Last time on Tech Tuesday, we straightened a wheel with the help of a tree.
This week, we’ll wrap up our trailside wheel repair series
with a few more symptoms and what you can do to fix them.
Man, all this wheel work makes me hungry, Ben. Are you hungry?
- You know me, Calvin, I'm always hungry.
- What are you hungry for, Ben? - Tacos!
- Woah! The infamous taco!
Let's have a look at this wheel.
That looks terrible. - It's bad.
What's your taco recipe, Calvin?
- Well, when making tacos, I like to take a lot of energy
and add a dash of de-acceleration, meaning a crash.
So typically, we've turned our wheel, you're bracing with the ground,
your fork is here, you're stopped at an impact -
it's going to fold the wheel.
So the taco is a lateral bend, but it's a compound lateral bend.
We look at this wheel here, we have an interesting spoke pattern.
Right here I've got loose spokes. 180 degrees - loose spokes.
But 90 degrees here I'll have tight and tight.
What do you have on your side?
- Opposite thing - we have loose spokes... and tight.
- That's right. So that curve tells us this rim has been totally deformed.
There may be some repair that can get us home, but this definitely needs to be replaced.
So the repair is simply to try and elevate the hub slightly - we'll find our loose spokes here and here -
we're going to apply pressure on those high sides.
So Ben's going to give us a foot here, he's going to come over here and press down,
trying to snap it back somewhat.
Let's see if we did any good.
- Not bad! - Actually, we didn't do too bad!
If we're clearing the frame or fork, we're ready to ride,
but again: this thing is compromised.
At any time it could snap back the way it was.
Replace as soon as possible.
Get yourself a straight wheel, not the taco.
- When do we eat? - As soon as we get rid of this wheel.
What are you hungry for now? - How about a radial impact?
So this is our radial impact.
You can see we've got a loose spoke here, a loose spoke here on different sides, so
this is definitely a flat spot in the wheel.
You get this from casing a jump, hitting anything, frontal impact...
Not a lot you can do to fix these on the trail,
you can see the bead is holding where the damage is, so we just ride out of the woods on this if we can.
Thanks for all your help Calvin, I'm going to go finish my ride now.
- Well, I think I see one more problem there, Ben, I think it's down at your front.
Pick it on up and get a better look up here.
- The front wheel was fine...
- No no, Ben, I think you've got a broken spoke - What are you doing?
- Right here. A broken spoke.
Well, broken spokes can happen. What's one way they can happen?
- A guy comes out of the woods and cuts your spoke?
But usually just fatigue from bad tension.
- That too low of tension, riding and riding, fatigues it.
It's not going to break in the middle - it's actually going to break right at the elbow.
The one problem we have is we don't want this thing lashing around,
so we're going to loosen this thing up, and we're going to take it out.
With the spoke out of the way, it's not going to cause any damage.
We loosen the opposing side a bit to compensate.
We see that the wheel is not hitting the frame or fork.
It's good enough to get us home.
We continue on our way and replace it back home.
If you're doing a long long multi-day tour, it is worth carrying a few extra spokes.
Well, you're ready to go on your way, we'll see you next time on: Tech Tuesday!
- Where'd he go?
Calvin!
Calvin?
Thanks for watching.
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