I just read Dan’s racing wheel article stating that it’s okay to have a runout of up to 1mm in a disk or tri-spoke. Why would one accept tolerances like that on a pair of wheels costing hundreds of dollars when most would not accept that on their wire spoked training wheels? At a shop we once put 10 pairs of tri-spoke wheels into a truing stand and couldn’t find a single front or back within reason. The entire shippment. This for a wheelset retailing at $800. As Dan said, one can’t true an all-carbon wheel. So it had better start dead true. Not +/- 1mm. Put a Corima product (disk for 4-spoke) into a wheel stand and look at it’s run-out. Next to nil. Same for a Zipp disk. Why can’t/don’t the aluminum capped manfs improve their product, and why do consumers accept second rate wheels? They are very nice people to deal with, but their product needs to improve before I’d recommend their wheels to a friend. I was never a fan of the old Spinergy RevX product due to their weight, but at least they were true!
‘As Dan said, one can’t true an all-carbon wheel. So it had better start dead true.’
If you can’t a true a carbon wheel how can you untrue it? What part of this are you quoting from Dan? If it’s the first part it sounds as if he is saying you can never make one absolutely true to start.
I just want to ad that the Renn Disc is also perfectly true and round at a much better price than the others.
I got the impression from Dan’s article that he feels one should accept an out of true wheel and to take consolation in it never getting more out of true that it already is. Sounds funky to me.
I’ve yet to see one up close or in a wheel truing stand, but you guys (owners) rave about them. Might be worth a closer look.
Why would one accept tolerances like that on a pair of wheels costing hundreds of dollars when most would not accept that on their wire spoked training wheels?
It’s fairly well-established that it is more important that a wheel is (1) round, and (2) has even spoke tension that it is to have no runout. Even spoke tension allows a wheel to stay strong, and stay in its original shape, longer. Anybody can build a spoked wheel with no runout, but if the spokes are not of even tension, then the wheel will not hold up and perform well.
You can’t feel 1mm of runout going down the road.
BTW-the reason that wheels with evenly tensioned spokes are not perfectly true is that rims are not perfectly made. They’ve all got a little bit of twist in them. You can get out the runout in the truing stand, but you won’t end up with as strong a wheel.
mine started out a little bit off…but it’s nothing major.