Some of you know I am a pretty big fan of Campy wheels. Have ridden them for years dating way back. That is until yesterday.
Yesterday was very different than anything I have ever experienced and I have been at this a long time. It was Mother's day and so wanted to get a morning ride in knowing I would consume a lot of calories later so headed out to my usual cycling road I ride for a quick blast. Got out there...catch a wheel of a sporty rider and we take turns pulling and having good conversation and we part ways about 10 miles out and I am heading home and boom, rear tire blow out. Hadn't had one in a while....have had great luck with Rubino Pro III's and standard heavy butyl tubes. So, stop to do the usable thing. Wasn't under too much time compression and carefully inspected the tire to make sure a thorn or something else like glass wasn't lodged in it...couldn't find anything...quickly checked the rear wheel, back together...tire inflated with CO2 and back on the road and then 1 mile later and boom...another rear tire blow out. Well, when lightning strikes twice something more than coincidence is at play but unfortunately I was SOL because I don't carry two tubes...at that point rely on a riding buddy but I was out for a quick solo blast and I either had to walk home or catch a ride. A word about human nature. It is not unlike this forum which is kind of a microcosm of society. The vast amount of people out enjoying a perfect day will do so much to help anybody in need they can and of course there is subset that will never offer to help. When I see somebody down, I always offer my phone or will donate a tube or inflator if it will get them back up and riding home. Of course many won't. Yesterday as it turns out I passed two rather nice looking girls on my way home and as I went I by...they were gabbing a bit on their road bikes and they laughed and said they just felt like gossiping and not riding harder to keep up and we all had a laugh about it. So now stranded, since I went down twice, they caught up to me and asked if they could help and I said, well, do you have a spare tube? I could take your name and be sure to return the favor. The girl said, well yes, I have two tubes and will give you one. Wow. Somebody I didn't even know would offer a 3 dollar tube. She didn't want to exchange contact info and simply said, nah...I will see you back out here...and you can repay me then. How kind people can be. Countless people stopped in fact...couple of other girls stopped and said they were glad it wasn't them because they wouldn't know what to do...and some great guys offered to help including one of my group ride buddies who was out there.

OK...enough. I am thinking...2 tubes in a couple miles....has to be an issue. There was. This time I very closely inspected the tire and rim which leads to a question as there are lot of wheel experts on this forum and I have never seen this in all my years of riding. A burr inside the rim where the seam of the wheel comes together had developed that was protruding through what looks like an integrated rim tape that was poking thru and popping the tube. The wheel seam from the outside of the rim looks normal. But on the inside, where the seam comes together, the two sides meet almost convex...with a bit of an edge which was repetitively popping the tube. So what to do next? I had a short segment of tube in my seat bag and I thought I would place this over the sharpness and buffer the tube. Best laid plans. So put that in there, inflated yet another tube with my last CO2 canister....got the wheel back on and was flipping the bike back over...and boom....lost the tube that the nice lady donated. Now I am really screwed. Since I was 5 miles out and in cycling shoes, I had to call my girlfriend to come pick me up. Its been several years since I have had to call for a ride in fact.

So...what do you guys think? I had never experienced this. These wheels are just a year old and I have put 20K miles easy on previous Campy wheels. This is the latest and greatest redesigned Fulcrum 5's...still have another set of Fulcrum 5's in operation without issue.

Fulcrum isn't easy to call...can't find a phone number for their customer service in North America. If any of you guys have a contact, please let me know. I did find an email form on their website and just wrote to them for direction...either warranty or do they suggest dremmeling the high spot of the interior rim seam down smooth and then say wrapping the rim with Velox rim tape to cover the seam?

I don't want to lose the wheel but if this happened to me, it probably has happened to others with these wheels...I am no Clyde nor do I jump off city curbs. Design onesy's as it turns out are quite rare. Design and manufacturing are like DNA. If there is one out there, there are generally several.

Any advice is welcome and appreciated. What would you do in this situation?
thanks

One link showed this as the Fulcrum, NA contact info:
4553 Mariotti Court Suite 103
Sarasota, Florida 34233
United States


PH: 941-924-1300
info@fulcrum-na.com

from: https://www.malakye.com/companyprofi...th-america-llc

Thanks so much Sy. As it turns out, I don't live far from there. I could take the wheel there to show them.
Much appreciated.

and a product catalog of a few years ago had this..

Thank you brother. I will be sure to keep you posted on what I learn.
Hopefully there will be a happy outcome as this wheelset is still pretty new. Even if Fulcrum doesn't support any sort of repair, since the rim seam doesn't appear to be separating...but joint is developing a slight mismatch on the inside, this could likely be knocked down and wrapped with a fresh strip of rim tape and presume it could be repaired this way. Ideally, I would prefer of course Fulcrum to replace it...but not sure if they will.

To add a bit of further clarity. The seam mismatch inside the rim is like the peak of a finely sloped gabled roof...the peak of this gable is catching on the tube. A dremmel could knock this mismatch down of course degrading the rim strip over it...which seems to be built into the rim??..not a standard rim strip that Fulcrum uses. Will try to get a pic up when I get it back apart, tho may not be easy to capture in a picture.

If fuller satisfaction turned out to not be possible, I would say just file the seam smooth and hope for the best. But a rim joint that is shifting isn't a good thing. If there is no sign of abuse, Campy should replace that wheel for you. I suspect it is a pinned joint rather than welded. Is that right? Actually all my rims are that type, so I'm not casting aspersions, just saying that would make the most sense.

Thanks for your input Robert. That joint may in fact be pinned. No sign of a weld and wasn't sure how what I presume is what starts out straight channel stock curled over a round mold and then somehow jointing the two ends which are now misbehaving a bit.
And yes, also agree, this maybe a sign...or maybe not...there is a structural integrity issue looming. That is why even if Fulcrum won't cover it, I would like their input if this burr can be taken down without liability. Of course the corporate line is always CYA and I don't expect them to endorse any sort of modification with a dremmel. But will see how it plays out and thanks for your advice.

Wanted to update this thread and clarify an error I made in the root cause of my rash of blow outs on my Fulcrum 5 wheels with Rubino Pro III's...latter rear tire only having a couple of hundred miles on it if that.

So what happened? I thought it was the rear wheel seam mismatch that caused the blow out, but I was too hasty in my conclusion. Yes the 18.5mm wide rim tape that came on this wheelset was shifted over exposing the seam on one side which I did feel to be excessive. But I performed the usual due diligence sleuthing of where the blow out was occurring in each of three failed tubes. As it turned out it was not at the wheel seam but rather a couple of inches from the stem...the same for each failed tube. So...I tracked this position to a couple of inches adjacent to the tire label that I always align with the stem...why we do this and what did I find? A very fine slit in the side wall about 1/4" long. Each tube didn't have a pin prick but rather a small bite out of it. What was happening was....when the tire filled, this cut expanded and as soon as I put my weight on the bike, it bit down on the tube and blew a hole it.

Since I removed the rim strip from the wheel to get a better look at the wheel seam mismatch, I took a very small diameter tight roll of 150 grit sand paper and knocked that burr seam down and made it almost perfectly smooth and then reinstalled the one piece urethane rim strip. Fulcrum could do a bit better with their factory rim strips which are thin and not really wide enough and also without adhesive to keep them centered. Velox would be better and honestly stay in place better versus shift...I find the Fulcrum strip a hint undersized in width as well. Take a look Fulcrum owners if/when you do a tire change.

Back on the road with fresh Vittoria Rubio Pro III. Never got a cut in one of these side walls before and have ridden Rubio Pros for years. But it was clearly the tire and not the rim that was at fault. But the burr in the wheel seam and lack of complete rim strip coverage was a less than ideal condition and no doubt unfriendly to long term tube survival.

PS: One email and one call to Fulcrum and no response to either so far. Thanks to everybody that responded for your advice.

Read this thread with interest as I have Fulcrum 5s and also seem to have an EMail to that address that is going to go unanswered. I had a question on another forum about the direction the labeling should face on these 5s. Seems to me the Fulcrum wording across the hubs should read left to right on both hubs when viewed from behind the bicycle, but when I do that the yellow warning label and QRcode ends up on the NDS side of the rear wheel, but on the DS of the front wheel. See what your 2 sets of Fulcrum 5s look like for me? When building wheels, I always lined up the rim labeling and of course real Campy hubs are directional. These Fulcrums are handbuilt but doesn't seem that they gave the same thought to the process.

Builder error on one wheel?

You peaked my interested and so had a look at both sets of Fulcrum 5's I run on two different bikes. Will preface and say, they are different designs as Fulcrum redesigned the 5's again in 2014 with some very nice changes and reduced gram weight a bit even though performance difference between the two wheelsets for me is indistinguishable.

Label direction. There are many ways to consider this. Call it a puzzle. Will say first hand, when it comes to design, if you get three engineers in a room, one or two will disagree. This is my first hand experience. But important thing is to rule out human error on how your wheels were built with warning labels on the opposite side, this was deliberate and not accidental. Both of my Fulcrum 5 sets are the same.

Will give you a bit different paradigm when it comes to warning label side in particular. A notion is...Campy/Fulcrum doesn't want the label on the same side. This is for two reasons. If the label is affixed one on each side of the bike, there is a higher probability of reading it. Second reasons is aesthetics. If there are two orange warning labels on the same side of the bike, your eye will go to this and is cosmetically distracting aka less attractive. So I believe that is the reasoning behind it.

Will give you another paradigm about hub labels. There is two schools there. If you think about it, you have latitude to install the front wheel either way. But not the rear wheel of course because the cassette has to go on the RHS. Difference in paradigm on hub label direction is....when you look at the rear hub label from the rear of the bike, it is properly attached....left to right.
Now for the front wheel, you can install the wheel either way. A differing view from what you said about label direction and interpretation about correctness is....just like when you look at the bike from the rear the hub label should read properly...how about when you are in front of the bike and you look at the bike from the front? The label should be legible but it wouldn't be if you had hub lettering with same orientation as the rear.

In summary, I believe there is deliberation to the way Campy/Fulcrum attaches their wheel and hub labels. This is mistake proofed in fact during the manufacturing process. It just might not fit your ideal precisely but I believe the way they did it can be explained.
Cheers.

are these the "Warning.. rims wear out with use" etc.. labels you're referring to? I peeled them off my Eurus without difficulty.. fwiw.

You've given this a lot of thought. Check out images of Bianchi Infinito CV bicycles as they use Fulcrum 5 LGs, either in image searches or on the Bianchusa.com site. While I cannot tell how they position the front hub and the "Fulcrum" label across the hub, it seems 50% of them have the orange warning label an QRCode facing the DS on the front wheel and 50% have those labels facing the NDS. All of the rear wheels have the labels facing the NDS. I'm inclined to believe that the "hand builders" don't pay any attention when the pull out a front hub and rim from the parts bin. If they were using old-style Campy hubs they would need to pay attention.

Wouldn't want to peel them off in case you ended up selling the wheels.

hmm.. maybe there's a resale market on stickers.

I just left the orange warning labels on even though I try to remove almost all labels from my bikes...I don't find the small labels on Fulcrum wheels objectionable.

An update. Fulcrum Customer service emailed me back. What he said was, if the burr is discernible and the outside rim/wheel seam does not appear to be problematic...both true in my case...seam on the outside looks fine...then perfectly acceptable to knock the burr down. He suggested not using a dremmel because it may take a bit too much material off and use a file. As mentioned, without this information we basically thought the same before I heard from him....I used a very small dia. tightly wound small piece of 150# sand paper and made the seam smooth after prying off the plastic rim strip which went back on how it came off with good elasticity....Fulcrum rim strip is one piece. Not a bad idea to replace the rim strip in my opinion with a thicker cloth type...wider would be better like 20-21mm wide...only a suggestion.

Hope this helps other Fulcrum owners if they feel this seam interface with the tube is a bit excessive and maybe problematic to tube integrity over time.