Problematic wheel

[chris-s]

I'm asking this really on beahalf of a colleague who is having no end of problems with the rear wheel on his six month old Bianchi Nirone.

We both bought the same bikes last summer, niether of us having had a bike for a long time. Whilst mine has been faultless over 900 miles, he has had real problems with his back wheel having done less than half the miles I've done.

He first noticed it had gone out of true about a month after getting it, the lbs straightened it and it seemed fine. But it needed to be re-tweeked by them three times over the following month or so. On saturday after not having ridden it several months, five miles into a twenty mile ride home, a spoke breaks. I recover him to the LBS who fix it up and off he sets for home again. This time he gets about five miles from home before another spoke breaks.

NOW, yesterday I was out on a local event ride and hooked up with a guy who also happened to be riding the same bike, after striking up a conversation, one of the first questions he asks is whether I had had any problems with the wheels! He had bought his bike from the same LBS and had had similar problems to my colleague before buying/part-ex his wheels for some replacements.

So it seems like this could be an 'issue' with these wheels, having never dealt with this type of issue with an LBS, what would your approach/view's be?

Cheers

Chris

 

[numbnuts]

Take it to a decent bike shop and have the wheel re-built by hand using new spokes that should sort it out

 

[PpPete]

Friend had a similar experience on rear wheel of a new Spesh Secteur last year. After LBS had had several goes at it I took it apart to rebuild from scratch. The rim had a substantial natural "bow" to it, and although I could get it true, the spoke tensions were so wildly varying when i'd finished that it would not stay true for more than a day.

I was very unimpressed with the quailty of the spokes & nipples too.

I have a feeling that in wheel-building factories the quality control is only on the true-ness of the finished result, and not on the evenness of the spoke tensions or picking up any sub-standard components. So there will always be a proportion of "bad" wheels which no amount of LBS attention will correct.

You friend should take it back to the shop and demand a complete replacement wheel as that particular example is clearly not fit for purpose.

 

[chris-s]

Thanks for the replies. He has spoken to the LBS this morning and Bianchi are sending him a new wheel. Hopefully this will be a good one.

Cheers

Chris

 

[cyberknight]

Take it to a decent bike shop and have the wheel re-built by hand using new spokes that should sort it out

Might even need to be retured properly , i had a similar problem and my most local lbs would just tighten up the offending spoke so i took it to a bigger lbs with all the spokes loose so they had to start from scrath and its been fine since.