langa

The bike: an old steel frame Bianchi road bike, possibly from the 1980s. I bought it used about ten years ago and have been commuting and riding it around the city 4-6 days a week since.

The problem: I was having some troubles with my rear wheel rim popping tubes, and my LBS couldn't find the problem after 3-4 tries, so I had them build a new wheel using my hub and gears. I didn't have my bike with me at the time, and asked if I should bring it in. They said not to worry about.

After being built, I had a hard time getting the wheel on the bike, and it wouldn't fit through the brake calipers. I took it back to the shop. They claim that the hub is too big for the fork, although it's the same hub that has been on the bike since I bought it ten years ago, and I have never had a problem getting the old wheel on and off the bike.

So they removed a spacer in the horizontal dropouts and slid the wheel back as far as it would go so that it would fit. The rear fork now needs to be pulled apart slightly to be able to get the hub back in the dropouts, and if I shift the chain onto the largest cog, the wheel will lock up. The bike mechanic explained all of this, and at the time I was okay with it.

After 6 weeks and about 120 miles commuting to and from work, the gears started slipping. That was two days ago. This morning, at a stop light, when the light turned green and I applied pressure to the pedals, the rear wheel slipped out of the dropouts and I hit the ground. I was lucky the cars behind hadn't begun accelerating.

Question: Should I bring it back to the shop again? I've been in there half a dozen times over the past few months already, and while they do the best job they can, I am quickly losing faith. They do have a good reputation and I've generally been happy with them. Has it been too long since I've had the wheel replaced? They have a lifetime guarantee on the wheel, but it's not the wheel that is malfunctioning, it's that it doesn't fit well on the frame.

I was able to ride the bike home by cranking the quick release as tight as it could go, although now I'm worried that it's going to happen again. I don't even feel comfortable selling the bike, as I am not comfortable thinking that someone else may have the same problem down the road and get injured badly.

Any tips, suggestions, thoughts? What can I expect them to say at the shop if I keep bringing the bike back?

Thank you.

Blue Belly

Same hub? Doesn't sound like it. Gears slipping sounds like a stretched chain & worn teeth. If the wheel is clamped in with a quality hub & skewers, it shouldn't be moving in the dropouts.
The hub width shouldn't change when lacing up a new rim. Most common hub widths are in 1/2 cm increments 126, 130, 135. Thus tells me something went really screwy with your hub, or more likely the just grabbed another wheel or laced it up to a different hub. That's my guess

langa

Thanks for the reply. They overhauled the old hub and kept the same gears. The chain is about 8 months old, the rear gears are about six months old, and it was shifting fine until a couple days ago. When I brought the bike in the first time they told me that the hub width shouldn't change, but it appears to have gotten a couple mms wider, but not a whole size up. I don't know how it happened, but it did. I'm less concerned with how well it's fitting than I am with the safety of the wheel.

Could it have loosened that dramatically after only 120 miles?

Maybe the hub and skewer are crap?

How do I make sure the wheel doesn't slip out again?

For my ride home I tightened the quick release up as tight as it would go, but I'm still not very comfortable with it.

dabac

Most common equipment cause of wheels slipping is that the axle ends sits too close to, or protrudes beyond the outer face of the dropout, preventing the q/r from clamping against the dropout. Sometimes the little centering spring can be involved as well.

Either way I'd recommend looking for another lbs. Rebuilding a wheel b/c tubes popping? Strange, really strange. Unless it was due to a rusted-out steel rim, I have a hard time figuring out why a rebuild would be required for that problem.

And for the fit issue - well, either your frame got pinched while being wheelless. Or the lbs did something.

Wheel lock when shifting into largest cog? Even stranger. Wheel lock when shifting into the smallest cog would be a realistic outcome for a hub that hasn't got the spacers right though.

Trouble getting the wheel through the brake sounds like they've given you a wider tire, and possible a wider rim as well. Do your brakes have quick-releases to widen the brake arms? Otherwise it's not too uncommon for people to deflate the tire for insertion, and then reinflate once the wheel is in place.

"So they removed a spacer in the horizontal dropouts and slid the wheel back as far as it would go so that it would fit." This too is odd. Normally, there aren't any spacers in the dropouts. Only things I can think of is either that you had positioning screws that were removed - or you've got a derailer clamp as opposed to a derailer hanger. Clamp-on derailers generally use a funny shaped washer that sits at the back of the dropout and keeps the derailer in place even with the wheel removed. The derailer will work fine w/o it, but you need to take care when mounting the wheel so that the positioning of the derailer gets right.

It's a bit mixed here. Bikes running clamp-on derailers will usually have clearance for just about any tire, while bikes with hanger mounted derailers might be built tighter and may not play nice with a wider tire.

Post pics for further investigation.

Myosmith

+10 for Debac.

What most likely happened is that when the LBS removed a spacer they didn't check the effect on the amount of axle protruding and now your skewers aren't contacting the dropouts properly. The only explanation as to why the wheel would have fit the dropouts before the new rim but not after, and the axle being too long, is that, somewhere along the line, you got either an entire new hub or a longer axle with more spacers.

I too am suspicious of an LBS that would replace a rim because of repeated tube punctures unless they could identify a problem with the rim. I've worked on a lot of bikes and fixed many, many flatting problems and if you do a proper rule out procedure to establish the cause, 99+% of the time you can track down the culprit.

Here's a tip for the future, when you put in a new tube mark the direction of rotation with an arrow drawn on the tube with a silver or gold Sharpie marker. Always align your tires to the stem hole with some sort of reference point. Some people use the brand label, others use the inflation guide, but direction of rotation and orientation on the rim should be noted by some means. When you get a flat that doesn't have an obvious cause, like a nail through the tread, find the hole in the tube and circle it with the same metallic Sharpie. If the hole is toward the tire, place the tube in the tire using your reference points to get it in its original orientation and then mark the approximate location on the tire for closer examination. If the puncture is on the rim side, put the tube on the rim with the stem through the hole and in the original direction of rotation and mark the spot where the rim lines up with the circled puncture. This type of procedure will eliminate a lot of guess work and, if you are getting multiple flats, will tell you if it is the same point causing the problem.

Typical rim problems include:
- spoke too long (does not require the replacement of the rim or rebuild of wheel)
- rim tape out of place (does not require the replacement of the rim or rebuild of wheel)
- sharp edge or burr on the edge of one of the spoke holes or the stem hole (needs a little emery paper)
- burr at a union point (needs a little emery paper)
- damage or defect leaving a rough or sharp area in the aluminum (I've seen this happen when someone tries to use a screwdriver as a tire lever) (might be fixed with emery paper or might be reason to trash rim depending on severity)

A rim can go bad from wear, metal fatigue or damage, but a little detective work will determine a cause.

langa

The old rim had been popping tubes at the valve on a regular basis. I had brought that rim to 3 or 4 different bike shops over the years and none of them were able to find a burr or any physical evidence that there was something wrong with the rim, but it kept happening, even with multiple layers of tape on the inside. The strange thing was that the tube would never pop when I was on the bike...it was always when it was sitting in my apartment, and always at random times. And when I say pop, I mean it would burst at the valve and make a loud bang. There would always be a half inch or longer tear in the tube near the valve.

This happened the first time about 7 years ago at 2 in the morning. Woke me up and scared the crap out of me. Then it was fine for a couple years until it did it again, and then the frequency increased until this past summer when I decided I had had enough and would rather throw down money for a new wheel rather than having to take the bike to the shop every Saturday to have them look at it again.

I agree that it was a strange problem, but neither I, nor a few different bike shops, were able to figure out the cause of the problem or fix it. This last shop I've been going to has been my favorite, and out of all the ones I've been to, they seem to be the most knowledgeable. They also have a great reputation so I am trying to give them the benefit of the doubt, but with each visit I become less impressed.

I took the bike back to them this morning to make sure nothing was wrong with the skewer or axle or hub. The first guy told me that I need to make sure the wheel is on tight enough. Yeah...no kidding. I told him that they were the ones that put the wheel back on when I brought it back to them the first time, and I've only ridden the bike about 120 miles since then. Then I asked if he could take a look at it and make sure nothing was wrong with it. He passed it off to another guy and they checked everything out and told me the skewer is a good one, and that taking the spacer out of the dropouts would have only helped the situation. They ended up sanding down the dropouts a bit, and putting the wheel back on really tight. Tighter than I've ever been able to put it on. I've usually gone by the imprint in the palm rule when it comes to tightening the quick release, but it's on there far more tightly now.

So I'm confident that it's not going to happen again, but I still find it strange that it doesn't fit on the frame as well as in the past and that it needs to be on there so damn tight. Both guys at the shop kinda downplayed the problem and both said it's happened to them in the past. I'm not quite sure how I feel about that.

langa

Here are some photos from before I took it back to the shop this morning.

Homebrew01

One way to reduce slippage is to have a good "grippy" knurled nut on the end of the drive side axle. It will dig into the frame dropout better than a smoother one.

Tubes only explode if the can get outside the tire. Most common is not seating the tire properly. Since yours kept happening at the valve, maybe you had presta tubes with a schrader hole .. enough room for the tube to squeeze through (seems a bit farfetched, I know). More likely that you didn't always get the tire seated at the valve stem. You sometimes need to push the valve up to get it past the bead to allow the tire to seat all the way down.