16 years ago. I've been steadily putting on the pounds over the years and riding less. Not healthy at all. And not good for the bike. Broke pedal axle recently. Dinged the front rim and had to de-lace, tweak, and re-lace, re-tension. And my rear came out of tension after just 200 miles, but I put some knobbies and was going off road a little more than usual.

But I did ride into work today, despite 100 deg F heat in Santa Clara! And this wheel set, with Sun CR18s (old rebranded ones with nashbar label purchase quite a few years ago), has been just great for road riding and has stayed true for a long time.

bradtx

bluefoxicey, Did you have the wheel trued when it first started to go untrue and it became untrued again?

Brad

bluefoxicy

The mechanics at the small-scale shop are knowledgeable and seem to actually care about their job. They're visibly listening when I talk, and split their time between giving the bike a quick visual inspection before wheeling it behind the counter and communicating back any suggestions or questions (yeah, mechanics ask customers questions, imagine that).

I'm sure if I voice my concerns that the wheels are stock and have never been properly trued or had their tension manually checked, they'll account for that. It wouldn't surprise me if the guy grabbed a screwdriver while I was still talking and banged on the spokes to see what they sound like. The place is stocked with good mechanics, and good mechanics--auto mechanics, bike mechanics, dishwasher mechanics--all have a pattern of behavior that's extremely noticeable.

My previous boss (we're rotating at the moment) actually used to own that shop. He said back then, they used to make sure every wheel was tuned and trued (in the bike) and properly inflated before it left, because it only took them a few minutes. Any missing end caps replaced, tubes replaced during a tire change or flat repair (they charged $2 more than a typical shop for that), the like.

One thing I found interesting, though, was that they strongly requested to everyone who brought a bike in for a repair that they come back with the person who was going to actually ride the bike when they picked it up. They'd fix the bike, give it back, have them ride it around the building a few minutes, and discuss anything that felt off or seemed not right. Pretty much nobody came back until they had another problem; every bike that left his shop was right.

It still seems to be run pretty close. They didn't request I test ride and report back when they fixed my derailleur (I came to the shop on the bike anyway, it's given I wasn't going to cart the bike home and stick it in the garage for a few days before riding it); but it was done right and the guy visually confirmed that was the likely problem before he even took my bike, then took the derailleur off and visually confirmed that the hanger was bent and inspected the frame and wheel around the area before beginning work.

I like this shop. They're easy to get along with, and very thorough. I have an auto mechanic that's the same way, the only one I let touch my car.

bluefoxicy

Nah, it's not been touched since I got it. The bike only has 450 miles on it; the whole of it seems to be that it's never been trued at all, I guess. What I'm getting out of this is that that's likely the exact problem and needs to be done.

bradtx

bluefoxicey, The wheel(s) were probably true enough to leave the machine that built them, but unevenly tensioned, a common finding when OEM wheels go out of true as quickly as yours.

Brad

Carbonfiberboy 

It takes a little bit longer to stress relieve a wheel and go around again with the tension meter and retrue, then maybe do that again. People don't want to pay for that, they want the low price. So it's expected that new wheels may go out of true. In your case it's probably a good idea to take the bike in and have the wheels retensioned and retrued. This may cost some money, but not too much. If the shop is any good, they won't just pluck the spokes, they'll put a tension meter on them and adjust them so they are at the rim manufacturers recommended tension and all as close to the same as possible.

Now then, it's more than possible that, because your wheels were never properly tensioned, or maybe even if they were, that you've put some extra sideways stress on the rim at some point and bent it a hair. It will be easy to pull it back into true, but then the spoke tension won't be exactly even around that spot. In any case, have the wrench explain to you how to do minor re-truing of your own wheels and buy a spoke wrench from the shop to use. You don't want to take the bike back to the shop every time a wheel goes a little out of true. And the way to keep the wheels in good shape is to keep after them and keep them true. No matter how well a wheel is built, you're going to be able to knock it out of true by doing some odd thing with it. Ideally, they'll stay true enough for a couple thousand miles at a time.

Then every time you get the bike ready to ride, pick up each end and spin the wheel, watching the space between the rim and brake pad. Touch it up a little if necessary. That's when you pluck the spokes to see which ones to let out and which to take up. It ain't computer science.