On Friday, July 31, 2020 at 11:21:52 AM UTC-7, Lou Holtman wrote:
On Friday, July 31, 2020 at 6:10:04 PM UTC+2, wrote:
On Thursday, July 30, 2020 at 11:49:42 PM UTC-7, Sepp Ruf wrote:
AMuzi wrote:
On 7/30/2020 6:58 PM, wrote:
On Thursday, July 30, 2020 at 10:37:46 AM UTC-7, AMuzi wrote:
On 7/30/2020 10:39 AM, wrote:
On Thursday, July 30, 2020 at 8:22:42 AM UTC-7, AMuzi wrote:
On 7/30/2020 10:02 AM, wrote:
On Thursday, July 30, 2020 at 6:53:26 AM UTC-7, Tosspot wrote:

If they need to adjust it, never, ever, take it back.

What you are saying is that you do not know anything about
truing a wheel. So your advice is questionable to say the
least. Riding a bike, especially those with carbon wheels, beds
the spoke nipples, also spoke tension bends the rim differently
on a stand than on the road under the jarring of the potholes
and bad roads and almost always requires a minor straightening
after a hundred miles or so

Why would carbon wheels behave differently?

That's ridiculous. If we had to ship new wheels back here and
then out again we'd be out of business.

Mr Tosspot had it exactly right that rework means it wasn't built
well to start.



All you're saying is that your customers are willing to accept a mm
or two out of true or round.


No, they would scream bloody murder[1]. And they would be right.

[1] American English translation = 'refund'

I'm having a little problem with your claim. Since I had my Madone in
the shop a couple of weeks ago the owner told me to bring it back in a
couple of weeks so that they could check everything and TRUE THE
WHEELS. Now Robby was one of the mechanics for 7/11 when Andy Hampsten
won the Giro and in those days they would build all of their own
wheels. So it isn't as if he isn't familiar with wheel building.
Robby's shop is called "Wheelworks"


When Mr Hampsten and his brother worked for me, they were taught by my
head wheelbuilder at the time, Mr J K Herro. Andy knows wheels. If a
wheel isn't reliable and stable for 100 miles, most classics stages are
impossible. I'm not besmirching your local shop, but 100 miles is a small
interval for a new wheel.

Aren't there non-tech reasons for inviting buyers back?

* Trying to cover their behinds against any wheel-related legal nonsense

* Trying to make the customer feel grateful for "free service," especially
if his riding buddies boast that their (sloppy) shops offer "free checks and
fine-tunings" after x miles or weeks?

* Creating an opportunity to find something else to sell, fix, or tune
before the customer decides that the shop is at fault for something he
bought and is not completely pleased with?

The carbon fiber in the spoke bed is soft with fibers down in the bottom not being properly compressed and NOT round. So CF wheels from China at least, have widely varying spoke tensions. While you can set equal spoke tensions on an aluminum rim and the wheel will be pretty much round and true you can't do this with a CF wheel though I would some day like to check out the Zipp or Enve or Campy CF wheels. But I suspect that either they use a different molding process or they have exactly the same problems.

You will find that MOST riders don't even know that their wheels are out of true unless they are dragging on the brakes. Didn't we just see AK asking about brake adjustment when he didn't realize he had a broken spoke? This isn't something that is stupid or uncommon and most wheels sold are obtained by people with even less knowledge than AK. So a couple of mm out of true wouldn't even be noticed.

Why would you act as if people are all experienced mechanics with more highly developed senses than most people have? From his postings, dollars to donuts Frank wouldn't even notice a broken spoke if it was tearing the paint off of his chain stays.

My experience with wheels with CF rims (Zipp and Campy) is that they stay true no matter what.

And I am sure you can do that if you're willing to load the wheels for awhile before sending them out. What is your experience with equal spoke tension? I'm willing to guess that you could make a better nipple bed with much more complicated molds. But the Chinese wheels are all over the map. And with the older "plate style" "aero" spokes you cannot get a tensiometer to read correctly because the spokes are simply too stiff. Remember, a tensiometer measures the bending of the spoke while under tension so it assumes a rather weak spoke in bending.