Truing a bent wheel

Snapper1

hi all,

My rear wheel (i think it's a Mach1 CFX 32T rim) on my road bike has become slightly bent/buckled after a few of the spokes bent/came loose. It's not a major bend but enough to make the rim scrape off the brake blocks when it rotates.

My question is would it be fixed properly by getting a shop to replace the spokes and truing the wheel? would this get the wheel up to its original strength or will it never be the same again? and in this case, should i bite the bullet and invest in a new wheel altogether.

Reason i ask is that I'll be doing a lot of cycling during the summer and don't want the buckle to re-occur when i'm on the road with no access to a bike shop.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

Mucco

You could try yourself with a spoke key. Only cost a few quid, and it'll mean you'll have the experience to do 'in the field' repairs if necessary. You might need to replace the damaged spokes.
A bike shop would, of course, be able to fix it. If it's really bad, you might need a new rim....

Civilian_Target

Yep - they're never quite the same after a truing, and a rebuild is usually about the price of three truings. Buying a new wheel seems excessive unless its quite visibly bent.

Capt'n Midnight

Best comment I've heard was "I've been doing this for twenty years and I'm still learning new tricks"

http://www.sheldonbrown.com/tooltips/truing.html

Of all the maintenance and repair jobs that may be needed on a bicycle, the trickiest is truing (straightening) wheels. A good wheelbuilder, in many cases, can do amazing things for a wheel that might appear to be totally destroyed. But a person who tries to "touch up" a slightly out-of true wheel without proper knowledge could turn an imperfection into a disaster. If you have a badly damaged wheel of basically good quality, take it to a good wheelbuilder. If you want to learn to do it yourself, the best approach is to start by building and truing new wheels, using new spokes and new rims. Before you try to repair badly damaged wheels, it is much easier to master the fundamentals working with undamaged parts.

youcancallmeal

Grrr spoke on my back wheel while broke on the way into work this morning. This is the 3rd time since Christmas.

ThOnda

youcancallme>al wrote:

Grrr spoke on my back wheel while broke on the way into work this morning. This is the 3rd time since Christmas.

Where did all of the broke? I mean which part of spoke? There could be something incorrect and could be reset for your hapiness. There could be bad diameter of spoke bend at it's head which is not suitable for your hubs. It could be a little expensive to have all the spokes changed, but after it you would get perfect and reliable bike.

However, adjusting spokes and wheels belongs to bikers' basic skills. It's not complicated, be gentle think and use your skills. Just slight turns and check if it is getting better or worse.

Capt'n Midnight

ThOnda wrote:

However, adjusting spokes and wheels belongs to bikers' basic skills. It's not complicated, be gentle think and use your skills. Just slight turns and check if it is getting better or worse.

Don't forget to loosen the adjacent spokes too. If you tighten half a turn on one spoke then think about loosening the spokes either side by a quarter turn.

Before you do anything though twang the spokes to feel the tension in them, if any are very loose check if the rim is damaged. ( you don't need to loosen the spokes beside a very loose one though ) Steel rims are harder to true than alloy ones because of the springyiness of them.