wheel truing or something more serious

tim_wand

Pannier went into the none drive side of my rear wheel. (Pro Lite Como) today on commute to work. I had to disable my rear Cantis on my Kaffenbach to continue my journey.

When I got to work could see that the wheel was out of true. Not enough to catch on the frame but certainly a serious rub on the brakes.

Took out most of what was obvious with the spoke key on my alien but it still rubs in the blocks.

Theres no apparent spoke or rim damage, does it just need truing properly by a pro or could there be something more serious.

It catches around the valve on the non drive side at the brake block for about the run of 4 spokes.

Any advice appreciated

redvee

Let your LBS have a look, there will be one in the area who has a mechanic who can work magic with wheels. Might be a £10 true-up or £15 true-up with a couple of new spokes.

tri-sexual

if it is a slight rub then it can very easily be straightened by trueing the wheel
look online to see how it is done, really not that difficult
its best to make small adjustments over several neighbouring spokes rather than trying to true the wheel by adjusting just one
best to remove tyre and tube first but small kinks can be done with the wheel complete
lube the nipples before adjustment and if you have aero spokes, hold them with specialist tool or by clamping them with pliers (wrap a small piece of material around the jaws to prevent damage to the spokes)
when you are happy with the wheel, check the tension of the spokes, use a spoke guage or "strum" them, they should sound the same,
pretension spokes, recheck trueness, make any small adjustments if needed and repeat if needed until the wheel is true, spokes are correctly tensioned and pretensioned
replace tyres, tubes
job done

Monty Dog

Depends on how big the distortion in the rim is and whether you've got enough spoke 'pull' to get it back into line. A little and often is critical. If you've not got any experience of trueing wheels, might be worth getting your LBS to have a look. With a severe buckle, I often wind-off spoke tension for the whole wheel and then start afresh rather than cranking up the tension even more - this often just results in premature spoke failure due to over-tension.