Damaged carbon tubular rim - what are my options?

Home:Ballyhoura

Hi guys, I came down inside the last 3km* (see below) on stage one of the Gorey 3 day last weekend and damaged the front rim of my Corima carbon tubular wheels. I know I didn't pay too much for them because they were old and second hand but I can't imagine what it would cost to replace it. I had a blowout before and the front rim was slightly damaged from whatever caused the blowout or else something I rolled over before I managed to stop. Either way it wasn't too bad and the LBS said the structural rigidity of the rim had not been affected and filled in the affected are with a carbon resin (red stuff in last picture) to make a braking surface again and stop it getting worse.

However, this time it seems worse. Not good at all I feel, probably a total write off actually. It obviously had some impact during the crash and has caused what I would describe as some serious damage but feel free to prove me wrong! I have attached a couple of photos and hopefully you can make out the damage. It appears that the foam which I believe some companies fill their deep secion rims with is visible, I may be wrong but I know that it definitely is not a good thing that I can see this stuff whatever it is.

So, I don't think repair is an option this time is it? Can you just buy a new rim with the same spoke count (18) and same lacing pattern and simply swap out the rim keeping my existing hub and spokes? Obviously I would like something similar and the same rim depth to keep them pretty much a matching wheelset. Can this be done? Are there any other options to get me out of this mess? Do Corima do any crash replacement programme or anything like that? What would you do and what advice would you give?

Thanks in advance for your help guys, I genuinely really appreciate it. It now looks like my prize money and more will be going towards this misfortune! Cheers

* = Off topic I know but just to let you know that I was told when I was on the ground that ya, the crash was inside the last 3k just get up and finish it, but afterwards I was given 3 excuses as to why I did not get the same time as the group I was in at the time - 1, Gorey is not a UCI event. 2, this year the rule has been changed to 1km. 3, It's 3km for Pro's and 1km for amateurs. I don't really care to be honest as it wouldn't have changed much for me but I am just curious as to what is the actual reason, does anybody know? Thanks again!

avalanche

sorry to hear you had a spill and hope you are alright but i think your wheel is unrideable. the structural damage looks pretty bad.

henboy

Also sorry to hear of your spill . Looking at the pictures you posted I would say that could be sorted . There must be a carbon resin out there for that . Hope you get it fixed man .

RobFowl

That wheel is fcuked......
It would be extremel dangerous to keep on using it so just replace it. You can get replacement rims but they tend to be quite expensive and you need to source a decent wheel builder as well.

And the rules for Domestic stage races state

8. Riders who suffer a duly noted mishap within the last kilometre will be awarded the time of the group they
were with when the mishap occurred, and they will be given the position in which they subsequently
cross the finish line. Failure to cross the finish line will result in the rider being placed last on the stage.
These provisions will not apply in TT stages, nor where the road stage finishes at the top of a climb, such
stages shall be defined in the race regulations.

Good ride BTW

IM0

Ask youself the question..if it was a tyre, and was cut up like that would you get a new one? (never mind relative cost) or wait until the tube bulged through and had a blow out?

Its all about whether you wanted to take the risk, personally if it was me I wouldnt..not anymore.
You'd need an aerospace engineer to tell you whether or not you could patch it safely ..or something.

dave2pvd

Rim = dead

Lumen

If you replace with a different rim you are likely to need new spokes as the lengths will be different.

Cheapest non-Corima deep rebuild option would probably be a Gigantex 50mm rim (and some spokes). Wheelsmith use them for Zipp rebuilds according to their website. However, you'd be going to a lot of effort to keep your hub.

Maybe get a set of PX 50mm and do some jiggery pokery with decals (it's your thing after all). Use the other Corima until you've killed that too.

edit: maybe this will help

columbus_66

Hi Ballyhoura, well done yesterday but sorry to see your damaged rim. There were a few of these over the weekend. But I think your rim might be salvagable, as you can inject the rim with epoxy resin or lay a fibre patch over the outside and then sand down the braking surface. I know http://www.roughstuff.ie/portal/index.htm can fix these problems. It might be worth trying them out at least. One of the guys damaged a Lightweight wheel and said he got it fixed before with Lightweight for €200-€300.

blorg

I'm no expert but I would not ride that, it is completely ****ed. Not worth the risk. Your life is worth more than a few quid. Whatever about if it was the back :pac: front wheel sudden failures can be nasty.

jwshooter

house insurance !.

fondriest

Don't think i would risk it myself, if it collapsed at speed you could end up seriously injured or worse . Start saving

garminguy

if it was me, i would not chance a front wheel damaged like that
better to start saving up for a new one
surely there is someone in limerick cc who would let you borrow one on race days for the next few weeks?

Home:Ballyhoura

Sorry guys, my post must have read slightly wrong. I have absolutely no intention of riding this rim whatsoever in the condition it is in at the moment. I know myself it is seriously messed up in a bad way and I wouldn't even think of risking it. I just thought there would be a cheaper way to get a similar wheel in working condition without having to actually go and buy an outright wheel seeing as it is only part of the wheel that is damaged and other parts are functionally perfect.

I think someone said to me the first time it got damaged that not to worry that a new rim would only cost about a hundred to two hundred quid if it couldn't be fixed, but I didn't realise that the spoke lenghts would be different (and I would need to find and pay a good wheelbuilder) and I'm not too sure how good the hub is to tell if it is worth trying to salvage it (would there be a market for this sort of thing, to sell the hub and the spokes if I decided to go down the route of replacing the whole thing?).

I know that the wheel is actually a Corima Medium from 5 or more years ago so getting an exact replacement rim would be next to impossible however I would be very lucky if the Aero+ rim that they sell today was still virtually the same. That way I could buy the replacement rim direct from Corima (or try and source one cheaper elsewhere :P) without a problem except for the wheel building process. Half decent spokes cant cost too much can they? How much for something like 18 Sapim CX rays which I hear so much about? I wouldn't mind a small extra expense if I could go with something cheap and good value like those Gigantex rims (where can you get those) or the Planet X hoops to get me back up and running again.

I'm also not sure if I want to stay with tubular anymore seeing as I flatted the rear on the same stage which is another 30 quid! I don't want to go trying to inject it with stuff and see what it is like. IMO the rim is a write off full stop. I must ask Corima if the Aero+ rim would sort me out. Let me know what you think, thanks again guys!

Lumen

H:B, if you're on a tight budget then deep section carbon tubulars are probably not a great idea, particularly since you seem to have had a few issues with punctures despite your light weight - maybe the roads out west are not suited to fancy tyres.

There's a lot to think about in a race, and stressing about how much the next tub/wheel repair is going to cost you is a distraction you don't need. Save your concentration for the mind games!

Hopefully you'll be in a position soon where a sponsor is picking up the tab.

IMO.

Home:Ballyhoura

Very good point actually Lumen, I had thought about this myself actually already! Would it be possible to swap out the rim with the clincher equivalent?

Lumen

Home:Ballyhoura wrote: »

Would it be possible to swap out the rim with the clincher equivalent?

Sure, a rims a rim (assuming the same number of holes). You may need different spokes of course.

The thing is, when you break down the cost of a wheel the components are rim, hub, spokes, build. At the very minimum you're looking at rim and build, or more likely rim, spokes and build (if you can't or won't source a perfectly compatible rim). That's three out of four cost components.

With expensive wheels the rim can be a large part of the cost, so you'll always be in questionable territory rebuilding at all.

For instance, the Shimano 7850 CL wheels are about £500 each, and the only place online I've found selling replacement rims has the RRP at £250 a rim. A set of RS80s with two of those same rims costs €400, so it would be cheaper to buy a set of those and break them for spares. Shimano just don't want people doing rebuilds or custom builds with those rims.

But I recently had a Planet-X A57 wheel rebuilt with an Open Pro rim. The spokes didn't need changing. The wheel was only worth £50 when new but I feel better because I didn't have to throw stuff away.

I think you should speak to a good wheelbuilder about the options.

You could say: don't race what you can't afford to replace.

tunney

Home:Ballyhoura wrote: »

Hi guys, I came down inside the last 3km* (see below) on stage one of the Gorey 3 day last weekend and damaged the front rim of my Corima carbon tubular wheels. I know I didn't pay too much for them because they were old and second hand but I can't imagine what it would cost to replace it. I had a blowout before and the front rim was slightly damaged from whatever caused the blowout or else something I rolled over before I managed to stop. Either way it wasn't too bad and the LBS said the structural rigidity of the rim had not been affected and filled in the affected are with a carbon resin (red stuff in last picture) to make a braking surface again and stop it getting worse.

However, this time it seems worse. Not good at all I feel, probably a total write off actually. It obviously had some impact during the crash and has caused what I would describe as some serious damage but feel free to prove me wrong! I have attached a couple of photos and hopefully you can make out the damage. It appears that the foam which I believe some companies fill their deep secion rims with is visible, I may be wrong but I know that it definitely is not a good thing that I can see this stuff whatever it is.

So, I don't think repair is an option this time is it? Can you just buy a new rim with the same spoke count (18) and same lacing pattern and simply swap out the rim keeping my existing hub and spokes? Obviously I would like something similar and the same rim depth to keep them pretty much a matching wheelset. Can this be done? Are there any other options to get me out of this mess? Do Corima do any crash replacement programme or anything like that? What would you do and what advice would you give?

Thanks in advance for your help guys, I genuinely really appreciate it. It now looks like my prize money and more will be going towards this misfortune! Cheers

* = Off topic I know but just to let you know that I was told when I was on the ground that ya, the crash was inside the last 3k just get up and finish it, but afterwards I was given 3 excuses as to why I did not get the same time as the group I was in at the time - 1, Gorey is not a UCI event. 2, this year the rule has been changed to 1km. 3, It's 3km for Pro's and 1km for amateurs. I don't really care to be honest as it wouldn't have changed much for me but I am just curious as to what is the actual reason, does anybody know? Thanks again!

You could try wheelies?

tunney

Home:Ballyhoura wrote: »

Very good point actually Lumen, I had thought about this myself actually already! Would it be possible to swap out the rim with the clincher equivalent?

I doubt the hubs are that good to be honest, and the bearings probably (if its old and second hand) could be at their end of days, I'd just get an enitrely new wheel.

Mr R Stuff

Hi Lads,

I have been doing carbon repairs for 20 years now on all sorts of sports gear.
Predominatly kayaks and paddles, bits of Cars and motorbikes, but we have done a number of Race bike frames and most recently one of those rims. That one in the photos is not as bad as the one we have just repaired so I reckon we could repair that one quite sucessfully. It might be a bit difficult to get it not to touch the brake block as we have to add carbon layers to the outside and feather the joint but with a little adjustment of the brake caliper in conjunction with polishing the repaired area, the braking is pretty ok on the wheel.
If you want me to give it a go either email mark@roughstuff.ie or call the palmerston factory at 01 6264363 and we can take it from there.
You would be amazed at what we can repair, from a bag of carbon frame bits to a trashed boat hull, All can come back to workable condition!
The cost of repairs are usualy linked to how good a finish the customer wants, If you don't want the repair invisible and colour matched, (and we can do that to!)then a 3000 euro frame might come back to use for a few hundred Euro.
Quotes cost nothing, chuckin out a frame that could be repaired.......
Thats expensive!

Best regards

Mark
087 2596012

Gavin

Just out of curiosity, do you have any way of measuring the strength of your repair ? Id imagine people are a bit cautious about getting a repair on something which is under serious stress and is vulnerable to catastrophic failure.

Quigs Snr

On the plus side Ballyhoura, One of our riders destroyed a rear Corima Aero +. And therefore has a front one that he might be tempted to sell. Good condition, 08 model, I had it on the front of my TT bike a couple of weeks ago.

Mr R Stuff

Hi Gavin,

like all adventure sports, its dead right to be cautious about equipment. Kayakers don't dive off the nearest waterfall with their newly repaired paddle,
We try it out on the flat and then get into some roughstuff with it in places where we are confident a failure is not going to be nasty.
Likewise, with a bike frame or wheel, down corkscrew hill at 50mph is not the place to try it out! You can put a bike frame under plenty of stress going up a steep hill quite slowly, similarly a wheel.
So get confident with your kit before committing to a do or die session.
It makes sense to regularly check your frame and wheels before tough sessions, you can have small mishaps that did'nt seem to do any harm,
Eg. big stone accidentally cycled over but you seemed to get away with it, or bike fell over onto a kerb in the car park and nicked the backstay
Are they safe now? check it by Stressing it up somewhere safe.

So in answer to your question, no, there is no non-destructive way of testing a carbon structure other than normal loading. Testing to destruction obviously will tell you if the component was stronger or weaker than the original, but hey, now its destroyed.

A good rule of thumb is always to repair with more fibre than existed in the original layup. For instance a unidirectional fibre tube that started out as 0.35mm wall thickness moulded at 150 bar with a 40% resin to fibre ratio, might have a repair applied that was vacuumed on at 0.8mm wall thickness and 50% resin to fibre ratio. The weight of that repair might be 45grams but its more than twice the thickness of the original tube.
So why would you compromise the strength of the repair by trying to cut 20 grams off the repair?

So, in short, we would always endeavor to exceed the strength of the original structure with the repair and the expectation is that you would test it somewhere safe to gain confidence that it will do what you want it to, before diving off that waterfall!!

hope that helps,

rgds

Mark

Home:Ballyhoura

Quigs Snr wrote: »

On the plus side Ballyhoura, One of our riders destroyed a rear Corima Aero +. And therefore has a front one that he might be tempted to sell. Good condition, 08 model, I had it on the front of my TT bike a couple of weeks ago.

Sounds good, let me know whenever you can as I'd say I would definitely be interested alright! Cheers

72hundred

Home:Ballyhoura wrote: »

Sounds good, let me know whenever you can as I'd say I would definitely be interested alright! Cheers

Or you can see him a front wheel :rolleyes:

amused2death

Consider this,
Irish road are unforgiving, Unlike most european roads ours are poorly constructed and maintained. Which means the wheels you buy need to be fit for purpose. carbon wheels are designed with aerodynamic and weight consideration over strength and durability. Alloy rims provide better flex on rough roads. They are also cheaper. Deep carbons look great but are not suited to general road race conditions in ireland. Look at the early season damage so far this year. There is a superb range of wheels available that are very light, look great and will take the punishment that we can expect racing in Ireland and you wont cry if they do break because you didnt have to mortgage the kids for them. Carbons have their place even on irish roads. But i would be more selective about when to take them out.
I have 2 pairs of mavic aksium clinchers
and a set of mavic ksyrium SL tubs
I would buy carbons but for TT or selective races

Home:Ballyhoura

amused2death wrote: »

Irish road are unforgiving. Deep carbons look great but are not suited to general road race conditions in ireland.

Just to point out I have had these wheels almost a year now and done approximately 5000km racing on them (and the previous owner did this probably a few times over) with no problems whatsoever. I never had to even true them (even after the crash damage it is still in perfect true) despite having hit some serious obstacles but I am light on my wheels being only 55kg, so it is not the road surfaces that have done the damage but a serious crash. Although saying that, I would imagine that had I been on the Ksyriums at the time they probably would have walked away still usable!

Comm2

Surely if you patch that rim up it will be well out of balance? New rim I say...

wheelsmith.co.uk in Scotland has replaced this sort of things regularly. i'd give them a call. unless you can get that other wheel second hand of course.

blorg

Comm2 wrote: »

Surely if you patch that rim up it will be well out of balance?

I don't think balance matters one jot on a bike wheel personally.

Comm2

Having ridden a well out of balance wheel at speed, I'd disagree, and if your going to race it...you should be riding at speed on occasion .

I had a rear wheel that was unbalanced, every time i went over 32/33'ish you could feel the bike becoming less stable. Once countered the wheel rode fine, it was no lightweight though! Certainly wouldn't want a front wheel like that.

RobFowl

blorg wrote: »

I don't think balance matters one jot on a bike wheel personally.

Wouldn't agree at all Blorg. I've had some crap wheels in my time and at speed especially you really feel a badly balanced one.

mloc123

simple test, tape a 20g weight to your rim..