I recently re-purposed a pair of well uses 30 YO Mavic MA2 rims by lacing them onto some Nuovo Record hubs 36t rear/ 32t front. The front built up easily (for me) and has held true since the day I tensioned it up. The rear is another story. The rear rim had taken a beating with several flat spots; probably the result of me taking it off road a few dozen times. The first time I built it up the variance in spoke tension was so bad, I took it all apart and worked on pounding out the flat spots. The second time I laced it up it went much better, but once it was tensioned it would not hold true; but I figured if I kept re-truing the wheel eventually it would stay that way. Yesterday I loosened and re-tensioned the spokes to be sure the tension was as uniform as I could get it. Today, I mapped out a 5 mile loop that I knew had pretty rough surfaced road. After the first lap, it was knocked out of true. I re-trued and went for another lap; still knocked it out of true. After the third lap it was better, but still required some truing. After the fourth lap it was even better but still off and after the 5th lap it finally held true. I had not been fine tuning the truing during this process, so I put the wheel on the stand one more time for fine tuning. Then went on a 30 mile ride with lots of bumpy down hill and again no evidence the turning had been knocked out at all.

So, for those like Mr Rabbit, does this sound like the wheel will hold up over time, or is this wheel/rim on borrowed time?

During all of the wheel-building and truing did you properly (and frequently) stress-relieve the spokes? Is the tension high enough? Have you checked those "well-used" rims for cracking at the spoke holes? A properly tensioned and stress-relieved wheel shouldn't need to be trued five times to get it right, IMO.

This answers your own question imo.


Pounding out the rim's "flat spots" and then subjecting it to the same, or similar, treatment that damaged it in the first place is only asking for a repeat failure imo.



I think you'd be better off spending your time and effort on a new rim and spokes that are capable of handling the off road riding you're subjecting it to. You might even find an off road suitable (and reasonably priced) replacement wheel that will fit your drop-outs.

I'd tend to agree with this if I hadn't recently had a similar hard time with a 32h Sun Mistral rear; took like three goes to get my build to stick, despite some pretty enthusiastic stress-relieving. Buggered if I could tell what caused the hassle, the wheel seems fine now... although perhaps changing the spokes to semi-aero jobs had something to do with it; when I relaced the round ones symetrically a while back it stayed true.

I'd mostly disagree with FMB42; although the rim will be a bit fatigued, it shouldn't be in such a way that will cause early failure (typically happens around the spoke holes); it might even be more resistant to going out of round due to work-hardening.

MA2, are older rims, and not as inherently rigid as modern rims. That makes them much more sensitive to variations in spoke tension. They also won't tolerate the kind of tension that modern (heavier) rims do. So you're very limited in how much tension the right side will tolerate, which means you're that much more limited in left side tension (roughly 60% of right side tension.

If you're building with 2mm plain gauge spokes, you probably have too much spoke for the rim, and the left is under tensioned. The constant realignment may be due to left nipples loosening, or the rim itself settling under load at the right spoke holes. You might get it to settle in, or you may be dealing with this nonsense forever. If it improves, and seems to settle in, you might stabilize the left side by using some wicking threadlocker (Loctite green) between the nipples and rim. Apply from the hub side, and spin the wheel to drive it in. Don't loctite the spoke threads.

The rim was used already, with miles comes some fatigue. That's a given...

You indicated "pounding" out flat spots so to speak...that's more fatigue.

It took several attempts to get the rim to settle down. Maybe you initially over-tensioned, maybe the tension was too unbalanced...maybe you didn't stress relieve enough...who knows?

You are able to ride it now - ride it until it dies. Seriously. Don't worry about catastrophic failure...this is a high spoke count traditional non-carbon wheel.

When the day comes that even purposely under-tensioning the wheel results in the wheel coming out of true upon inflating the tire - then do a rebuild on a new rim. MA2s and MA-40s should easily be able to give you 40,000+ miles of use over their lifetime - I remember Mavic even stating as such in their tech notes back in the mid-80s in small print footnotes or a back page of sorts.

=8-)

Thanks, this what I was hoping to hear. While I am no where near a wheel building expert, I have built 20 or so wheels and they always came out straight and true and stayed that way. The only reason I even spent so much time with the rim is because of it's vintage.

I also am in agreement with FBinNYThe rim feels almost fragile and seemed to react to even the smallest of adjustment (I'm probably overstating this a little as it was more of a perception). I did tighten the spokes on the taught side thinking it would better support a less rigid rim, but there are no signs whatsoever of any rim fatigue. Further it's off road days are over and hopefully will enjoy a long retirement of long rides on the roads the through the agricultural landscape of Santa Cruz and Pajaro.

I am calling this a major success. This is one of those projects that started out as what seemed an easy rim switch and morphed into "is this even going to work?". Well it did! It took several weeks of tweaking and truing, but today was a 50 mile ride with some of the worst roads In Santa Cruz/ Pajaro and the wheel was solid and stayed in perfect (well as close as I could get it) true! When's the last time you had success on some project that took more work than you thought it would?

That's good news, and good work on your part! I'm glad that I was wrong...

Yours was a reasonable reply and right for 95% of the folks that wouldn't put more time into this than it was possibly worth. The only reason I gave this so much attention is I am retro fool and the idea of re-purposing the MA2 just wouldn't go away (the use of 30 YO Nuovo Record hubs should have been a clue). Still, thanks for your response and I certainly considered what you said.

I'm in the midst of a similar process with a Super Champion rim, with Shimano 600 tricolor hub. And for the same reasons. Initially, on the stand, I couldn't get the flat spot out, so mounted it anyway. The ride was unacceptable, so trued it again, and got a good deal more of the flat spot out, and continued riding it. One more time and I think it'll be good and stable. Not that I'm any kind of wheel building expert(with less than 20 under my belt), but I don't see this as a bad way to go about it, on very old rims, which probably aren't round to begin with. I had originally built up a Rigida rim, and had to reject it because I just couldn't bring it into round.

Great work guys and very good info.