i fail.

seejohnbike, after reading your post, I sincerely respect your candor.

That said, I figure I can round up 12 chromoly frames from different manufacturers remove any labeling and ask a BF panel of experts whether they were hi ten or chromoly frames ? Let them ride and inspect them. How many of the 12 do you think any given expert would be duped into identifying as hi ten ? The results might surprise you ? Like I indicated you can take a lugged vintage road bike and let them ride and inspect it and if the expert relied solely on that, some wouldn't guess correctly, but how many would admit that it really came down to a 50/50 guess ?

I don't know everything there is to know, never said I did. I've learned some things here @ BF and then I've also filtered out a lot of bad advices too. I rely on personal experiences the same as the next guy. What I've offered can be taken or left just the same. Self deluded and so on, that applies to many in this world just the same, if that's the way it's perceived.

seejohnbike and JesusBananas are my new heroes. Couldn't have said it better myself.

And to fuji86, of course we all know that a perfectly true, tensioned, well balance wheel provides smooth riding. I built my wheels radially and laterally true to 5/1000 with a dial gauge, and I know my rims are perfectly balanced becoz the little 1 inch piece of Araya sticker always always falls right to the bottom (without tires or tubes). But after you add everything together, it's too ridiculous to obsess over the little things that will alter weight esp when the differences aren't directly noticeable. Things like valve stems, patches, tire wear, etc.
Sometimes my LBS only have 48mm valve instead of 34mm. Do I take it? Yes, it's not a big deal to me. And while patching tubes might cause imbalance to the wheel, it's just too OCD to obsess over it. Plus not having to replace a tube every single flat is just more financially and environmentally appropriate.

I will volunteer to test out a frame for you fuji.

fuji, I wasn't trying to challenge you earlier, I was just throwing out some possibilities that could affect your test's outcome. I realized you are very intelligent and are willing to test things and posting the result on here, for that I respect you. With that said, I do think you are being a little bit too obsessive about your wheels, just go ride and have fun.

What I was trying to imply is that even if your bare rim is perfectly balanced for a given tire & tube, that once you patch/replace a tube, or replace a tire, your wheel is going to be out of balance. I really doubt an unmodified, off-the-shelf tube or tire can possibly be balanced enough to not prove your rim-shaving exercise a waste of time.

If you're really as sensitive to wheel balance as you say, you're either an android or an audiophile.

i lold at the manicure statement though.

heh

Well, I was going to pull the trigger on a response and then I highlighted it and hit the delete key. I do appreciate & respect your candor (do I really have any other choice) and have come full circle and realized there is nothing I can post here that won't be taken personally. This has digressed even with you and if your perception of me as the "troll", it is what it is ? No devils advocate or subtlety here, I mean I start a thread, get attacked in it, yet I'm the "troll" ? I've explained to you that when I post I try to keep it one on one, especially when the initial attack was exactly that, an attack or attempt to annoy and not just a post generated to discuss. I posted directly to you so that others don't perceive the discussion involves them in any way. My apologies for annoying you, but I will not change that, because when a post isn't directed at you, you can read it at your discretion, but why would you feel compelled to read any further ? Scroll on to the next one ? I get the feeling that the real reason is you feel excluded ? And if it's part of the BF group that has to hunt in packs, it tends to level the playing field doesn't it ? The one's that have each other's backs can't gang up and attack except in post after post fashion. And by me responding individually my response is more directed at the points that were brought up. Who would take on 5 or 6 disbelievers (and here's where perspective is applied, read that as "trolls" in your vernacular) in the same post ? So we're back to winning an argument on the internet ?

You seem to have misunderstood the meaning of the word "troll".

A troll is someone who posts something contrary or inflammatory solely to illicit an intended reaction. It has nothing to do with attacking or insulting people (though those are a means of doing so).

For example, if a poster goes to a pro-life forum and make a new thread saying "I am fine with abortion, they're not alive anyway", then that person is being a troll. They are inciting argument by posting an unpopular opinion solely for the intent of inciting argument. Similar but to a lesser degree is someone who goes into a cycling forum (especially a fixed gear forum, where the predominating opinion is that foot retention is invaluable if not indispensable) and posts that there is no advantage to riding with foot retention.

So please, don't misunderstand. If people liken your behavior to that of a troll, they aren't accusing you of attacking people. They're accusing you of being unnecessarily (and likely, disingenuously) inflammatory with your positions.

dsh, regardless, being called a troll is hardly flattering.

Vixtor, Oh great, take me up on the offer to test out a frame, wth am I gonna get 11 more for this test ? (j/k)

dsh is correct.

And I used to wonder if you were a troll (i.e. you make unpopular/factually questionable statements for the sake of being annoying) because it was, in my mind, actually a more flattering alternative than the idea that you make these statements because you actually believe them. I still don't know if you actually believe all the things you say, but you do seem eager to argue for the "other side" even when the evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of the tried and true.

1) I was not referring to this thread in particular. There have been multiple other threads started by other people, where you made some kind of untrue statement, and the rest of the thread consisted of people trying to explain how you were incorrect in your assumptions.
2a) Disagreeing with you is not attacking you.
2b) In regards to me personally, I stated that I wondered if you were a troll (vocalizing my thoughts). It was never and never has been a personal attack, e.g. always "This is an incorrect assumption" not "you're stupid for thinking this."

Excluded from what? I don't feel excluded from anything? I didn't really understand the rest of this.


I'm flattered.


"audiophile"

this argumnet is ridicurous

Your argumant is redonkulous.

Yeah, I'll need the cliff notes version on this thread.

This thread just keeps giving and giving... just got home after riding my bike 60 km (commute) and am having that much anticipated cold beer.

Have to say that if I built two frames and used high ten steel on one and chromoly on the other and kept everything else the same so that they looked identical and had exactly the same parts you would be hard pressed to know which one was which.

Bananas, I'm going to just drop and ignore a lot of your last post, going back & forth on it is pointless, neither of us are going to agree, so let's just say we agree to disagree ?

Moving on, more information:

https://www.sheldonbrown.com/wheelbuild.html
https://www.sheldonbrown.com/gloss_m.html#machined

Now we're getting somewhere on how any rim is actually manufactured ? Could it be remotely possible that the rims were irregular at the seam/weld on this bicycle before any additional shaving work was performed ? I wonder what an internal biscuit would do towards offsetting any valve stem imbalance ? Perhaps this is why nobody has a wheel (edit) that settles with a valve stem at the 6 o'clock position, among other factors ? Wouldn't this be considered something a wheelset manufacturer does to balance a rim off the production floor ? Whether it's conscientiously done by design or not ?

" Perhaps this is why nobody has a rim that settles with a valve stem at the 6 o'clock position, among other factors ?"

Rims don't have valve stems and the heaviest part of rim is usually where the manufacturers sticker sits... and this little bit of weight will usually drop to the 6 o'clock position.

When I got home I put my bike in the stand and watched my front wheel turn and when it stopped the valve was at 12 o'clock... the magnet for my computer was at 6 o'clock.

65er, my bad, poor choice of words in that post, "rim" sb "wheel". Wheel as I intend it to be used is tube & tire included. Thanks, good catch.

As I understand it, the position of the valve stem hole is always positioned directly across from the weld/seam. Because there is more material at the seam, due to pins and/or welds, this allows the wheel to be better balanced due to the additional mass of the valve stem when the tube and tire are installed.

I don't think anyone is arguing that a rim can't be better balanced by filing the seam and/or strategically adding weight. I think most of the "pack" believes it's a total waste of time and/or doubt that you can actually tell a difference in ride quality that isn't due to the placebo effect.

If you can feel the difference in ride between before rim shaving and after, then you'd be able to tell (by ride alone) if a tube has been patched, or even whether or not a valve stem cap has been replaced after pumping up a tire. Not likely.

six, your post made me realize a few things, so I have to ask a few questions and bear with me on this. Others can read this and chew on it too as food for thought ?

Was your post influenced by and composed based upon any of the links or readings from posts # 64-66 of this thread ? Because if so, that would refute some of what others have been telling me as their truth(s) and thus their assertions of my untrue statements in the past couple of days or so (you can see the date and time stamps of the posts):

You said:

This was said in post # 72 in this thread linked below before it was closed on the same subject:

https://www.bikeforums.net/showthread...Masi-%29/page3

This is how I'm interpreting your post, that a manufacturer has intentionally oriented the seam & weld to be opposite the valve stem hole to better balance the rim that perhaps accrues to the entire wheel ? Post # 72 of that thread indicates manufacturers don't do this ? I maintain that thru R&D, wheelset manufacturers have improved materials and processes (post # 65 of page 3 of that thread linked above).

Maybe, a manufacturer or few has gotten good enough to do this over the past 30 years and it's a matter of QC really passing or failing a weld/seam, perhaps maybe a few slip by because of human error ?

Now, I'll move on to a psychophysic concept known as a "jnd", rather than repost quotes from it, I'll let anyone read it for what it is and make their own assessment whether it's real/true or not:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-noticeable_difference

I hear terms like "placebo effect" and "quality of ride" being thrown out. And that works for their points, perhaps now some of that may even work for my points ? At this point, I certainly want to know what anyone's perception or definition of "quality of ride" is. Because a "jnd" is really difficult to get a handle on, but it's very real and does exist from many other's perspectives that have argued in favor of the concept. For example, let's take when a cold front moves in, can we all feel a drop in humidity and temperature ? Do we all have the same threshold of sensory perception to detect it at the very same exact moment ? If others aren't aware of the jnd or don't even acknowledge they exist, when does the "quality of ride" ever really improve ? And that's another thing, even if I posted this immediate moment that I felt that improvement in "quality of ride", would anyone that has already made up their mind (as I have been accused of and explained away as placebo effect), would anyone in the pack mentality even believe it ? You at least leave some opening in your post with the words "Not Likely", but "not likely", still leaves probability that there is a possibility. That's the futility of where this discussion has escalated to, that nobody would believe me if I said it ? I'd still have skeptics. I'm fine with it though, because these concepts actually mean that they can't refute or disprove beyond a shadow of a doubt their contentions. But it's more likely that what I suggest is actually true. By and large "Quality of Ride" is very much real and like "threshold of pain", only the nerve endings in anyone's body elicit a stimulus to the brain that equates to pleasure, the quality of ride perhaps by their definition. Can those sensory perceptions of touch and feel even be accurately measured ?

My latest post was based on the research I did a few months ago when I decided I wanted to learn how to build wheels. I read the information on Sheldon Brown's site (linked to above), a lot of other articles and forum discussions and a wheelbuilding book. It was also based on my training and past experiences. Prior to this thread, I had not once given a second of thought to whether or not bicycle wheels were balanced or not. Other than the blurb I remembered reading about the valve stem hole always being across from the seam/weld.

I have ridden in cars with unbalanced wheels and have heard about various types of machinery self-destructing due to improper balancing. However, I think these cases are due to much higher RPMs and much larger imbalances than are likely to be found in a bicycle wheel.

I have no doubt that most bicycle wheels are not balanced - because they don't need to be. I think it would be really difficult to make a bike wheel unbalanced enough for anyone to notice. People add/remove things like reflectors, computer magnets, spoke cards, etc. all the time with no noticeable (at least that I have ever heard of or experienced) effect on ride quality.

There are too many other variables that affect ride quality much more than the balance of a wheel. Legs moving up and down, whole bike and body swaying back and forth, bumps in the pavement, springiness of the frame and tires, etc.

You say that you can feel a difference in ride quality after filing down the weld beads. How much weight do you estimate that you removed? Depending on the alloy used in the rim/weld, I guesstimate it would take about a chunk about the size of a valve cap to weigh one gram. That's a lot of metal to remove, so I'm assuming you shaved off only a fraction of a gram from each rim. If each wheel with tube & tire weighs a pound, the entire bike weighs 20 pounds & the rider adds another 150 pounds, the effects of balancing the rims seem to become negligible.

I suspect that the improvement in ride quality you claim to feel is all in your head. It makes sense that after all the time and effort you put in to taking your wheels apart, observing how they spin, shaving the welds, etc. that you want to feel an improvement. However, without more data and experiments to back it up, I have to (no disrespect intended) call BS.

Fuji- Arguing with you is completely pointless. No matter how super human you think your sensitivity is compared to others, you are not ever going to notice micrograms of weight change during your ride. Also, you keep saying you are excluded and attacked by a "pack" and I'm pretty sure I know why. Every time I see your posts all I see you spouting off flawed facts in the most annoying fashion. Every single one of your posts is you being a pretentious ass thinking you're going to change the world of cycling by typing nonsense into one rhetorical question after another. You do this so much in fact that you are putting question marks at the end of statements, and you are too smug to remove your head out of your own ass to fix it. ("Others can read this and chew on it too as food for thought ?" just one example) If you don't want an entire "pack" to "attack" you then stop writing useless factually skewed information in a manner where you present yourself better than everyone. Nothing you say is profound. Most of what you say is borderline idiotic.

Stick to the discussion CrockerCock. Where do you stand on the concept of a "jnd" and it's applicabilities. Still waiting for your definition of "quality of ride".

Your quality of ride is the same now as it was before you "balanced" your wheel.

six, you made an admission by stating that all the components, cyclists weight, energy transfer and so on effect quality of ride. The rim is one of those components. Before, my wheel rocked back and forth like a pendulum as it settled when it was set into motion in a direction. The laws of physics dictate that the wheel would never rock back in the opposite direction without a force countering it and causing it to (in this case the weight of the imbalance). If this is the method to measure that than so be it. Afterwards, the goal was to minimize the rock, if not eliminate it altogether and that was accomplished. So how far does the imbalance rock. Several in. or mm, perhaps nothing as perceived by the naked eye. I can tell you that the rock on these wheels was significant, several inches. Since the degree of rim perfection is a characteristic of a component that determines ride quality, the rim is significantly improved and therefore ride quality has been improved by that. No BS, just the fact(s).

Stick to the discussion dsh. Where do you stand on the concept of a "jnd" and it's applicabilities. Still waiting for your definition of "quality of ride".

I thought the thread was about how you thought you were proving a point by being super OCD about a very minuscule problem(if it can be called that). The definition of "quality of ride" has nothing to do with the point of the ride, since a minor(very very minor) weight imbalance would not affect the ride enough for any human to notice. In fact it is only when you are sitting in our house with your bike upside down trying to prove your flawed intelligence that you were able to notice that there even was a weight imbalance. It started as someone tried to politely correct you that weight imbalance is generally a problem in cars and rarely with bikes. I'm sure you felt insulted that a lowly BF member corrected you, so you felt the need to search for(I would even go as far to say created one) a problem. Finding something and using a joke as a so-called "theory" to try and put yourself in the right. The fact remains that you shaved off micrograms of material which got a result you were looking for. The key words being "looking for". If you had created a video where you rode your bike and went "I think something is wrong" proceeded to shave off metal then hopped back on and said "wow perfect". Then this thread would be more plausible. Unfortunately that is not the case, instead of basing it off of what you feel you found it with your bike upside down. Just give it a rest you haven't proven anything to anybody.