I've got a question... My roommate just took her 'fantom cross uno' into have the wheels trued at a pretty upscale lbs. That is they work on mostly nice/very nice bikes. They guy wrote on the recipe that OE wheels and OE spokes were almost impossible to true, and would "assuredly go out of true very quickly"? How true is what he said? Are they that crappy that a good wheel builder couldn't do a decent job?

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if they give recipes instead of receipts, that's pretty cool

considering the amount of bd bikes on here, you probably would've heard something before about it.

Sounds like he wanted to scam you into buying a new wheelset.

Sounds like a) they don't know how to true wheels and are trying to pin it on the quality of the wheelset, or b) being "upscale" they're used to working with full carbon super-low-count-bladed-spoke $1k wheelsets and think any bike that costs less than a compact car is a piece of ****.

Thats what I was thinking.

Good, these responses have confirmed my suspicions.

sounds like my lbs. ******bags.

tell them to **** off and do what she asked them to do. elitist ****heads in shops piss me off so much.

when someone comes into my shop and wants something simple done (and i have time), i show them how to do it, and recommend they buy the necessary tool(s) in case it needs fixing again

My LBS is super friendly, tightening cogs/lockrings and shortening chains for free super fast etc. I do need to buy a chainbreaker though asap.

yeah, lets all jump conclusions like we know the LBS. I'm sure there's more to the story.

OEM wheels tend to need some love before they are 100% as the tensioning and truing often leaves something to be desired but once they have received some attention from a good wheelsmith they should be good.

he's right. it's the uniformity of the metals and composition of the materials and precision of the manufacturing process. cheap wheels aren't going to be evenly distributed and that weight when bumped will pull unevenly.

that said, it don't matter.

seriously, you can true them again and especially with canti brakes, it don't even matter. you'll go 99% as fast wherever you're going, and you can teach yourself to true them so it's not a moneydrain, just a time drain.

it don't matter. not worth spending another 5, 6, 7 hundred on a wheelset that *may* be a little better at staying true when you cheaped out on the bike as a whole.

anyone who buys a phantom cross uno is either fast enough to win crosses with untrue wheels on any bike, or slow enough to not need wheels to stay true for decades.

so full of **** you are

The LBS guy may have trued your wheel, but he probably did not do a complete adjustment of the tension, because that takes more time and skill. Wheels continually loose their true when the spokes are too loose. If a spoke is too loose, on the bottom of the rotation, the spoke completely looses its tension allowing the nipple to gradually turn, which causes your wheel to go out of true. Hitting potholes will exagerate the process. This will not happen with a properly tensioned wheel. If tensioned correctly, a wheel built with ****ty components (or wheel built with too few spokes) will hold its true...its just more likely that components will begin to break sooner (rims cracking, spokes breaking, etc). With a proper tensioning, the BD Phantom Cross Uno wheels will probably hold true for a long time.

Fine a new shop.

99.9% of wheels out there that we would by are fine. Yes, they might need some more work in the beginning but that it.

Maybe he's not used to your double-butted spokes.

Really? OEM in what terms? Machine built? I have plenty of OEM wheels from Mavic, Fulcrum, Ritchey and ALEX that were perfect out of the box or on the bike.

Now my ALEX wheels form BD need some really good truing when I bought my Dawes.

On my wifes Specialized, the ALEX wheel are perfect from day one!

prebuilt wheelsets can have problems staying in true; same goes for wheels built with lower-end rims. it's somewhat cyclical (ha ha) in nature - getting a wheel in true but sacrificing even spoke tension in order to do so makes it a bit more likely that under duress, or while settling, the wheel will go out of true. fixing the trueness doesn't address the problem of uneven spoke tension, so it creates the same problem again.

of course, that doesn't excuse a bike shop wrench trying *once* to do something... i mean, come on. i've been in a situation of taking a pretty crashed and bang trued wheel to a shop. they said, this is probably the last time it can be trued before it's just going to have to be rebuilt, but if it goes out fast bring it back and we'll give it another shot.

+1. Even tension is more important than perfect trueness. No rim is perfectly round to begin with and in order to get even spoke tension, sometimes its necessary to leave a slight hop or wobble in the rim. A slightly out of true wheel will not be noticed by the rider.

Alex makes good rims. They have a bad reputation because they often come on stock on low-end bikes with poorly built wheels, which is why, in many instances, they end up going out of true and not lasting very long. A good shop will finetune your wheels when you buy the bike...most shops don't do this, at least not in my experience. They'd rather just charge you for a ****ty truing job that won't last and try to sell you different wheels.

2 year old $110 wheel set from nashbar that I literally beat the living piss out of have stayed true for me.

I had them retensioned when i bought them but since they have been great.

+1

One my of local shops hand builds all their wheels and 99% of their house brand bicycles roll out the door with Alex rims unless someone specifies otherwise. They also give you one free true on every pair of wheels they sell. I've got a pair of Alex DA28s to formulas they built that will probably survive the Apocalypse.

Whether they give the same treatment to their brand name bicycles, I don't know.

+1000. Im constantly being told how ****ty the wheel set on my Maddy are, and how theyll be "bent up" before the end of my ride" always by ZIPP, Deep "V", carbon, riding morons Even a few BF memebers have told me this! Ive ridden my Madison thru the F'ed up streets of Filthadelphia since day one and they a still perfect! and anyone that lives here can tell you what the streets are like but to stay on focus YES! your LBS guy doesnt know how to true wheels, that why he's making up lame excuses, take it to another shop that you know does good work and see how it goes, if it goes well you can go back and demand your money back.

Thanks for all the responses!

I'm just finishing reading Brandt's wheel book, and then I'll begin attempting my own wheel work. Personally, I've had really nothing but so-so/bad experiences with the lbs(S) so, I'm pretty much in the mindset of learning/(getting all the tools i need) so that I can just do all my work myself. (and maybe in the future my roommates work as well). Wheels are my last hurdle, so this is a good experience in a motivational sense. (Wheels are last until I start getting bikes with gears and all that jazz again).

I know the shop you're talking about. I bought my MASI there and it came with Alex rims they hand built and I've bashed into some potholes and the general ****ery that is bloor street for two months now and they're still perfect as the day I got em.