How bad can a wheel be….

[New29er]

…. and still be OK to true with spokes?

I crashed (not new!) and came down on my back wheel (no, I am not entirely sure how I managed to do that). It potato-chipped badly enough that it could not make a revolution through the frame. Being a long way from a road where my wife could pick me up, I muscled the thing back to being round enough to spin. It seems to be about two inches off-line at the max. Aluminum wheel. No visible cracks or damage. I have a feeling I should just go buy a new one, but they ain’t cheap, as the saying goes. I have a truing stand and spoke tensiometer. I’m good at truing wheels, but I haven’t ever tried to take out this much wobble.

Any advice? Thanks in advance.

[fat_billy]

It is a fatality if the rim is Tacoed that bad. The only way to be sure is to unlace the wheel and see it it will lay flat on a flat service. If not the rim is toast. If you can retrue it and get it in line the next time it is hit it’ll be taco land again. It is impossible to have even spoke tension on a bent rim as the spoke tension keeps it centered and true. Sorry. 😄 Later,

[Mark Larson]

And I can tell you that the second failure might be catastrophic. I did this once on an older road wheel with sew-ups. I managed to "straighten" the rim and then re-laced it and got it fairly true. Then it collapsed completely on a corner. It just folded in half and left me laying in the street.

An engineer friend explained something about disruption to the surface tension of the aluminum leaving weak spots at the site of the original bend.

If you’re good at lacing and truing, you can buy a new rim for much less than the cost of being seen at the local emergency room. You might even want to buy new spokes.

Good luck, and ride safe.

[ollysj]

If it was that bended, I wouldn’t use it again for saftey reasons.

[New29er]

Thanks for the help. You all confirmed what I thought I should do, but I was hoping to be wrong. I was already thinking I couldn’t really trust it again even I got it true.

Off to the LBS….

[xtipen]

Hello,

I am looking to replace a bent wheel. However the original wheels I have say "32h SSW26". Ihave no idea what that means. Should I look for wheels that match that size exactly or is there a range I should look for?

Thanks

steve

[fat_billy]

32h = 32 spoke rim. 26= 26 inch diameter. Go to your LBS and see if it is cheaper to replace the rim or buy a new wheel. 😄 Later,

[dozzerboy]

A little late but SSW stands for "Stainless Steel Wheel."

[Author]

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