Q&A: Fixing Dented Deep-Dish Carbon Wheel & Lacing Spokes

Winter's a great time to get your equipment ready for next season and to work on your mechanical skills, like wheelbuilding. From this week's mailbag, here are two related Q and As with feedback and photos from the cyclists showing their handiwork.

This first question is from my Bicycle Trip/Symantec teammate Miles, who is one of our top 45+ masters racers.

Dented carbon rim

Q: Hope you can help me out, Jim. I wanted to make my race bike even faster with some deep-dish carbon sew-up (tubular) wheels. I did my research and decided to buy some made by Edge, which have a great reputation (FYI, they changed their name to Enve recently).

These are pricey wheels so I decided to search eBay and I found what looked to be the perfect pair at a sweet price.

I won the auction, but when the wheels arrived I was depressed to find a large dent in the front rim. Here's a photo. Did I get ripped off? Should I send the wheels back? They're very true and round and all the spokes are nice and tight. I can't see any other signs of damage but I hate this dent. What would you do?

Thanks!
Miles

A: You said the wheel is very true and round and all the spokes are nice and tight. That's good, Miles. As long as there's no other damage (did you check for cracks in the rim where the spokes enter it?) - the dent is probably only cosmetic damage not unlike when a shopping cart rolls into and dents your car. It's ugly and frustrating, but it won't affect the strength of the wheel.

Tall, deep-dish carbon rims like this are often pretty flimsy. You can squeeze them and make the sidewalls flex a lot so it's easy to see how someone running into the wheels in the race pack could have done this. Or maybe, just putting them in the back of a car and someone putting something on top of the wheel dented it. So, it pays to watch out for stuff like this.

Why don't you bring the wheel over to my home workshop and I'll check it out and see if it's fixable? I'm thinking we can pop it out similar to how you'd get a dent out of a car fender.

NEWSWIRE: Ric Hjertbert offers wood rims

The photo above shows a Ghisallo wood rim in the final processes of construction being drilled with holes for the spoke nipples. Wood rims are hard to come by these days yet still of interest to vintage road bike aficionados looking for super classy tubular wheels. So I was happy to hear from my friend Ric Hjertberg at FSA that he is bringing some to the market again through his new website www.wheelfanatyk.com. On his site he also offers excellent wheelbuilding information, more photos of the Ghisallo rim build and some tempting top-notch wheelbuilding tools for sale, too.