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Hovis
dglshrn
Need some advice - bought a set of these
a month ago, rode them a couple of times on short rides and they've been fine. However, the other day I realised that the dishing on the rear wheel was about 6-7mm over to the non drive side so looked at them properly. According to my TM-1, the drive side tension was about 130 (?), but non drive side was too low to be recorded, yet they were still massively non-dished. By backing off the NDS tension a bit, I was able to centre the rim, which brought the drive side down to around 100 (13 or so on the TM-1). Having done this, I thought I'd better just get them checked at the LBS, just to be sure the non drive side wasn't too low. They called me a couple of hours later to say that the rim was fucked because the drive side was pulling through the rim at a couple of places. Thankfully, the seller has refunded half of what I paid and so I'm not massively out of pocket as the front is absolutely fine.
I have a couple of questions though - why did the drive side need to be so high tension that it started to pull through the rim? They're rebadged Reynolds assault rims AFAIK, so quality should be good. Is it that the NDS spokes are too long?
How loose is 'too loose' for the NDS? They're not floppy but definitely not as tense as any round spoke builds I've done (which have held up), but I've never built with CX Ray so don't know how much flex is to be expected.
And finally, is this 'potential catastrophic failure' territory, or can I keep riding the wheel on the flat? I'm not going to take it down any 50mph descents, obviously, but would it be ok for flat rides? Is it a case of the LBS being over cautious and just something I should just keep an eye on?
I've attached a picture of the worst eyelet, where it does look like the clear coat has lifted. In the shop, the mechanic showed me slight bulging around a couple of the eyelets but you could only see it at certain angles and there's nothing I'd call a crack (what looks like a crack there is just detritus that I've since rubbed off). I can't actually find a bulge again since backing off the drive side tension a bit. Had I not had it pointed out to me, I honestly don't think I'd have noticed the issue, but I can't ignore it now I know.